There is a moment in the life of every translator when we run into a totally unknown term, and not even the words surrounding it can give us a clue. We don’t panic, we go to our favourite dictionary and find the Spanish equivalent there. But not always is that easy: sometimes the term has more than one meaning. Which of them should we use? Will the reader notice our inner struggle? Does one of the equivalents make more sense in the sentence than the others? Or none of them make much sense? |
“[…]Coloqué la primera diapositiva bajo el microscopio y ajusté rápidamente el campo de visión del objetivo a 40 X. Examiné la capa durante unos segundos […]”
What did she put under the microscope? A “diapositiva”?
“[…] I snapped the first slide into a plate under a microscope and adjusted it quickly to the 40x objective. […]”
The problem here was the term slide, which unfortunately for the translator, has more than 8 equivalents in Spanish only as a noun. One of the one of themequivalents is diapositiva , which obviously you don’t watch under a microscope, and another is portaobjetos, a little glass piece whose purpose in life is helping to watch things under a microscope.
It was a tiny mistake, but it shows how even professional translators can make mistakes. We never stop learning, and sometimes, simple words can surprise us.
Any comments? Comments are most welcome =)