Translation and Ethics

You have a very diverse educational background. You studied systems engineering, graphic design, and you have a degree in English. How do you put it all to use in your professional life?

Well, I have always been a curious person. If I could, I would go back to college, learn so many things... But you can learn a lot on your own, even in your daily work; and I have often had to learn to do something to complete a design project; the same is true for translation. Sometimes you even have to do some research to be able to provide a quotation for a specific task.

Now, my background and knowledge allowed me to work in different areas: I have worked as a teacher (and continue to do so), graphic designer, web developer, interpreter and translator. To my partners at Globulart, the design studio where I work, I am a “problem solver”; they even used to call me Mr. Wolf, after the character played by Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction; it can be an advantage but also very tiresome, as people tend to rely on your abilities rather than learning to do something themselves. Lately I have focused my efforts in the field of translation, although design continues to be a big part of my everyday work.

How did you get started as a translator and graphic designer? What skills are required for the services you provide? What do you like about each one?

When I was a kid I loved drawing, I was happy with a notepad and a ballpen; we had a Commodore 64 with an optic pen and I spent hours drawing on the TV, that was something magical to me as a child. In the late 80s I discovered 3D animation and it got me increasingly interested; years later I started learning to use a program called 3D Studio on my own and, while I studied at the university, I created a 3D animation as an intro for a TV show on astronomy a group of friends and I had started at a local TV station; that was back in 1995, the animation took hundreds of hours to render but it was worth the effort. Flash forward to 1999, I began studying graphic design at the Almería School of Art; those were the best, most interesting two years of my life as a student. I hadn’t even earned my degree—it would have to wait another year for me to deliver the final project—when I started working at a company called Visual Chart Group as a designer, web developer and, eventually, translator.

My translation work began at that company; I had to translate parts of the corporate website as well as marketing materials, and, being the only one in the company who could really speak English at the time, I was the one to call when the bosses needed to contact a foreign provider or client. Another flash forward to 2006, when I started collaborating with the TV & radio news show “Democracy Now!”, translating their daily headlines and the weekly opinion column by the host, Amy Goodman.

In 2008 I definitely started pursuing translation as a career, and during the last year I have translated two books on design, several articles for magazines specializing in design and art, TV ads, essays on marketing, etc... with a short incursion working as a court interpreter. True story: the name of the first person I had to assist as an interpreter at the court was “Innocent”.

I believe creativity is a strong plus in both professions, design and translation. As a designer you have to think about what the client actually needs, and fight your inner desires to do this or that; you have to be analytical, do a fair amount of research and draw conclusions from it and from the interview with your client. Having great drawing or painting skills is not an absolute must to create a good logo, for instance, but you need to understand composition, how to lay out the elements, and I believe you have to love typography; it is a great part of a designer’s work, and one has to appreciate it and learn how to use it.

I love design, and I love translation. I believe this is so because I am a creative person, and both activities “tickle” my brain the proper way. Both challenge me, help me learn new things, and in part that’s what life is about. And, as geeky as it may seem, computer games had a big part in my learning English. See, during the 80s and part of the 90s, games were seldom translated; I loved graphic adventures (the likes of LOOM, Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest, etc) and interactive fiction games, and I had to improve my English if I wanted to know what was going on in the game, so I played with a dictionary next to the mouse. It may seem silly, but that’s how I learned to love the English language. An early start also helped, as I started learning English at school when I was 7; I am thankful for that.

Translation can be quite a competitive industry. Yet your blog displays many beautiful logos that you designed for other translators and which are clearly intended to help your colleagues improve their professional image and promote their own services more effectively. What inspired you to provide design services to translators?

At first it was the other way around; a translator from the UK contacted me via twitter and asked me if I could redesign her website. I saw she needed a proper visual identity before a website could be created, and she gave me the green light for a new logo and business cards, which you can see in my corporate blog at Globulart.

A month after that, another fellow translator contacted me with a similar proposal, and after designing her logo, CV and business cards I am finishing her website.

What I could see is that many translators and agencies have no visual identity, or the one they have leaves a lot to be desired, looks like a template, or just needs more work. A client makes assumptions about you when he or she sees your website, your logo, you business card, your photograph, and so on... so, a good visual identity is a real asset and it can make you stand out from the competition. I am planning to be more active promoting design services to translators (may this serve as a token of my offering these services).

When creating a design, what are your sources of inspiration? How do you make designs that are creative, but at the same time limited to your clients needs? How do you approach designing?

The client is the main source of inspiration; I usually do an interview and try to gather as much information as possible about the target audience, the product or service, the functioning of the company or professional... Add to that a good amount of research on the business of the client and his/her competition, visual style, language, etc... Once you have absorbed all that information it is so much easier to create something that is right for the client in question. Creativity is the X factor, I have to say that I have been surprised by some of the designs I created, and it is hard to tell where this or that touch came from.

I always try to go through those steps; following them is time consuming but extremely important. When I feel I know enough I start doing some rough sketches, with pencil and paper or directly in the computer; when I find a promising concept, then iterate, iterate, iterate... to just get it right; some of my designs, especially logos, can look simple and easy to create, but you would have to see the Illustrator files... lots and lots of versions to come up with the right one; it pays off to take all that time polishing a design, that way it will be much more robust and usable.

Where do you see yourself and your business in the next few years?

I would like to say that I will become a successful translator, which is my goal now and I am working hard to accomplish it. So yes, I have faith in my possibilities, I believe it will pay off. If I start to fantasize, I would have loved to do the Spanish subtitling for the documentary “Helvetica”, or the upcoming “Objectified”, both by Gary Hustwit. I tried to contact the director but got no reply, perhaps some other time.

I don’t think I will stop doing design work; I offer DTP services and that has brought work from time to time. What I would like when it comes to design is to do more creative work—I feel there is still too much technical stuff in my everyday work.

Aside from graphic design and translation you are also a musician. Tell us a little bit about that. How did you get started? Why? What kind of music do you make?

I would say it was at school that I started loving to play music; I remember we had a great music teacher; he challenged us, taught us how incredibly interesting and beautiful music is. We learned to play the recorder, and I remember I was quite good at it (I have a small collection of tinwhistles and I still enjoy playing them). At the age of 12, I convinced my grandmother to get me a keyboard for my birthday; it was a polyphonic keyboard... God, I’ve spent hundreds of hours on it, learning how to play. I could read a musical score, so I bought several music books and slowly learned to play, also playing many songs by ear, mostly by Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis; that helped a lot to improve my skills.

The biggest thrill probably was when I first played a song using both hands. It may seem trivial, but at the time I was blown away, and I have to tell you it feels GREAT when you are inspired and play with the heart; and it’s a very weird and special sensation when each hand moves independently. So, I was about 15 years old when I started making small compositions; Steven, my best friend at the time, also played the keyboard, and had a Roland synthesizer (D10) as well as a Yamaha MIDI sax (WT-11 & WX-11); I wrote and recorded a couple of interesting songs with those pieces of equipment. Me, I was struggling to save money to buy my own synthesizer, something my father didn’t like; that was a cause of confrontation and, long story short, it took me almost 5 years to get the money, and even when I bought it, the synth was kept away for some time, so I had to wait until 1997 to actually have my hard-earned synth, my faithful Alesis Quadrasynth, in my hands. Most of my songs available at Soundcloud were composed during that time, from 1997 to 1998.

Why doing it? Music is a great way to express yourself, writing it is stimulating and rewarding; of course I’d love to make a living creating soundtracks for videogames or movies, but you know, I really think it doesn’t matter all that much. I am happy if a bunch of people listen to my music and it actually makes them feel something. But there was an instance in which I got paid for my music: back in 1999 I composed two 10-second jingles for a local TV station from Granada.

I suppose I could label my music as “New Age”. Everything I have composed is instrumental; many of my songs are evocative, with dream-like passages of strings and tinkles. I say: listen to it, you tell me what you would call it.

Do you feel language, design, and music share common characteristics? Why or why not?

They are all creative processes, and they all have their own rules and structure... Music is mathematics, and so is design; math is everywhere: in the tempo, the beats, the chords, the silences and the repetitions... and also in the shape, colour, proportion, balance, etc. The same happens with language, it has its own rules and there is rhythm in it.

As to why this is so, I’m not completely sure, but my guess is that contrast is the key. The human brain likes contrast; when you hear a song, the changes in chord are what stimulates you the most, what uplifts you or makes you feel melancholic. In design, the right contrast between colors or shapes is what catches your eye; with language it may be more subtle, but I think the same thing happens.

Have you always been interested in the arts and language? Do you have any other interests you would like to share with us?

I have! And I remember how, as a child, I thought a lot, and I mean A LOT about words and how they were made, how you could transform one word into another just by exchanging letters or syllables... I played with words in my mind. And I still do, actually.

My other interests include photography, art and film. I collect old computer animations; I have a nice collection of computer animation clips from the 70s, 80s and 90s. I love science-fiction; currently I am reading “Neuromancer”, by William Gibson; I especially like the first sentence in that book: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

I have always liked photography; lately I’ve photographed a lot of fireworks, though portraits are usually much more rewarding. During my studies at the school of art, we learned traditional photography techniques... you know, dark room, red lights, developing liquids, etc. I enjoyed that so much, I loved every minute of it. You can see some of my photos here.

I enjoy writing; I have written a couple of short sci-fi stories, one of which was chosen by a popular radio show here in Spain, called “La Rosa de los Vientos”. They recorded and aired a dramatization of that story in May 2005. You can listen to it (in Spanish) here (it will soon be available in my Soundcloud page).

Finally, my translation work for Democracy Now! has made me aware of many things that happen in our world, it is a great source of news. But it hasn’t really changed dramatically my view; if anything, now I have a stronger political conscience.

I would like to thank you for your interest in my opinion, and hope some of your readers find my responses a good read. Regards from Spain!

To learn more about Angel you can view his professional profile on Proz or LinkedIn. You can also see his pictures on Flickr and enjoy his music on Soundcloud.