I posted to a light-hearted blog called Fucked Translation over on Blogger from 2007 to 2016, when I was often in Barcelona. Its original subtitle was “What happens when Spanish institutions and businesses give translation contracts to relatives or to some guy in a bar who once went to London and only charges 0.05€/word.” I never actually did much Spanish-English translation (most of my work is from Dutch, French and German) but I was intrigued and amused by the hubristic Spanish belief, then common, that nepotism and quality went hand in hand, and by the nemeses that inevitably followed.
I recently read Edmund Morris’ great biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and someone suggested that for some continuity as well as change I segue into the collected works of Zane Grey. Grey is the great romancier of the American West, and his theme – the forging of the American Nation – is that of Roosevelt: birth…
This morning someone rather unusual said something to me along the lines of: Hice tres footin(g)(s) pero se me rompió el tendón(g), entonces dos liftin(g)(s) y ya me ves la cara, y luego en el hospital me metieron un dopin(g) tremendo y ahora estoy en una relación con la farmacéutica y lo llamo la ley…
Too many Spanish restaurants these days try to limit you to one glass of the grape with your fixed price menú del día, inside of plonking a bucket of some nature in front of you and refilling as often required. I fear that Capitán Garfío (has anyone been there?) in Prat de Llobregat will be…
Re: Via secret agent Eva of Muñoz & Malpaso. (Este trabajo es Licencia por la Espanol Ministerio de Agricultura Pesco Alementacion. POR FAVOR NO METERSE CON LAS REDES HO LOS AVES. Firmado, El Cutre Inglés.)