Marybeth Timmermann, an ATA-certified French>English translator, 2016-2017年学校永利登录网址比赛的获胜者是谁. She won a free registration to ATA’s 58th 年度会议 in Washington, DC for an all-smiles photo taken during her presentation at Greenville High School in Greenville, 伊利诺斯州, where she spoke to students in the school’s advanced Spanish class about translation.
Raising Awareness About 翻译 in Small-Town 伊利诺斯州
Marybeth had been reading about the 学校的永利最新网址 Program and contest in ATA编年史 for many years and had always been interested in participating. In March 2017 she gave her first 学校的永利最新网址 presentation about translation to her son’s Spanish class at Greenville High School. “I just called his teacher and asked if I could present,” Marybeth says. “他对我的到来非常兴奋.”
“Greenville is a small town and we don’t have much contact with people who speak foreign languages,” Marybeth explains when asked about her motivations for giving a presentation. “其他语言根本不是永利登录网址生活的一部分, so I wanted to stress the idea that translating is something people do, 而不仅仅是手机和谷歌翻译能做的事情.”
Marybeth decided to speak to the school’s advanced class because they were juniors and seniors in high school who had chosen to study Spanish as an elective. Since studying languages is considered impractical in her small town, she wanted to challenge that way of thinking before the students went off to college. “I wanted to show them that you don’t just have to be a teacher if you study language. 你也可以做笔译或口译.”
Marybeth did a lot of research before starting to prepare her outreach material. “I read through all the presentations that are available on the 学校的永利最新网址 website and listened to one of ATA’s free webinars about the program.” She found that none of the presentations available online quite fit what she wanted to do, 所以她决定从头开始做她的演讲. She then spent a lot of time researching Spanish translation examples she could include in her talk. “我不会说西班牙语,所以这是一个真正的挑战.”
When Marybeth started her presentation by speaking French, 这对学生们来说是一个很大的惊喜. “这是一个小镇,我认识所有的孩子. 对他们来说,我只是马特的妈妈,”她说. “他们听到我说法语时非常震惊.”
Having gotten the presentation off to a great start with this attention-grabber, Marybeth开始讲基础知识. 主题 included the differences between translation and interpreting, 常见的专门化, 还有你可以工作的地方(e).g.、自由职业者、私营及公营机构).
Her next step was to explain that translation is more than word-for-word substitution by providing a few simple examples from the Spanish translations she had collected during her research. One of the examples she used pointed out that although three words are used to say “I am fine” in English, only two words are needed to say the same thing in Spanish (estoy bien). Marybeth then explained how false friends can lead to serious misunderstandings and got a laugh from students by pointing out that embarazada in Spanish means “pregnant” in English, 不是它的假朋友“尴尬”.”
She then moved on to more complex examples using metaphors and idioms from the Dominican Republic, 班主任的原籍是哪里. Her final example came from a real-life translation her son pointed out to her earlier in the year. They were at a McDonald’s where there was an advertisement for breakfast sandwiches playing on a screen in both English and Spanish. 英文版本, the ad ended with text across the screen that said “More Breakfast, 更神奇的,” while the Spanish version ended with Más y más y más rico (or “More and more and more delicious”). Her son was surprised to see that the ad used all the same images, 但最后的短语却不一样. Marybeth used this example in class and the teacher helped explain why a literal translation of the English version wouldn’t sound appealing to a Spanish-speaking audience.
Marybeth also spent time talking about the role of technology in translation, including computer-assisted translation tools and machine translation. She wrapped up by discussing how translation is a growing profession by including statistics from the U.S. 劳工统计局. She concluded by explaining what the students could do to become a translator or interpreter and mentioned ATA as a great resource for aspiring linguists.
获奖照片
The winning photo of this year’s 学校永利登录网址比赛 is of Marybeth and the students posing with the result of a translation activity. She gave the students an index card and asked them to write down an example translation that showed one of these:
- 单词数量上的差异
- 语言结构上的差异
- 虚伪的朋友
- 习语/隐喻
- Cultural differences (used in advertisements, for example)
The students wrote down their answers and then posed with their index cards after finishing the activity. “永利登录网址玩得很开心,”玛丽贝丝说.
学校永利登录网址比赛
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