The idea that translation is an art rests on two fundamental premises. The first is that effective translation requires a certain amount of skill, its techniques and methods developed over time not only in the hurly-burly of solitary practice or paid translation projects but also under the guidance of a…
There are many things to love about the Spanish language. For instance, it has a wonderful cadence undergirded by its many vowels and a speed unmatched by that of almost any other language. And while this can present a steeper learning curve for students of Spanish, who often find themselves…
Humans are storytellers by nature, it has often been said, and we tell stories not only to other people but to ourselves. Without any qualms, I would assert that these stories are more common, frequent, and elaborate than the gather-around-the-campfire stories that have the appearance of innocent entertainment, revealed over…
This past summer, after a short hiring process with only a single interview and a grueling two-hour online assessment, I ended up working for a large data-engineering company that was contracting with an American social-media conglomerate, a major player in the industry. Although nominally employed by one company, I was…
In an era defined both by the limitations and the expansion of artificial intelligence, human writers and translators exist at the same crossroads: that of apparently having to defend themselves against machines, define their value, and decide whether to go on. But this scarcity and fear is the opposite of…
If we stop for a moment on a day’s journey, sagging onto a bench in an orange grove on a rainy day or a perfectly leveled tree stump in the middle of a clearing, we might start thinking chin-in-hand a la Rodin and slowly, after a while, realize something: we…
We all have bugaboos and afflictions as human beings. They tend to percolate into our unconscious, dashing our plans, messing with our standards, opening shutters and throttling cabinets in our tidy neuronal offices of the mind, and generally doing everything in their power to ruin a good night’s sleep. And…
On a Saturday night, while I sit typing away at a desk in a colorless white-walled bedroom, concealed in an apartment building next to the university where I’ve been finishing my two-year master’s degree in translation, I have reason to be excited. I am a schoolboy waiting for his favorite…
For all the pejorative uses of this word whenever applied to a particular individual, in a more abstracted breakdown of the concept there are two relevant kinds of stupidity. And while both have similar outcomes in any given context, they have vastly divergent causes. The first kind, actual stupidity, occurs…
Let the world pummel itself in the full throttle of its terrible self-examination. To this end, there is another source of evidence to be added to the mountains of films, books, treatises, analyses, documents, and first-hand accounts of the Holocaust, the most salient proof of the bestiality of the human…
