How to Apply Theory in Multi-Layered Shapes

Today was my first tutorial for Applicaitons of Translation Theory. Its basically a class after lecture where you break into smaller groups based on your language pair (mine is English-Spanish) and have everyone critique your translation and discuss what things could be improved. Much like an art critique, except this was way more brutal.

I guess this was an eye-opener. Grad school is not going to be easy. That's what I wanted, actually. I can't possible live up to these other two girls in my tutorial. One of them, Isabel from Peru, is already a professional translator/interpreter, has 2 kids my age and I guess just wants a "refresher" or an advanced degree in Translaion. The other girl, Samantha from Australia half English and half Mexican, is a writer. She's published and she also works at Channel 7 doing captioning in Spanish. I'm just me, Cuban and from nowhere, straight out of undergrad with no professional experience but with great aspirations of becoming a subtitler for television shows or film and I also did horribly on my first translation assignment about dinosaurs. All I did was try to apply all of this theory my professors are throwing at me. Faithfulness vs loyalty. Free vs literal. Overt vs Covert.

I was way to literal with my translation and a bit too much of the english language structure showed up in my spanish translation. And the worse thing was that I realize all of this as I'm reading out to the group and had no choice but to continue reading and make a complete idiot out of myself. After that I didn't want to open my mouth again and I was all flustered and uncomposed and bothered.

I was caught by complete surprise. Translation is so much more intense and complex than it was in undergrad. And grad school has now officially become hard and lots of work.