Translation as Burden, Translation as Gift

Thoughts on the oldest profession...for me hehehe

I do not open these anymore but they are comforting to have around.

For most of my professional life, I’ve been a reluctant translator.

I was blessed to move to the United States at the age of five when your brain is still capable of absorbing a new language like an eager sponge. I was also blessed to live in a home where my parents encouraged us to speak in Spanish, meaning I never lost touch with my native tongue during my Connecticut and Maryland childhood. I was doubly blessed to attend elementary school in the US and the equivalent of middle school and high school in Latin America, which means I’ve received schooling in both languages. Finally, I was cursed to like writing and reading and doubly cursed to attempt to make a living out of it.

Those series of factors made it exceptionally easy to fall into translation as soon as I was of legal working age. I’m about as bilingual as you can get. When meeting me for the first time, most people would have never guessed I learned English in Kindergarten or that my native tongue is Spanish. This isn’t a reflection of any innate ability with languages as it is a result of all those blessings listed above. What makes me an excellent translator, though, is that I’m a good writer in both languages.

Smarter people than me would notice they had a knack for translation and celebrate it. Me? I considered it an affliction of sorts. Like a beautiful woman who wonders if men only love her for her looks and not what’s inside (LIB is on my mind), I felt like my translation skills were the only thing I could sell in a cruel and cold job market. They overshadowed my writing talents, cornering me into roles I usually did not want and with little room for advancement. The reason I said yes to them was because, well, money.

I didn’t start off resenting translation. When I was a kid, I liked translating Little House on the Prairie books for fun. Yes, I was that much of a dork. In English language class at school, my classmates knew they could ask me to give them the answer because I always side with underdogs and not power lmao. As soon as I turned 18, translating was how I made a quick buck.

It wasn’t until I found myself putting in 40 hours a week in a Panamanian call center that my relationship with translation changed. It was my first job out of college and one I took after my UNHCR internship ended. I had very little money and a whole lot of dreams about getting into a PhD program in the States. The call center paid $1,000 a month if you had near-native English-speaking skills, a small fortune for the Caribbean nation. My colleagues tended to be kids of the Panamanian elite who were studying law (and therefore had not been shipped off to colleges abroad) or going to the Florida university that had a campus in the country. I think they saw it as a lark. I saw it as a harbinger of doom. What good was it to get a fancy college degree if I was going to end up at a job that I could have gotten straight out of high school?

That existential question resurfaced, intensified, and transformed into my own personal demon when I left a very fancy graduate school and found that the only jobs I could get were…translation jobs. I own the fact that I had no idea how to navigate the US job market, that the concept of “transferable skills” was foreign to me, and that I put too much weight on job requirements that required English or MFA degrees. I was participating in that very female practice of self-selecting out of the hiring process.

Spanish language skills were in high demand, and I knew I could easily snag any of those positions. But it was a demand that was so underpaid. As a full-time freelancer for a translation agency, I was paid $15 an hour with no benefits. When I switched to temping agencies, my pay got bumped up to $20. Still no benefits. When I was hired as the proofreader and full-time translator for a Hispanic advertising agency, I made more money than I ever had in my life up to that point, but the amount was still low enough that I had a right to overtime pay. At least now I had benefits.

Benefits but no respect, not really. My co-workers in the creative department made me feel valued, praising me as a vital part of their team. They gave me props for being quick and accurate. When I looked over their work, they understood I did more than correct typos. I often went in for the heavy edit. Many of my colleagues were born and raised in Spanish-speaking countries. They had the English proficiency of college-educated white-collar workers, but many of them did not have the English fluency I had. I enjoyed making their work better.

Soon, I was writing social media copy, infomercials, and an assortment of other materials no copywriter in the agency had the time to touch or the willingness to. On top of that, I was still translating for all our clients. Did this make the higher-ups describe me as anything else but “just the translator”? NOPE. They denied all my requests for raises. (So much for leaning in.) They pretended like I wasn’t copywriting for one of their major clients on a daily basis. They did not give me credit as the translator for one of their Cannes Lion award-winning campaigns even though the commercial included subtitles I had translated.

Yes, yes, I know. Capitalism, Corporate America, Meritocracy is a Lie, Toxic Workplaces, Millennial Burnout, etc etc etc. I know my tale of woe is not exclusive to translation, but I misplaced the bulk of my rage on the activity. I wanted to write! Translation would not let me! I needed to do everything in my power to shed my identity as a translator!

I spent so much energy, sweat, and tears, and then I spent so much energía, sudor y lágrimas, running away from it. I pitched and pitched and amassed bylines, and every time I did, I felt I was one assignment further removed from translation. I fought and bitched and clawed my way through my supervisors, bosses, and HR to finally get a change in title at the ad agency. As soon as I did, I quit, found a job doing communications for a law school, and vowed to never translate again.

That vow was short-lived after I was the victim of a mass round of lay-offs. Completely disillusioned by the 9-5 stability I had been promised and frequently denied, I went freelance. Translation was, once again, the easy sell. But this time, I wasn’t mad about it?

During those years of translation torment and my subsequent battle to free myself from it, my views on translation shifted. First, owning my desire to be a writer and claiming that identity for myself lessened my neurotic need to be validated by the job market as a writer. I certainly cared less about the opinion of those who made hiring decisions in industries like consultancy and marketing, lol. I was performing all the time to an audience who saw me as a writer. I was writing for publications, sending my work to editors who saw me as a writer. I was accumulating small wins, like regional scholarships and awards, by authors who saw me as a writer. Above all else, I saw myself as a writer because I had put in the work to transform that desire into action.

Second, my troubled trajectory in the US job market went hand-in-hand with my deeper understanding of how much capitalism fails women, minorities, immigrants, and a whole swath of roles in industries that may or may not be dying. It also corresponded to a bigger awareness, on my part, of how much the Latine consumer is completely disrespected in the United States. Fuck, how much the Latine resident/citizen is taken for granted. I’ve seen awkward, error-ridden, flat-out literal translations in official documents, highway billboards, splashy media, and even election ballots. Every time I do, the message I get is the following: Spanish-speaking people only deserve our minimal effort, and they are either too ignorant to notice or too grateful to be here to complain.

But we notice. And we know that you pass off shoddy work because you see us as inferior. It’s made me want to translate out of spite, which is an incredible source of motivation for someone as petty as me.

I’m not a perfect translator, but I can say that I try my best. Today, I mostly work with non-profits and organizations that seek to empower the Latine community. When I can attach it to a mission-driven goal, I find complete satisfaction in translating. As much as I hated my call center job in Panama, I still feel proud of the day I interpreted a call between a domestic abuse victim and a women’s organization helping her flee her abuser. When the vaccines rolled out, I signed up to interpret at one of the city-run clinics because I heard they gave shots out to volunteers. I got my shot elsewhere, in the end, but kept coming back to help out. I’m a piece of crap selfish human, but my heart melts when an abuelito thanks me for making the process less scary.

Plus, I have spent most of my working life seeking an intellectually engaging day job that required little emotional or energetic investment and could be applied towards the greater good. Translation was there, staring me in the face. I just had to learn how to interpret that gift correctly.

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Homework

What is a skill or talent that comes easy to you and that you may have undervalued? How can you supercharge it to boost your creative practice?

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State of My Wallet

September Invoiced: $3,261.18

September Received: $1,857.04

A word of advice: If you set up direct deposit with a client or gig and they end up sending you a physical check instead, tap into your inner pain-in-the-ass and send them emails about fixing the situation every day until they do. This month’s financial upset is that one of the organizations I work with sent out FOUR checks instead of sending payment via direct deposit even though I filled out all the forms. Even though I told them I was traveling and could not receive or deposit checks reliably. Even though I asked them multiple times to please put a stop to those checks and send the money via direct deposit. After some very strongly worded emails, they have reassured me that they have fixed the problem. I have a follow-up email ready to go. -

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Progress Report

September was another Work Hard, Party Hard month as I tried to cram everything I loved about my Chicago decade in three weeks. There were a couple of days in there where I played hooky at the lake or cut short my work day to stuff my face at a casual and affordably priced eatery, but there was a lot of creative activity, too! I shared my work at StoryStudio’s reading in Printers Row Lit Fest, Psychotic Break, and Funny Haha. I snagged some more projects from a regular client and signed on with a new one. My freelance life is moving forward after such a bumpy year, and my wallet could not be happier.

Now that I’m back in Peru, I’m also turning my attention again to poetry and literary journal submissions. This is my first time trying to place work in literary magazines, and all I can say is: The wait times. Dear lord. Six months? A year? Ok, hope to still be alive to get that rejection!

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Shameless Self-Promotion

• In my life as a translator, I’ve had the great honor of working on some cool AF writing projects including this photography book, this poetry collection, and a few NPR articles.

• Looks like I’m going to AWP 2025! A writer colleague asked me to be part of a panel, she did the hard work of filling out the application and pitching her idea, and the lords over at AWP said yes. Let me know if you’re planning on going!

• Thrilled that the first time my name has ever appeared on the Washington Post, it’s with the words “manipulative psychosexual game” attached to it. Read the piece this article references here.

  

• On December 2, I’m teaching a two-hour virtual class on navigating the artist statement via StoryStudio. I promise to make it useful! Paid subscribers can sign up with a 10% discount until November 12. I’ve sent the code via chat and will include it in upcoming newsletters.

• Since I mentioned the chat feature, do people like that? Do you want more activity over there?

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