Hello!

My name is Madeleine Deis and I am a 5^th year sociology major with a Spanish minor here at UBC. I started off the semester not knowing anything about the art of translation, except of course, google translate (sorry Maria!). However, as the class progressed, I began to truly understand that there is an entire world associated with translation. It’s almost like a dance with the languages that you are working with; how each sentence and each word needs to move in order for the translation to make sense, for the tango to be seamless.

Translation has made me a stronger Spanish speaker, and even a stronger English speaker, as through the semester I have had to delicately balance my knowledge of both languages in order to create translations for two incredible community organizations: Mosqoy and Ratón de Biblioteca. Working with these groups has been an absolute pleasure, as my understanding has broadened about different organizations in varying parts of Latin America that do so much good for the members of their communities. It is a unique experience to be able to use translation skills in order to help these fantastic organizations with reaching more people within the communities that they are operating in, and being part of that is extremely heartwarming.

Although I still have a long way to go with refining my translation skills, I have appreciated this class immensely, and I look forward to different translation projects in the future!

A picture of me at a lake in Whistler!