Gary Smith

“Just translate the words.” Translating culture and dealing with clients’ culture shock.

Machines don’t get culture shock. And that is precisely one good reason why professional human translators can still do a better job than AI. This light-hearted presentation will explain how to take advantage of such human aspects, including dealing with authors’ mistakes, modifying the text’s structure, and communicating with the clients throughout the translation process to avoid misunderstandings.

The talk also includes advice about extra services we can and should provide for our customers, which machines cannot do, as well as entirely new possibilities for work and income that many professional translators and interpreters may not even have considered.

Enjoy this amusing look at monolingual, monocultural clients’ misconceptions about different languages and cultures, and how to deal with them without banging your head on your desk.

BIOGRAPHY

Gary Smith is a well-established Spanish>English and Catalan>English translator, who he has lived and worked in Spain for thirty years. A British native but a Spanish citizen, his clients include many Spanish universities, specialising in academic and legal texts. He has also translated and proofread books by famous authors, as well as being the author of Confessions of a Freelance Translator himself.

He has given many presentations at translation congresses over the years, and has been actively involved in association work, formerly the president of the Valencia region’s association of translators and interpreters. He still lives in Valencia, where one of his hobbies is observing tourists’ culture shock.