Ellas traducen: mujeres en la traducción y la interpretación a lo largo de los siglos

Summary

The video records a Biblioteca Nacional de España event about women’s contributions to translation and interpreting throughout history. Its central message is that women have played major roles in these fields but have often been overlooked, left unnamed, or treated as secondary.

The program is organized into three panels: audiovisual translation and localization; philology and literary translation; and women interpreters. The available subtitles cover the first two panels and part of the third.

1. Audiovisual translation and localization

The panelists discuss film and television translation, advertising transcreation, and video-game localization.

• Women’s work needs greater visibility. Carla Tejera describes how students and bibliographies often highlight male professionals while overlooking women translators and researchers. Two volumes on women in audiovisual translation were created to document their work and make their names easier to find and cite.
• Localization means more than translating words. Video-game localization adapts a product for another culture and market. It may involve changing jokes, references, cultural details, wording, and even visual elements such as fonts. Localizers also need to understand the game’s software, code, formatting, menus, mechanics, and space limits.
• The goal is to preserve the experience and emotion. A localized game or film should feel natural to its new audience and convey the intended tone, humor, or feeling. Transcreation is especially important when literal translation would not work.
• Film translation is creative but constrained by the image. Dubbing and subtitling must fit what appears on screen and may involve strict character limits, timing, and lip movement. Animated films can require particular ingenuity with jokes, names, cultural references, and dialogue that children will repeat. Translating song lyrics for a dubbing script is not necessarily the same job as adapting and recording the lyrics.
• Video games are not only for men. One panelist estimates that roughly 43% of players are female and points out that gaming includes many genres beyond violent or best-known titles.
• The profession has grown, but quality and working conditions vary. Streaming platforms and the expanding games industry have created more work, while rushed schedules, poor rates, and inadequate review can result in uneven translations. The panelists argue that translators should defend professional standards and avoid accepting conditions that undermine both workers and the final product.
• Technology is changing the field. Machine translation and AI are being used more often, but the speakers caution against treating them as universal replacements for human translation, particularly for creative work. They see technology as a tool whose usefulness depends on the task and context.

2. Philology and literary translation

The second panel explores how philological training and translation inform one another.

• Translation is a form of close reading and interpretation. Knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, textual history, literary traditions, and cultural context helps translators understand a work’s meaning and choices. The speakers reject a sharp divide between philology and translation.
• Translation has helped shape languages and literature. The panel notes that translations of classical works have contributed vocabulary, styles, poetic forms, and literary models to later languages and traditions.
• Literary translators work across many kinds of material. Examples include poetry, classics, contemporary fiction, essays, music scholarship, museum catalogues, and historical or scientific texts. Translating a popular or fast-paced novel can be just as demanding as translating a canonical work, even if the challenges differ.
• Research is part of the work. Translators may need to investigate historical practices, specialist terminology, objects, or cultural references. The speakers describe translation as a continuing process of learning and documentation, not simply replacing words.
• A published literary translation carries the translator’s name and authorship. This creates a different relationship to the text than many audiovisual assignments do. Translators may need to discuss changes with editors and defend accuracy while remaining open to negotiation.
• Women translators have often been obscured. The panel discusses traditions in which women’s work was anonymous or published under initials, and the idea that translation was “suitable” for women because it involved creativity without being considered original authorship. The speakers call for renewed attention to women’s contributions.
• A translation’s canonization is complicated. A source work may become famous while its translator remains unknown. Different translations can serve different readers and purposes, and their standing is shaped by publishing markets, institutions, and readership—not simply by one definitive version.

3. Women interpreters: history, mediation, and sign languages

The third panel begins a historical journey through women interpreters. The subtitles end partway through this discussion.

• Interpreting requires more than language knowledge. The introduction emphasizes immediacy, memory, mental agility, social awareness, and the ability to interpret tone, rhythm, gestures, and other nonverbal signals. Interpreters also act as cultural and practical mediators.
• Malinche (Doña Marina) was a crucial but under-credited mediator. The panel describes her knowledge of Nahuatl and Mayan languages, and her later use of Spanish, in interpreting and negotiating during Hernán Cortés’s expedition. She worked in relay with Gerónimo de Aguilar when needed. Although she was central to communication, Cortés’s writings give her very little acknowledgment.
• Grace’s work illustrates community interpreting. The speaker describes an Italian-born or Italian-family interpreter in Toronto who acquired languages in a diverse immigrant neighborhood and worked in the courts. Her story raises questions about how community knowledge, dialects, and cultural understanding affect legal interpreting, especially for people facing authorities.
• Sacagawea was both interpreter and guide. During the Lewis and Clark expedition, she helped communicate with Indigenous peoples and contributed knowledge of routes, customs, supplies, and negotiations. She traveled with her newborn child and was later publicly commemorated.
• Women served as interpreters during the Spanish Civil War. The discussion includes Adelina Bramson, who had grown up in an emigrant Russian family in Argentina and came to Spain to interpret for Soviet personnel. The speaker says that women made up about half of the Soviet interpreters involved and describes their varied duties. The subtitles cut off while other wartime interpreters are being discussed.
• Sign languages are natural languages, not universal systems. Ana Tamayo explains that sign languages develop naturally within communities and differ across territories. Spain has two officially recognized sign languages: Spanish Sign Language and Catalan Sign Language.
• Translation and interpreting in sign languages take different forms. Tamayo distinguishes prepared translations, more immediate interpreting, and live prepared presentations, such as signing for theatre or songs. The boundaries can overlap, but the amount of preparation and the live conditions differ.
• The field is highly feminized but not necessarily visible. Tamayo cites research suggesting that around 80–85% of sign-language translators and interpreters are women. She describes a common professional profile as a white, heterosexual, middle-aged woman, often self-employed, working part-time, and frequently employed in community services.

Practical lessons from the panelists

• Build strong language skills, but also develop cultural and subject knowledge.
• Learn to research carefully and assess whether sources are reliable.
• Stay curious, read widely, and continue learning after formal education.
• Be flexible and open to dialogue with clients, editors, and other members of a production team.
• Treat feedback as part of the process, while correcting changes that introduce errors.
• Seek colleagues and subject experts who can help with unfamiliar topics.
• Be patient: careers develop gradually, and early work in different specialties can provide useful experience.
• Learn to negotiate and say no to assignments with unacceptable conditions.
• Promote women’s work, cite women researchers, and take opportunities to speak about professional experience.

Speakers and sources featured

Speakers and panelists identifiable in the subtitles

• Opening welcome and event organization: A BNE/European Commission representative and event organizers; the speaker names are unclear in the auto-generated subtitles.
• First panel—Audiovisual translation and localization: Carla Tejera, Lucía Rodríguez Corral, and Diana Díaz.
• Second panel—Philology and literary translation: Yolanda Morató Agrafojo, Isabel García Adánez, and María Teresa Santa María Hernández.
• Third panel—Women interpreters: Icíar Alonso, Jesús Baigorri, and Ana Tamayo.
• Moderation: The moderator’s name is unclear in the subtitles.

People and examples discussed

Malinche (Doña Marina), Hernán Cortés, Gerónimo de Aguilar, Grace (the Toronto court interpreter discussed), Sacagawea, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Adelina Bramson, Paulina Bramson, and other women interpreters in wartime and sign-language settings.

Institutions and projects mentioned

Biblioteca Nacional de España; University of Castilla-La Mancha; the Speculum observatory; the European Commission’s Translate in Europe program; the Mulieres Sum outreach project; and the Women in Audiovisual Translation volumes.