THE ROLE OF A TRANSLATOR

By Jorge Pantoja

Ever since the beginning, the tower of Babel for instance, the existence of many languages has
been an inconvenience. The fact that they exist delayed progress to some countries, while they
didn't have the people to help comunicating with foreign visitors, many contracts wouldn't be
signed, manytechnologic advances wouldn't be reached, many lives wouldn't be saved (in the
case of medicine progress). It's interesting to see how a country that hasn't fully adopted a
second language, such as Colombia, begins to have more business deals just because more of
it's people started to learn english in time. While bilingual people tend to move forward in life
a bit faster than those who don't speak other languages, it brings benefits to the country: more
jobs are created and business deals will be made more frequently.

The role of translators in a country such as Colombia has been crucial in order for all these
issues and more others to be solved. Without a proper translation, local workers wouldn't
learn new technologies and trades, it would be harder to improve industrial processes, it
would take longer to update already installed hardware. In education matters, the translator
helps ease the transmission of knowledge from one country to another, turning a foreign book
into something a person that doesn't understand the aforementioned book's language can
read and learn its contents to improve their skills. The translator allows, as part of their work,
to bring improvement to the nation.

Thanks to modern technology, a person can contact other people in any other country. The
ability to do so brings a new challenge to companies interms of effective communication, since
a business deal cannot be made ifthe message isn't clear one way or another. Knowing our
peers' language will allow us to have a correct understanding of what they are transmitting
and we can therefore assume business between two companies can be easily fulfilled by
overcoming the problem that not knowing how to communicate with each other would bring.

Strange as it sounds, knowing the foreign language alone isn't enough for a good translation to
be made. The translator has to know how to notice the implicit context (place, speaker's
intentions, specific cultural meanings of the expressions used, and so on) of a conversation so
the translation can be the accurate approximation to what the speaker is trying to say.

It is when two or more people are having difficulties communicating with each other that the
need for a correct interpretation rises and at that point the translator appears in the scene to
ease communication between peers. The translator acts as a bridge between two (or more)
cultures, thus, making interactions smoother between those trying to understand each other.

There are many languages in the world, and that is an inconvenience. But a translator's job is
to help solve that problem, making other people's lives easier, helping industrial companies to
update technology faster, and improving knowledge transmission in schools and universities.
Every time a new technology, book, or any piece of information appears that needs to be
published, there will be a translator doing their part in helping others understand what's new
in the world.