1. Aída
COVID-19 has brought many challenges to my life as a translator. I was used to working alone and now I’m sharing my “sacred and quiet” space with my husband and my two kids all day long. Homeschooling made it more difficult to maintain a routine and keep my standard productivity. Some days are harder than others, and anxiety and sadness come to me.
I miss my mom, and going out with my friends. On the other hand, I have shared great moments with my kids, they have taught me how to enjoy silly games and the small things. I got a project in an area I had never worked before (a videogame translation), and it has kept me very busy learning new skills.I’m even planning to study videogame localization in the next months. I’m concerned because I think there’s still the worse to come for Mexico regarding the pandemic, so we must be resilient and ready for the unexpected. We as translators have an advantage because adaptability is part of our daily work. I wish you all health and work during this challenging time!
Aída Carrazco, MBA
Traduscopio
2. Ana
COVID-19 update from an audiovisual translator… on maternity leave!
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, and we have been in lockdown since the beginning of March. As of this week, some retail and restaurants with outdoor spaces have reopened, apart from the essential-need stores, which have been open all along. We are required to wear masks inside stores at all times, and outside if we cannot guarantee the six-feet distance from others.
Small gatherings of up to 12 people are also allowed with some restrictions. We are seeing some resemblance of normalcy out in the streets, although I think we all remain cautious, and I’m personally still concerned about a second, more potent outbreak. In terms of work, I have been on a “soft” maternity leave since early last year, working on occasional nights, especially for direct clients that I want to keep. After the pandemic broke out, I actually saw my small workload increase a bit as more online educational videos needed translating or proofreading or QC-ing. I can’t say whether this was just a coincidence, but I have been doing more mindfulness and self-care educational videos and other online-learning classes as of late. Regardless, I do think that this can be an opportunity for audiovisual translators in times when more and more is being done online as opposed to in person.
Ana Salotti, M. A.
English-Spanish Translator
AVD Assistant Administrator
3. Dietlinde
So far, the volume of work has not diminished, but it has changed: I used to do a lot of subtitling for featurettes on DVDs. With no new movies going from cinema to DVD, this does not happen currently. My last few larger assignments were all German subtitles for third-language content from Asia: China, Korea, Japan.
Dietlinde DuPlessis, Diplom-Fachübersetzerin
Member of ATA and Untertitelforum
Audiovisual Translation
Tucson, Arizona, USA
4. Maria
Covid-19 has changed everybody’s lives in many different ways, and for lots of people, work has been one of the areas that has been affected more deeply. For this reason, I am extremely grateful that I have been able to continue working throughout this crisis, although not without some changes. Audiovisual translation has been fairly stable; however, I also work as an interpreter, and that aspect of my job has changed dramatically.
Most in-person court, legal, and medical appointments have been cancelled or postponed, and while we are still able to carry out some of these processes remotely, there are challenges to doing this, and the amount of work available has certainly decreased. So, for now, all I can do is hang in there and wait for some version of normalcy to return to this area of my work.
Maria Delgado
Audiovisual Translator
Accredited Court Interpreter
