Show Must Go On...

After having taught English as a second language for 20 years (you can guess my age; I started teaching when I was 23 years old), I've come to the conclusion that teaching for a teacher is as going on stage for an actor/actress. In both cases, you get rid of your own personal emotions and play a role. I have many weaknesses but one of my strengths is to have the capacity to keep my personal life away from my teaching life. Throughout my teaching career, some colleagues of mine have asked me if I've never had problems or worries as they've always seen me with a smile and in a good mood in my working place. I can say that many times I've been ready to teach a class after going through difficult situations and nobody has noticed it.

One of the saddest experiences I've had in my life was my mother's death three months ago. Despite the fact I believe that God freed her from the hardships she was facing as part of her disease, I cannot help missing her as there was a closed link between her and me but all my feelings of sadness disappear when I'm delivering a class. It's a moment when I'm transported to another dimension in which  my mind becomes totally focused on what's going on in the class.

Teaching English is part of my life and I cannot imagine myself without teaching. I think it's a gift I received when I was born and I studied and practised to improve myself and offer a better service to my students. I'm thankful to God for having realised that was one of my missions in life. All of us have missions and receive gifts at birth but not everybody is able to spot which one is the talent to be developed. This idea is shown in the film "Tinkerbell", in which the fairies are given a talent at birth and they have to improve it for everybody's well-being. I took my nieces to the cinema to watch that film and I really enjoyed it. 

I hope you've found out what your talents are and have felt rewarded for having enhanced them and for having used them for your and everybody's sake.

Untranslatable Words?

We, translators and interpreters, have the challenging but fascinating job of expressing the same idea in different languages. There's a whole mental process involved, which in the case of interpreters requires extra effort as it should be performed fast.  

Throughout my career I've encountered words that imply the use of paraphrasing techniques in the target language due to the lack of a word with exactly the same denotation (http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/denotation) and connotation (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/connotation).

One of the words that poses difficulty to me is insightful, which means showing a very good understanding of a person or a complicated situation, Macmillan dictionary. We can collocate this adjective with  parent/book/behaviour/article/commentary. A suitable word in Spanish would be perceptivo, which means having the capacity to receive sensations through the senses. However, does this mean that you show a good understanding of a person or complicated situation. I wonder... Other adjectives in Spanish that would be used to express this idea would be revelador, intuitivo. Thus, un comentario revelador would be one that offers good understanding of a person or complicated situation. I'm not sure the whole concept is depicted in this way. 

Can you think of adjectives in Spanish that reflect the whole concept imbedded in the term insightful?

Have you had trouble finding a word in the target language that really expresses that idea conferred in the source language? Please share! I'd like to know.

My favourite Word this Week...

My favourite Word this Week... 

Complicity

I heard this word at the end of a radio programme as the presenter thanked his listeners for their complicity and I wondered what the word connotes, denotes and evokes. I looked it up in the dictionary and was surprised to find out the following:

the fact that someone is involved in or knows about something bad that happens 

(http://www.wordreference.com/definition/complicity)

So, does it mean the radio programme presenter was doing something wrong? Of course not.

I did a bit of research and read that Virginia Woolf 
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf) also used the word complicity to refer to the relationship between writers and readers. Again, does this mean the writer was involved in some kind of misbehaviour? I don't think so.

As I was not satisfied with the dictionary definition of complicity, I concentrated on the way I perceived the word. As far as I am concerned, this word implies a close relationship between people with a certain degree of secrecy and confidentiality. Profound closeness with other people we usually interact with involves the appearance of shared codes. Looking into this matter a little further, I've concluded that we hold as many instances of complicity as there are people we interact with. Thus, I propose a new concept for this word: secrecy that arises in our interaction with another person that depends on the kind of relationship one has with that person.

Do you know other words you feel the dictionary definition is unsatisfactory? Please feel free to share them.