 All right, we are recording. And one final note, every other Thursday, we meet with someone at NCAR who works at NCAR, learn about what they do in their jobs and answer questions from those of you who are joining us. And one really cool part about working at NCAR is that there are so many different types of jobs, such as a scientist engineer, electrician, computer programmer, safety expert, machinist, translator, that all these different jobs and more help support the science research that we do. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to David, who's going to tell you more about what he does and take your questions. Good morning, David. Well, thanks a lot, Tim. Let me click on the sharing button here. Can you see it? Yes, we can see it. All right, great. So good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. My name is David Roussi, and I work as Spanish translator and translation coordinator at the comic program, which is a small group of about 40 scientists, instructional designers and technical support staff who create training lessons on a variety of scientific topics, many with a focus on meteorology. And these are then published to our website called MEDED. Now, today I'll just talk to you briefly about translation in general and then give you a bit of an idea about the tools that I use to translate. And I'll also mention why Comet translates its lessons. And by the end, I hope to have given you an idea of why I love this work. So before I go on, I'd just like to ask you if you can think of any ways that you use translations or that translations might be part of your life. Just send us a chat message and I'll come back to this. So one of the great benefits of working at Comet has been the ability to travel. For example, I spent time in Mexico City. And in this picture, you see me in front of an ancient Aztec pyramid in the center of Mexico City. And much of the time that I spent there was at the meteorological office. This is a historical building that dates back to the 1700s. And it also houses the weather observatory which is on the roof of the building. Now, I wanna stress that these travels are not just for fun. My main objective is to sharpen my skills and to take classes. I also work closely with professionals to improve my knowledge and skills and to learn about the science that I translate. This picture here shows a course that I attended in Chiapas in the city of Tushla Gutierrez. This is the new building that they had just finished building and you can see they also have an observatory on the roof. And of course, I get to see beautiful sights. This is the Popocatepeta volcano just outside of Mexico City. I also get to see museums and I get to go to archeological sites such as Palenque and Sodom Chiapas. So very briefly, what is translation? Well, there are many definitions. You can look them up in the dictionary but basically it is expressing what's written in one language in another language. Fundamentally, it is how humans communicate and transmit knowledge across languages and cultures. My own definition, which I wrote here includes three specific words, completely meaning that all the text needs to be translated accurately, which refers to the fact that there should be no mistakes or omissions and appropriately in a way that the audience of the text will be able to understand it well. As a point of detail, I'll also mention that we generally distinguish between two forms of translation. Interpreting, which involves conveying the spoken word and translation proper, which involves the written word. So let's go back to my questions. What are some ways that translation is part of your life? Well, David, we do have a very interesting response from Isha Renta, if I pronounce that correctly. I apologize if I haven't. She writes that at home in Fredericksburg, Virginia, she, that's where she is. She worked five and a half years in the Weather Service translating and providing services to the Spanish community. And now she's at the NOAA headquarters, still working with the Latinx committee, the AMS at Latinx community, community, or sorry, committee. And one of the focuses is a translation of meteorological terms. Wow, that's fantastic. Fellow translators, I'm lying. Yes, yes. Well, I would like to say that I can expand on this because whenever we read the news today and we've read something that happened in a distant land, you know that a translator had to tell the newspaper that you're reading in your own language about that in their own language. So a translator was probably involved. Or when world leaders meet to talk about diplomacy and treaties and international regulations. Or when business people get together to discuss how to market a product overseas, a translator is needed. And of course, when you read a fabulous book in your own language that was originally written in another language, you know that translators were involved in that too. And speaking of literature and classics, do you have any idea what the most translated and published book is? Go ahead and chat and I'll come back to this too. I think I have a guess, but let's see what comes in over the chat. So I'm gonna go on and I'll ask you about this in a minute. But as I said, in 15 years of comment, I've had many opportunities to travel, including Argentina. I was able to live in Buenos Aires for about six weeks in a small apartment that I rented. And I worked at the main meteorological office you see pictured here. These letters here in front, SMN, stand for Servicio Meteorológico Nacional, which is the Spanish version of the National Weather Service, NWS. It's essentially their logo for the same time. Now, Buenos Aires is a fantastic city. In this picture, what looks like a little city inside the big city is actually a famous cemetery called La Recoleta, where many of Argentina's most notable people are buried today. And this is the Casa Rosada, the pink house. It's the equivalent to our White House with the difference that their president doesn't actually live there. And here you have a picture of me in front of Mafada. Mafada is a beloved cartoon character created in the 60s by Quinoe, who unfortunately passed away just last week. Now, for centuries, the traditional tools of translation were pretty simple. Pen and paper, reference materials. Once they invented them, glasses. But translation practice probably changed very little throughout the century until the typewriter became available. And for the first time, translators were able to produce a text, a translated text that was not handwritten. Oh, I almost forgot. I asked you about the most translated book. Did you get any ideas for Tim? Yes, we did. And there are three, four different areas that people think might encompass that answer. And one of them is the book War and Peace, or novel, War and Peace. The Bible or another religious text. And then fourth, if you want to say that, Homer's Odyssey. Interesting choices. Well, the fact is that the Bible is the most translated book. It has been translated in hundreds of languages and there have been thousands of editions of it. But interestingly, the most translated non-religious book is Pinocchio. Pinocchio was written in Italian by a man named Colordi in the late 1880s. And The Little Prince, which you see here in a Japanese translation. And Alice and Wonderman, which you see here in a Spanish version of the Disney version, are two other books that make up usually the top 10 of most translated books. Fascinating. So what really revolutionized translation was computing. Today's professional translators have to know more than languages. They have to learn to use software, new ways to research. And like scientists, we use tools, but we don't use them to gather or record data, but we use them to speed up our work or to do research. For example, I use a tool called, it's a special kind of software called translation memory. And the reason it's called memory is because it remembers what I've already translated. Here's a screenshot of a tool I use at work. It's called MemoQ, you can see the name right here. And on the screen, you can see that there's a column with English text. It's divided into what we call segments, usually their sentences. And then to the right of it, you see a column for Spanish. This column with these numbers and percentages show the percentage of match to something I've translated before. So when I see this green 100% match, I know that I've translated, produced by the comic program as the comic program sometime in the past. When the match is less than 100%, such as you can see in this segment that's highlighted, the program shows me the differences in this box here. And then I can select from a list of previous translations. And then I can just go in there and make the changes that are needed, accept it and go on. And the program will continue to build the translation memory as I continue to work. It's just a database, but it is designed specifically for translators. So of course, I also use these tools. They're called dictionaries and I have lots of them. But unfortunately, they're static. They're very hard to update. They're costly. And so with time, I find that I use them less and less. Instead, what has become a main tool for me is I'm gonna give you the example with Google, but search engines in general are just an incredibly important tool. Here you see a search, a simple search for the definition of punto de Rosillo, which means do point. And you can see that Google points me to the Wikipedia page and then other resources. So there is one more tool that I wanna show you. And it's called machine translation or automatic translation. So today, machine translation is available to anyone, but it has to be used with caution. Let me give you an example of why. If I show you the word ball, you'll probably think of something like this, which in Spanish is called the pelota. But if I say Cinderella's ball, you will probably think of something more like this. Now this is called violin Spanish. You don't have to remember these words, just know how they're different. So ball has many meanings. And if I say have a ball, you know what I mean, have fun. And this in Spanish is expressed with the verb divertirse. Now I asked Google's machine translation engine to translate I had a ball from English to Spanish. Now, you don't know what I mean by this. I mean, I may mean I had a soccer ball or I may mean I had a good time. And of course Google doesn't know either. So it just sticks in what it thinks it might be. And in this case, I had a ball. Now this grammatically is not correct, but let's skip that for the moment. So then I asked Google to translate, I had a ball with the ball, meaning I had fun with the ball. And as you can see, the translation includes the word for soccer ball, I'll call it twice. What this in fact says if I translated back is, I had a soccer ball with the soccer ball, which of course is nonsense. Here's a corrected version, me diverti con la pelota, which uses this verb and this noun. So just for fun, I thought I would take it one more step. And I asked Google to translate, I had a ball at the ball with the ball. As you can see, you don't need to know Spanish. Google translated this as, I had a soccer ball in the soccer ball with the soccer ball. Here's the translation corrected, me diverti con la pelota. So you can see that this tool has to be used with caution. Of course, this is a limit example, but like this, there are hundreds of ways in which Google can make mistakes. And the reason for that is because it doesn't actually understand the text that's input in the box. It has no way of understanding context and it's just unable to make certain decisions that a human translator can make. For this reason... I was gonna say, David, it sounds like it's pretty important to have a professional translator look at work if you're doing it for professionals. Absolutely, you can use Google translator or any other machine translation tool to get the gist of something. But if you are going to do any serious work with it, you should have someone that understands the target language in order to be able to make sure that there are not just kind of gross mistakes at least. So, all right. So, sorry, I was clicking on the wrong thing. So why do we translate the comment materials and comment lessons? As I said, there are many reasons to translate, but sharing scientific knowledge is especially important in a connected world. I mean, think about it. Scientists at UCAR gather data, they analyze it, they find ways to use it, and then groups like Comet create lessons that are an important bridge to communicate that knowledge to other people. By providing our lessons in Spanish and other languages, Comet supports science in Spanish-speaking communities both here, such as in Puerto Rico, for example, and in other places like Mexico, Spain, or central and South America. This helps countries to have material to train and update their staff. If you wonder why that matters, consider how much safer you will feel when you travel abroad knowing that meteorologists forecasting at your destination are well-trained. Comet today offers over 500 lessons in English, almost 200 in Spanish, about 90 in French, and also an unsmattering of other languages, such as Portuguese and even Chinese. This lesson was developed in collaboration with the Taiwanese weather service. So, wow, I think I've told you a lot of stuff about translation in these less than 15 minutes. And why Comet translates its materials. As for why I love my work, well, yeah, it lets me travel and I love it. These last pictures were taken in Spain. I lived there for six weeks as well and I continued to do my regular work for Comet, but I also spent time with meteorologists at the Agencia Estatada de Meteorologia, which is called IMET. This, by the way, is their name for the National Weather Service, just slightly different from the one in Argentina. I also got to visit other MET offices. This picture was taken in Toledo. You can see the Alcazar in the back. And their office is just a medieval building. It's pretty amazing. I also got to visit some schools where they were checking up on weather stations. So these travels allow me to make lasting connections and to improve my skills. And they're a part of my job that I absolutely love. But more importantly, I get a great deal of satisfaction knowing that my work has a positive impact on thousands of people all over the world. So thank you very much for being here with me and for being interested in my work. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them now. And or you can write to me at that address, at the email address that's listed on the slide. Well, thank you for sharing, David. Your work is fascinating, at least to me. Yes, we're open up for questions now. We already have a thank you from, let's see, Virginia. And we'll see if there are any other, if any questions show up in the chat. So we'll wait for just a couple of minutes to see if we... Ah, yeah. So we had a question in school, David. Did you study science or language or both? Well, I studied both. I started being interested in astronomy, but I like science in general. So I took every one-on-one course in science that I could think of, including botany. But I soon realized that I really didn't have the basis, the math and the physics that I needed to continue in that. And at the same time, I started studying Spanish and I fell in love with it. And my career in school was actually in literature. I studied Latin American literature. But that has proven to be the real basis for my work because of course, what it takes to be a translator is to be able to write well. Oh, fascinating. We do have another question. I'm from Virginia, I hear of... Thanks for teaching us about translation. And this visitor was asking or was wondering, are there climate concepts that are particularly challenging to translate? Climate what? Climate concepts, like global climate concepts, like flow, see, I'm having trouble explaining them. Is there anything that when you're... You have to translate something related to the climate of the earth that are there. Challenges there. Yeah, I wouldn't... Off the top of my head, I can't think of a specific climate term that I find difficult to translate. But all terms always pose a challenge. I keep a glossary, which is a dictionary of terms that I translate. In the 15 years that I've been doing that, I've compiled about 1,300, I mean, 13,000 terms in this glossary. What about concepts like El Nino? That's on a much larger scale. Right, no, well, but these concepts exist and have been translated. Nino, of course, is called the Nino because it's a Spanish word. But, and by the way, it takes the tilde on top of the N. Otherwise Nino doesn't mean anything. So, I mean, I always encounter terms that are difficult to translate. And they require research. I have to find either glossaries or dictionaries that deal with those topics or like published papers, those kinds of things that can allow me to extract the terminology. There are times when I have to invent things or just describe them. That does happen. I can't think of an example off the top of my head right now, but. If someone, if you were to translate global warming with that concept of global warming, is that challenging or is it? No, it's not challenging. The challenging part is that there are several ways of saying that in Spanish. And that is a problem that crops up frequently in translation. If a term was originally coined in one language, the other language, and Spanish is particularly the case because we have people that speak Spanish and I believe it's almost 20 countries. And so in each of those places, they might develop their own terminology for a particular concept. Then the challenge becomes finding which one of those terms is most understood in order to use it. And sometimes what I do is I include two or even three sometimes terms at the beginning when they're first mentioned. So that people can see this. For example, the word for runoff in Spanish can be escorrentia or escurrimiento. There are two words and they're used in different places. So I use one term in the text, but generally I will list both of them the first time it's mentioned. Wow, this is involved. And there, thank you for all of that clarification. There are two more very good questions in here already. The first one is any advice for beginning Spanish study? Tools or online programs if you're learning the language? That's outside of my ability to answer, unfortunately. I don't, I'm not familiar enough with beginning Spanish tools. I do know that Babel for example has a learning series that appears to be pretty successful. Okay. And we do have the next question then would be how difficult or easy is it to translate technical terms in Spanish? I found it's hard to, this is the end of the statement is I found it's hard to have consistency because of different countries interpreting differently. Similar questions to what was asked earlier. Right. And the answer is it can be difficult. And as I said, often the problem is that you have too many choices and you have to decide what to do. I'll give you an example that I came across years ago. This guy right here is a thumb drive, right? And I had to review a translation that was done in Costa Rica. Now this has several names in Spanish and in fact it has, I would guess it probably has 10 different names. But in Costa Rica in this translation, they use Yave Maya, which means the key of the mayas. It's just a beautiful, beautiful translation. I mean, a beautiful name for it. But unfortunately it's only used in Costa Rica, nowhere else. So I had to research that, find out that it was only used in Costa Rica and then figure out what term I should actually use to translate this. So, I mean, that gives you an example. Localisms in Spanish are very common. And we are running close to time here. I just was wondering, is Spanish or English your native language or how would you describe your native language? Yeah, well, that's complicated, but I'll try to clarify it. So I was born in New York City. I learned English as a child, as a baby. When I was three years old, my father went back to his homeland, which was Italy. And that's where I grew up. I grew up in a city called Bologna. If you have a chance to look it up, it's a beautiful medieval city with two leaning towers, not one like Pisa. And I lived in Italy until I was 15 years old. At that time, I came back to the States, but I didn't speak English. And it took me many years to learn English. And Spanish is actually my third language. I acquired it when I went back to school, when I went back to college. Then I lived in Spain for a time in Mexico. And I did my PhD work in Latin American literature, as I said, and eventually married a Uruguayan woman. And we speak Spanish at home. So, and I have been translating now for about 30 years into Spanish. I don't work into Italian. My Italian is very removed from my work abilities. Well, David, this has just been fascinating. And that's also been repeated in the chat. And we are up against time. So we'd like to thank you. It's been really fun exploring the job of Spanish translation and for telling us more about your work and thanks to everyone for joining us. We, and just a reminder, we are doing Meet the Expert sessions every other Thursday. So hopefully you'll join us again. The next session will be on October 29th. And we'll talk to someone who combines his experience with science, art, and video games into his job. Then we are going to post in the chat right now. We already, Tiffany's already done that for us. Thank you. The Meet the Experts page for more information about upcoming sessions and links to recordings of our past sessions. So we are concluding here, but for those of you who will help us with a survey, or if you're in the grades of five through 12, and it looks like we do have at least three people on board doing that, and we're willing to help us with the survey, please hang on. We will be posting in the chat a link to the URL where you can put in your reflections and help us out. And we have one last comment. The issues that have found the translation is how to make the translation work with different regions of the US, different cities have different majority of population from different countries. So it's hard to have a consistency. And for Isha, I believe it is, if you'd like to continue communicating with David, I'm sure he would love to chat with you more. And his email address is drussi at ucar.edu. And with that, we will say thank you so much, everyone, for joining us. And thank you, David. Thank you, Tim. And thanks everyone for participating. I really appreciate your interest in my job. Bye, everyone.