ABSTRACT
Spanish translation facilitates private and government commerce, education, health and human services, the legal system, the arts, multimedia localization and the work of many other institutions, cultural producers, and businesses in North America. Spanish translators may work into or out of English, French, indigenous languages, or any number of other combinations; they work with written and digital media, including sound files and video games; they may work in-house, or increasingly, due to vendor consolidation, as freelancers; they translate the gamut of communications: documentation from international accords (e.g. diplomatic negotiations over the Panama Canal), family law (divorce decrees or restraining orders) to web content (press releases and news feeds), and much more. Spanish translations are created not only for end users but also for relay translations into indigenous languages commonly spoken in the US, particularly in the area of healthcare. Spanish, in this sense, serves as a lingua franca between underserved speakers of less common languages, frequently immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and healthcare providers, researchers and educators. The U.S. Department of Defense is the US’s largest employer of language service providers (“Using Languages in National Security” 2015). National security jobs, including FBI Linguists, Foreign-Language Professionals, Language Analysts and other positions, have high demand in Spanish both for domestic and international law enforcement operations. The ‘War on Drugs’, led by such organizations as the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, frequently involves wiretaps and translated linguistic evidence from Spanish. In Canada, large sectors of employment for translation are professional, scientific and technical services; educational services; public administration; and finance and insurance. Translators in Canada are classified as Writing, Translating and Public Relations Professionals under the National Occupation Classification (NOC), and salaried positions in large banks, telecoms, law firms and other employers are more abundant than in the US. The Canadian government’s Translation Bureau hires over 1,200 linguists and provides language services such as Termium, the English-Spanish-French terminology databank (Hamilton 2010, 13).
