One of my most difficult moments as an interpreter involved a fight between a Minister of the Colombian national government and some very respected academics.

A human translation is the opposite of a machine translation (MT). It is a translation carried out 100% by a human translator.

Like many countries, Colombians have many sayings and terms that everyone in the country understands but are almost impossible to translate into another language.

When I first start a translating or interpreting job for a new client, it can be like finding your way through a forest without a torch.

I love translation fails. They make me laugh out loud but they also remind me how important human translators are who can decipher possible conundrums and take into account the local context.

A recent trend in the translation industry has been the growth of machine translations and post-translation editing.

While being an interpreter is definitely not as glamorous as showbusiness, it is a bit different to a normal office job, particularly in that many of us work for ourselves.

Subtitles are everywhere these days. On YouTube, Netflix and videos on social media. They are essential for allowing us to watch videos, films and content made by people who speak a different language. But they are a relatively new invention.

This is one of the easier translations to obtain. A certified translation only requires that the person who translated the document certifies that it is a true and faithful translation of the original.

If you haven’t organized an interpreting job before, it might be a little tricky to know what you need to hire in terms of equipment. In Bogotá and the rest of Colombia, we get such a variety of jobs that sometimes we hire out different types of equipment for use in a single day.