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Sample translations submitted: 1
English to Spanish: From... David Ogilvy: The King of Madison Avenue (first chapter) General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Poetry & Literature
Source text - English An Eccentric Celtic Mixture
Our Chairman “is definitely descended via five different lines of descent from Charlemagne,
King of the Franks and Emperor of the West,” reported Flagbearer, the agency’s employee
newsletter, in the 1970s, humoring his ego. A relative investigating the family’s roots was said
to have made the discovery. To help make the connection, the article was accompanied by sideby-
side pictures of Charlemagne and Ogilvy, “to demonstrate the similarity in facial
characteristics.”
The fourth of five children, David Mackenzie Ogilvy was born in 1911 in West Horsley, a
rural agricultural village in Surrey, 30 miles southwest of London. His birthdate, June 23, was,
incredibly, the same as his father’s and grandfather’s. It was also the date of George V’s
coronation and the year Ronald Reagan was born.
The population of West Horsley had recently boomed, to 750. But there were more horsedrawn
vehicles than motorcars, and the village smithy didn’t shut down until 1920. The area has
a history going back to the Romans, who were replaced in 410 A.D. by invading Saxon
mercenaries, then by Danes and Normans. Horsley is Saxon for “a clearing for horse pasture.”
The town was by-passed by the Industrial Revolution, so the landscape remained unspoiled by
factories or rows of houses.
The Ogilvy family home, Wix Hill, was an old estate with a timber-framed manor house
dating back to the 14th century. It was clad with bricks in the 18th century to make it look more
up-to-date. Wix comes from “Wick,” a corruption of the Latin “vicus,” an inhabited place where
victuals could be obtained, important to anyone on a long journey in a sparsely populated
countryside. The family had moved there from nearby Rowbarns Manor, part of a model estate
village in East Horsley, the gated community of its day.
Ogilvy reminisced about the Surrey of his early youth: “a paradise of plover’s eggs, cowslip
wine, charcoal burners, gypsies in caravans, thatched haystacks and governess carts.” Plus a
witch called Dame Feathers. When his advertising agency created its “Come to Britain”
campaign for the British Travel Authority, he personally selected the lush color photographs of
the English countryside, picking those that reflected the England where he grew up. “I suppose I
ought not to tell this around. I ought to pretend I based my selection on research.”
Little genealogy is disclosed in his 1978 autobiography Blood, Brains and Beer. The title
came from his father’s bizarre directive at age six to drink a glass of raw blood every day (for
strength) and eat calves’ brains three times a week (to expand mental faculties), all to be washed
down with bottles of beer. Some locals in West Horsley still remember the “eccentric” father at
Wix Hill.
Reading the short book is like having dinner with a charming raconteur. It is thin on details
about family. We never learn his father’s name or his mother’s. He describes his father as
warm-hearted, affectionate and a failure. His Scottish grandfather is portrayed as cold-hearted,
formidable and successful – and his hero. He had three sisters and an elder brother, but names
only his sister Mary and his brother Francis. His sister Christina was so furious with Ogilvy for
the way he described their father that she didn’t speak to him for 15 years.
The memoir portrays a young boy stumbling “bone-idle” through schools, meeting
interesting people who fascinate him, and making his way through a variety of jobs that prepare
him inadvertently for success in advertising. It drops a polyglot assortment of famous names:
George Bernard Shaw, Harpo Marx, Albert Einstein, Leonard Bernstein, Lady Astor, Henry
Luce, Edward R. Murrow, Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kaufman, Ethel Barrymore, Robert
Moses, David Selznick, Charles Laughton, Loretta Young, Alfred Hitchcock, Thornton Wilder,
Samuel Goldwyn, Walt Disney, Aldous Huxley. They all somehow crossed his path, and he
didn’t mind letting you know.
As successful as Ogilvy’s other books would be, he admitted this one was “a bust.” He said
he knew the reason. “When you write a book about advertising, you’re competing with midgets.
When you write an autobiography, you’re competing with giants.” He also acknowledged the
title was repulsive, “and so was my egotism.”
His parents bought Lewis Carroll’s house in Guildford, and he knew Alice Liddell, the
original Alice in Wonderland. Beatrix Potter, the pet-loving author of The Tales of Peter Rabbit,
visited his next-door neighbor, bringing a tame hedge-hog called Mrs. Tiggie-Winkle. Potter’s
famous gardener, Mr. McGregor, was thought to be based on the bad tempered gardener at the
local Woodcote Farm. “Her England is the England I remember,” he recounts. It resembles a
world pictured in the movie Mary Poppins, well-off families with servants. With a chauffeur,
nanny and undernurse, he was solidly upper-middle to upper class.
Ogilvy was a sickly child, riddled with asthma (which afflicted him to the end of his life) and
said his nurse was scornful of him “because I was a mollycoddle, a milksop, a nyaah-nyaah, a
sort of sissy because my sister Mary could beat me at everything – at wrestling, at every
imaginable game, at climbing trees even. And I grew up to think I was a boob. And I thought so
well into middle age.” This led to psychoanalysis in his middle forties and, with the help of the
analyst, deciding he wasn’t such a boob as he’d thought. It may, however, explain his constant
need to be the center of attention.
Translation - Spanish UNO
UNA EXCÉNTRICA MEZCLA CELTA
Nuestro presidente “desciende con toda certeza de cinco líneas de genealógicas diferentes de Carlomagno , rey de los francos y emperador del Oeste”, informaba solícitamente Flagbearer, el boletín para los empleados de la agencia, en los años 70. Se decía que el descubrimiento lo había hecho un pariente que investigaba las raíces familiares. Para ayudar a reforzar la conexión, el artículo iba acompañado de sendas ilustraciones de Carlomagno y Ogilvy, una al lado de la otra, “para demostrar las similitudes en los rasgos faciales”. El cuarto de cinco hijos, David Mackenzie Ogilvy nació en 1911 en West Horsley, una localidad rural de carácter agrícola entre Guildford y Leatherhead, en Surrey, a unos 50 kilómetros al suroeste de Londres. Su fecha de nacimiento, el 23 de junio, coincidió para asombro de todos con la de su padre y su abuelo. Era la fecha de la coronación de Jorge V y el año en que nació Ronald Reagan. Aunque en West Horsley la población había aumentado hasta 750 habitantes, seguía habiendo más coches tirados por caballos que automóviles y la herrería del pueblo no cerraría hasta 1920. La historia de la zona se remonta hasta los romanos, que en el año 410 D.C. fueron reemplazados por los mercenarios sajones que la invadieron y posteriormente por daneses y normandos. La palabra “Horsley” se refiere en sajón a “un claro para que pasten los caballos”. La revolución industrial pasó de largo por allí, por lo que las fábricas y las hileras de casa adosadas no degradaron la belleza del paisaje.
La residencia de los Ogilvy, Wix Hill, era una antigua finca con una casa señorial de estructura de madera que databa del siglo XIV. La familia se había mudado allí desde East Horsley. Desde el siglo XVIII la casa estaba revestida con ladrillo para darle un aspecto más contemporáneo. El nombre “Wix” viene de “Wick”, una corrupción del latín vicus, que hace referencia a “un lugar habitado en el que se podían conseguir vituallas”, importante para cualquiera que en un largo viaje atravesara una campiña escasamente poblaba. Ogilby rememoraba el Surrey de sus primeros años de juventud: “un paraíso de huevos de chorlito, vino de prímula, quemadores de carbón, gitanos en caravanas, almiares de paja y carritos de institutrices”; más una bruja llamada Dame Feathers. Cuando su agencia de publicidad creó su campaña “Ven a Gran Bretaña” para la British Travel Authority, seleccionó personalmente las fotografías a pleno color de la campiña inglesa, escogiendo aquellas que reflejaban la Inglaterra en la que había crecido. “Supongo que no debería ir contando esto por ahí. Debería hacer como si hubiera basado mi selección en una búsqueda”. Era un mundo de familias acomodadas con sirvientes, muy parecido al que retrata la película Mary Poppins. Con chófer, niñera, criada y otros dos sirvientes más, Ogilvy partía de la estabilidad de una clase media alta tirando a pudiente.
De su genealogía poco revela en la autobiografía de 1978 (Blood, Brains and Beer) Sangre, sesos y cerveza. El nombre venía de una estrambótica norma que su padre seguía cuando David tenía seis años: beber un vaso de sangre cruda cada día (para fortalecerse) y comer sesos de ternero tres veces por semana (para desarrollar las facultades mentales), todo ello regado con dos botellas de cerveza. Algunos vecinos de West Horsley todavía recuerdan al “excéntrico” padre de Wix Hill.
Sumergirse en la lectura de esa breve autobiografía es como cenar con un relator entrañable. Es austera en detalles familiares, ya que nunca se nos revela el nombre del padre o de la madre. Ogilvy describe a su padre como un hombre afectuoso y cariñoso, y un fracasado. Su abuelo escocés aparece retratado como un hombre frío, extraordinario, y con éxito (su héroe). Ogilvy tenía dos hermanas y un hermano mayor pero sólo nombra a su hermana Mary y su hermano Francis. Su hermana pequeña, Christina, se enfureció tanto por la forma en que describía a su padre en el libro que estuvo sin hablarle durante 15 años.
Era un niño enfermizo, el asma que le aquejaba le perseguiría hasta sus últimos días. Ogilvy decía que su niñera lo menospreciaba “porque era un consentido, un gallina, un quejica, una especie de mariquita porque mi hermana Mary me ganaba en todo: a las peleas, a cualquier juego imaginable, incluso a trepar en los árboles. Y crecí pensando que era bobo, Y así seguí considerándome hasta la madurez”. Esto le condujo al psicoanálisis a sus cuarentaitantos, y con la ayuda del terapeuta decidió que no era tan bobo como él se pensaba. Quizás esto explique su necesidad constante de ser el centro de atención.
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Translation education
Master's degree - Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Experience
Years of experience: 18. Registered at ProZ.com: Nov 2009.
French to Spanish (University Pompeu Fabra) English to Spanish (University Pompeu Fabra) English to Catalan (University Pompeu Fabra) French to Catalan (University Pompeu Fabra) Catalan to Spanish (University Pompeu Fabra )
Spanish to Catalan (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) Italian to Spanish (Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Barcellona) Italian to Catalan (Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Barcellona)
I am a certified translator since 2006. I work as a freelance professional provider of translation, proofreading and localization services. I'm constantly working on increasing my connections so I can consolidate and establish strong long term professional relationships. As part of my business growing target. Please visit my professional website AGMtranslate.com for more information.
Qualifications I am qualified to translate from English, French, and Italian to Spanish and Catalan as well as between these two languages.
Education I have a bachelor’s degree in translation and interpreting. I received a postgraduate diploma in literary translation in 2007. In 2008 I studied French language and culture at the University Marc Bloch in Strasburg (France). I have recently finished another postgraduate degree in technology and translations consisting of a double specialty: Translations and Technology, Project Management and Software Localization and Audiovisual Translation.
Experience I have over 5 year’s translation experience. During this time I have proved myself to be a versatile easy-adapting professional to the changing contexts of translation. I have translated documents for international cooperation targets based on social and economic reports as well as corporation literature for several international non-profit organizations. I have also worked on website projects, advertising copies, technical documents and tourism texts. Last year I translated a biography for Editorial Planeta (A well-known Spanish publishing company) on the prestigious Madison Avenue advertising man David Ogilvy. I have also completed various other translation projects that are included in my CV.
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In order to know more about my references, please visit my website www.agmtranslate.com. You will find a recommendation letter at www.agmtranslate.com by the non-profit organisation OXFAM INTERNARNATIONAL. I am also member of APTIC (Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters in Catalonia).
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Travelling around the globe, research on different cultures and societies and alternative ways of life, science, psychology and parapsychology literature, philosophy, language teaching and learning, communications in general, economy, finance and politics, website creation and new technologies.
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Alchemy Catalyst / ForeignDesk / Heartsome / OmegaT / Open Language Tools / Passolo / SDLX / TRADOS / Transolution / Wordfast
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