Expert insights on the creative translation process | Meag Gardner

[MUSIC] Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in today for another episode of The Content Mix. Today's episode is slightly different from our other episodes this season. At Vera Content, we specialize in localization and translation for content marketing, helping clients truly say what they mean. In over the past few years, I've seen a study increase in the importance of translation and localization in marketing across all sectors and industries. And when brainstorming for this episode, I thought there'd be no better person to chat with than Meg Gardner. After graduating with the bachelor's in Spanish language from Indiana University in 2015 with a certificate in translation and interpretation studies, Meg packed her bags and moved to Madrid, Spain, where she's been living ever since and navigating the linguistic nuances of being an American translator abroad. So without further ado, let's welcome Meg to the show and get the interview started. Welcome, Meg. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. So many moons ago, I studied abroad in Salamonca, which is about two wish hours from Madrid. And I was 18. And before coming on the study abroad trip, I was studying philosophy, I think. And after I studied abroad because I had a really good experience in Spain, I went back and switched my major to Spanish and started pursuing translation as a certificate. And the education I had in translation was really good. I had some really great classes in theory and history of translation. And this was about the time when I learned about the history of the translation of the Bible, which I find super interesting, especially how like, you know, a text that's quoted by people in so many different languages around the world until today, in which has influenced political decisions and society and so many things have shaped our world. This was a translation that's passed through the hands of several different translators in different centuries. And it's kind of like a game of telephone in that sense. And so because of, you know, like this up to agent, for example, was like the first major translation from Hebrew into common Greek. And it's called that because seven new translators were on the job. But those translations led to the translation we have now of the Bible in different modern languages. And yeah, those texts influence people's decisions and how they live their lives. And so learning about all of that got me thinking, you know, when we're translating, we have to think about the repercussions of the text and what is its purpose and who is it for. And there's a lot of power in that. I think it's actually quite political and really impactful. It's really interesting that you bring up that point. And I feel like a lot of the times when we think about translation, that's what we're thinking about traditionally, like people translating like big old books or like not in a sense of marketing, which is interesting now because I feel like a lot of things you just brought up, like, you know, asking questions. What is it for the impact it has is something that we can apply also in the world of marketing translation. Now, as an American living in Europe, we kind of witnessed firsthand every day, probably the linguistic diversity of the MIA and the impact translation plays on daily life from business and tourism and the government offices and all these different entities that need translation, you know, services all the time. So I guess in your opinion as someone who's worked in the field for a while, why is it so important for organizations to dedicate their resources for translation and localization. And what differences actually make having a translator translator who lives and works in the target market market. Yeah, this is a great question because I think it's more relevant now than it would have been even 10 years ago because obviously with technology and globalization and everything were super interconnected. We're reading translations every day. If you follow someone on Instagram who is typing something in French or Spanish or whatever, you have this option to translate it. There are so many ways in which we're consuming translations without even realizing it. And that automatic translation can only do so much. People can really, really tell when a text isn't written by a native or translated by a native. And this is super important for social media because AdVera, obviously we do social media. We do social media accounts for many of our clients and the nature of social media calls for someone who is on top of what's happening because of its nature of being so immediate and, you know, up with trends. And so often when we're running a social media account for one of our clients will make a calendar for the month and then the calendar ends up changing because of some kind of current event. And that account has to be run by someone who has their finger on the pulse and who knows what's happening in that market. So for example, there were wildfires in Turkey, I think it was last year. And we have, I won't name the client because I don't know if I'm allowed. But we were going to post something that was like very cheery. And the person who was in that market said, you know, we shouldn't post content that's rainbows and sunshine when a lot of people are hurting right now and a lot of people have had their homes or their businesses destroyed. And so we made a special post for that and we rearranged the calendar. And I think that that has a big impact on the followers for that account because they're going to realize that, you know, this isn't a robot that is creating the content. It's a human and that does good things for the brand and it makes people feel more connected with the brand and that they can trust it. And I think it's really interesting about the topic of social media and mentioned the work that you've done as a community manager working at Vera as well. Another skill that you have on the list of things that you do. But it's just like I think there's been a huge shift right to how we consume content and a lot of it is social media. And I think a lot of people think, okay, well, you know, Instagram, for example, is all image based. It's the big thing. But I do think at the same time what you mentioned too is that people are looking for content that resonates with them. Content that they can really connect to and I think that's what success makes, you know, influencer marketing successful because people find maybe a reflection of themselves in the person. But I really think it's interesting how you mentioned to like how it needs to be localized for each market content itself because that's going to also add to that like human connection as well when people are consuming different types of content on social media channels. Exactly. It's so connected to brand loyalty. And you can't really explain it always like why do I trust this specific brand when there are so many others that are so similar that does come down to that human connection and how it appeals to your emotions. And that's why influencing works so well because you feel like you know this person who's telling you so much about their lives. And so that's that's super relevant for us writing content for social media and also doing translations for social media, which isn't that different in the end is content creation and it's localizing our content to very specific cultures. And I think it's also interesting to how I like for us, I think like and you can maybe I don't know if you agree with me or not, but when you like to see a translation like in English, for example, people lived abroad and we're from the US and we've living in Europe. If you see a translation that's like weird in English, like it just turns you off from like, I don't know, it's just like this innate something within you like, I don't trust that brand. And just like that because it's really weird. So I think although people don't want to really, I see sometimes like people really want to like allocate a big budget for translation or they don't they don't see the importance of it. I think like those things like you can't, I don't know they're they're priceless in the way like you need to have a someone that's actually like writing content that actually is accurate. So that someone actually believes the into the brand what they do. Yeah, and not just accurate, but depending on your brand voice, it also has to be like very up with the trends and the phrases that people use. Like if you think about the Instagram accounts that you like the most, you know, I really like ID for example, they're always using like, you know, very young sort of Gen Z or Millennial slang. And that's super on top of what like whatever is happening, whatever meme is popular that day or that week. And that actually really makes you trust the more and feel like, oh, this is run by people who are just like me. And that is, you know, it's just basic like consumer psychology. And that's what I see a lot and like this market is a lot of brands want to localize because they don't, although English is spoken a lot throughout Europe is still not me or it's not like the target, you know, the audience that person in that market is like they want something that is connected to them. And a lot of times that we express ourselves as humans and with language and that expresses our emotions and some things aren't captured in every language that we speak. So I definitely think it's a really cool market to be working in. It's really cool that you have the experience as someone abroad living in Spain and having this connection with the content marketing industry here. Now I do think at the same time we seen like that translation is on the rise and a lot of people are more and more interested, I guess, in the kind of implementing translation strategies and localization strategies throughout their business. And we're expected they say to see an increase about 20% between 2019 and 2029 and the number of translators worldwide. So this 45 billion dollar industry is only growing and growing, but in your opinion as someone working in this industry, what is the feeling if. expansion? And do you think like the role of globalization and the speed of tech innovation has anything to do with this? Yeah, it's like I was saying before, you know, like as we you know become more interconnected, that's influencing the way that business operate, businesses operate as well. And so for me at least it's not uncommon for me to be on Instagram and I get a targeted ad and I click on it and the website is in Australia or it's in China or it's in Scandinavia. I'm thinking you know like how how is this possible? But it's because with Prada they can reach for their audiences, they can you know analytics can fuel being able to connect with someone who they think based on analytics will like your products. And so what happens then if that company that's based in Scandinavia is reaching audiences in other countries around the world where they don't have anyone in house who speaks that language or who has knowledge of the local culture. And so what happens a lot is that they have automatic translation for for the ads or for their website. And then the customers get turned off immediately or they don't even it's so incomprehensible that they can't actually even navigate the website. And so if that company in Norway or whatever they realize they have a bigger following on in the States for example because they've done really well on Instagram and all the sudden their analytics are telling them part of the topic. All of a sudden their analytics are telling them you know 20% of your followers are based in New York now. Then they might think we should invest in localizing our content so that we can actually retain those people who are clicking on our website because they like our products. And so that's where we come in where we if we don't have someone in house we work with trusted freelancers around the world who are in that market they know what's going on. They they know the specific dialect within that language because many times customers are looking for UK English versus Australia versus US. And we can find someone who's the perfect person for the job. And I think actually this is a missing part of the puzzle for a lot of business that's who are expanding very rapidly in a digital way. Yeah exactly. And yeah it's really interesting to see kind of how automatic translation and how that's impacting I guess like a lot of people are using it. And I think with any piece of content and so we met you and I both know well whether it's a blog post or like a piece of a caption on Instagram you have like I don't know like 10 seconds really to like capture readers. So someone's reading a blog they're going to read that first part of the blog and that's kind of where you pull the people in and same with like a Instagram caption. You have like a split second really to be like do I trust this? Do I want to read more? Do I be interested? And if the translation is off then they're not going to be interested. So you're going to lose so many people like can be great that you have all these clicks right on your website, on your blog. But then if no one's actually spending time on the page and reading it then it's pointless in a way. So that's why it's like that big argument of like let's just pump out content for SEO which I get it and it makes sense. And it's kind of the name of the game at the moment. But at the same time you don't want to have this meaningless content. So it's really important to keep those things in mind. Now a lot of times too I think in my experience this in general I worked as a translator. I worked with Meg. She I get a lot of my experience from her and the feel of translation because I did not have a certificate in translation like she did in a lot of experience. But a lot of people I think there's a lot of misconception about like what translators do. I think people just think oh you speak two languages it's like the classic. You speak two languages. Oh you can translate and it's like that's not the case. Now I really wanted to ask this question to give people more insight. I think a lot of times on the show we've had the people implementing these like big you know content marketing localization and can't strategies or campaigns. But like we never had someone that actually is doing the work. So I was just wondering like for you like what's on your translators checklist like what are some essential steps that need to be taken when you're doing a translation to ensure that you're accurately translating your source text. And this is very by the sector you're working in or is it like the same process for everybody to ask that you do. I think it's a similar process and it's a really good question because there's so much that goes into the process that isn't seen from the outside. It's a lot of people can sexualize it as before and after just sort of putting it through this filter that turns it into another language magically. But first before you even start you have to ask a lot of questions and make sure you have those clear whether that means doing a bit of research or asking them to deploy it. For example you know who is the audience here because regardless of how the source was written you have to keep that in mind as you translate the target text. So why do they want this translated? Who is this aimed at what kind of register what kind of tone do I need to employ as I'm translating this. Does it do we have word or character limits? This is the case a lot in the world of content marketing when we're translating a campaign for something that will appear linked in and we don't have very much space. It's not so much the case usually with blog posts or long long form content but if it's something for social media typically we have to keep the target text very in line with the length of the original of the original text. And once you have all of those questions in mind you have to make sure you understand the subject matter. We've seen anything at Vera from legal text to creative sort of magazine content and I first do a once over I read through the whole text before you even start because it's really important to know the gist and the tone that you're working with and also understand what they're talking about before you start translating line by line. So another another question that you keep in mind that brings me back to my translation theory glasses about 10 years ago I'm dating myself. Which is does this translation need to prioritize the source text or the target text and by that I mean you know is it more important that it's a quote quote unquote direct translation does this need to be line by line as similar to the original as possible or do we have a bit of liberty to prioritize the final product and make that sound as natural as possible in the in the target language and in the specific dialect or region that this is going to be read in. Typically the latter is more the case with creative text so if we're translating an opinion piece for a magazine they want us to use slaying maybe or expressions idioms so that it reads like it was written in the target language as opposed to the source language and the former is more the case with legal text or something that's quite technical where nine times out of 10 there is a set translation for what you're saying like legal terminology or medical terminology and so that's another factor you have to keep in mind when you're translating. And yeah I think I covered everything I mean there's so much more that goes into translation which would be like consistency of punctuation capitalization making sure you're sticking to US English versus UK versus any other you know dialect or or version or region of a language I think I think I've covered everything but I think there's probably a lot more factors that you didn't cover but I do think a really interesting point you brought up was like the research part of it but like that goes into the translation because I think a lot again the conception is that people just sit down and just automatically do it and it's like no it's so many different factors in one of them is research and I think a lot of times people are very like they want to find someone so say you're talking about these legal text translations they were like want someone that has legal background which in some cases is important but I do think like what makes translators really like I don't know interesting profiles I guess like a good translator is someone that really knows how to do good research and I think that it's really interesting and something that we see at very content like a lot of the trusted translators we work with they work in them like across a different like a variety of different sectors and industries that maybe have specializations but at the same time they're able to I don't know I think the security has to do that translators have to learn more and always keep learning and to adapt and to like work in different styles and different industries it's something that's really unique and really that's a good translator I think a lot of times we say like a good translator is someone that speaks those languages and they know what's going on and those languages are very familiar with the culture and that's part of it but I think at the same time it's more important that you're a good writer and understand like the nuances of the target language that you're translating to but also to someone that's just curious and wants to keep like constantly learning and that's really great yeah yeah I think that what makes a good translator similar to what makes a good writer a good copywriter which is being very meticulous and knowing how to research and also being very curious because if whether you're being tasked with creating content and be as as a copywriter or translating your job is going to entail reading about different subjects every day and I can't even tell you how many different industries I've translated for there was a dark time of air content where we did translate a manual about how an air conditioning unit worked and that was a grim but That's a lot of research. Well, you have to be curious. You have to be open minded and say, you know, I don't know how your conditioning units really work. So we're going to learn something. Exactly. And that's a good case of like, you cannot going to find like, your conditioning experts, like translation, exerates like often. So it really matters to someone is willing to do the research and get at it. Now, I did want to talk about a recent project you were involved with that didn't probably like require a lot of research because you were a big fan of the person we were translating for. But we were recently at Veracontent involved with a very creative and creative translation project that came to us from Sony Music Spain. And the task was to translate the song lyrics for art and tie and artist, Nathie Paluso. And people that don't know-- Nathie Paluso, she's a very-- she actually is very big right now in the Spanish speaking world. She just performed at Coachella in the US, which is a big deal. And she's kind of getting a bigger global presence at the moment. And she had just maybe like a month ago or a month or a half ago. She released a new music video, which was-- she did in collaboration with PlayStation because PlayStation were actually seeing a new video game called Horizon For Been In Less, which I had no idea what that game was. But when I talked to gaming friends, they were like, oh my god, it's a big deal. Now, and then she had this song that she had written in Spanish. And they needed it in very accurate English translation because they're going to be launching this on a global scale. And obviously, I guess the global language right now is English. So not only was this a challenge, since it had to be translated and localized for a non-Spanish-speaking and global audience at the same time. But as Meg knows, it has a fan of Nathie Paluso, her writing style is very unique to her. And it's very much-- she plays a lot on words. And there's a lot of imagery. And she expresses herself through her lyrics, which is very difficult. And Meg, I think, had two days to do this. And it came out fantastic. I will tell everybody go look at the-- Meg can talk about more of the video itself, too, but definitely check it out. But I want to know a bit more about how you got-- I don't know how you went about this project, because again, we just talked about this checklist. But obviously, this was a time crunch kind of in a way, but also a very creative and out-of-the-box translation. So I guess how did you go about the project, but challenges the two-faces when you're working on this? Yeah. Thank you. I always say-- I mean, when I talk about this project, I always say, this is literally the reason I studied translation. I found this project fascinating. And I was a huge Nathie Paluso fan. So I was very excited to work on it. But actually, a lot of research did go into it. Although I already knew her songs quite well, the first thing I did was put her songs back on and pay really close attention to the sort of way that the words sound together. How does she like to rhyme? What kind of imagery does she use? What her big themes are in her songs, that's really helpful to know, how does she present herself to the world? How does she-- what's her identity? Because the more creative a source text is, the more creative you have to be in the target text, to be a faithful and good translation. And so, back when I was studying translation, the most challenging translations we had to do were always a poetry or a song lyrics, things that maybe don't always make sense at first glance. You maybe have to dig for more context. You have to pick apart metaphors, understand what they're saying, and then try to replicate a similar image or metaphor in the target. And so, yeah, first I kind of did my literature review and listened to all her songs. And then I listened to the new one and watched the video so I could understand sort of the images she wanted to make appear in the person's head who was listening to it. And then I really studied the lyrics and everything. So for something like this, you can't just dive in and start translating. You really need to wrap your head around what she wants to convey first and then start. And there were many drafts involved, of course. But, yeah, so I had to keep in mind the style rhythm when you're translating. You don't exactly have to rhyme for a song lyrics, especially because these were for subtitles. Like, she's never going to sing what we translated out loud. It would be awesome. But so those things you have to keep in mind, a huge, huge challenge was translating idioms. There's this example that we talked about before. That's actually in this wave of case study about this project on ferricontent.com. And it's this idiom that Nadte makes reference to. But she doesn't use it exactly how it is in Spanish. So it has to do with an idiom that's about rings falling off your fingers for rough translation. It's like, "Semekai en los aníos." And this image, like, harkens back to the times where kings and royalty would wear rings. And if a ring fell off your finger, that could symbolize that you are doing something that is below your rank, that you're stooping down to a lower level to do the dirty work of someone who someone who is below your rank would typically do. And so she, in her song, she's talking about grind and every day to fight for what I deserve. And she says that "Semekai en los aníos," like her rings fell off her finger. And the batayel would be the daily grind or the hustle. And so she's saying she has stooped below her rank. And she's really worked hard to get where she is. And so in the end, we went with, I got my hands dirty in the daily grind. And we chose that because there was still this image of hands involved. And an image of maybe the hands were clean before and they got dirty. And so that would be, like, lower than the rank that you started with. And we chose in the daily grind because throughout all of her songs, she has this repeated message of, "I've been working so hard every day for this." And they've tried to stop me. And I've come across obstacles or people who didn't want me to succeed. And I just, you know, stared him down and kept on keeping on. And so we were pretty happy with that translation, but it was very, very challenging. And the last thing you have to think about is, if someone comes to watch her video on YouTube, they don't know Spanish. And they're only listening, or they're only reading the English subtitles. They're going to base their opinion on her artistry. And what the song is and how good the some lyrics are, only by reading the English subtitles. And so we need to create a text that not only is faithful to what she's saying, but that sounds good, you know? Like the thing she says in her songs sound really cool, you know? And so we had to play the songwriter a bit and try to create a text that someone's like, oh, that's a bomb, you know? Like that's a banger. - Yeah, exactly. And it's really cool that like, I think it's really great that I asked you this question after asking this checklist question 'cause it shows how every process is different. But I didn't even know this until right now that you kind of looked at her whole like discography and the sense of like, this is the message of her. I think that's like part of her story. And as someone I like her music as well, I haven't deep dive so deep as you have. But I think like, it's really cool because that's her image that she has. Like she works hard, she's like a strong independent woman. That's kind of come from a very like humbled background and has this goal and she doesn't care what people think. And she's gonna make her goal and like share her music with the world. And I think that's what her priority is. So like the fact that you kept that in mind when translating and made sure you had that imagery there because it's probably something that's so important to her and her messaging as an artist. That's really cool. And one thing that Meg didn't mention is that since these were like subtitles, another really cool thing that we had to like also like, make sure the lyrics would fit unlike the frames of the different of the video itself. So she also works with someone else on our team that knows how to do subtitling and made sure like that everything fit perfectly and everything was lined up. And it just that makes it even more difficult because not like you're just gonna have to layer to publish somewhere and someone can just look at it side by side, it's like they actually have to be fitting in each frame of the music video. So that's a really amazing project. But I also think it's something that you do as a translator and marketing as well. Like this whole thing of like understanding the brand is like understanding the artists in this case and understanding what they want to project out to the world and also just kind of like the thread that is gonna be connecting every piece of content that they produce whether it's on the social media or on a blog. So that's why it's really interesting to I think have you on the show because it's showing us how much actually goes into translation and how much does not mean that you snap your fingers and it's done. It's a craft. And I think a lot of times people forget that and translate your new more credit, I think for the work that they do. - For sure. - Yeah. And that's why I mean, I'm plugging there left and right. But that's why it's very proud to work at Vera because you know, as opposed to other maybe like huge translation companies where you know, maybe quality is sacrificed for meeting a deadline or, I don't know, I think at Vera we really prioritize quality and we communicate really well so that we know if this is exactly what the client wants And does this match with Satona? in the audience and everything, we care a lot about the translations. And I think we have a team of really passionate content writers and translators who take a lot pride in their work. And so I think that's really key to being a good translator. Yeah, I mean, that's the reason why we both have stayed at the company for so long. It's just that we really believe in that. I don't know that. So like, I don't know the motto or it's like that we really dedicated to quality and to really helping our clients kind of get their voice across in a way that they're happy proud of as well. And it takes all these factors that go behind it. Now, I did mention this before, kind of the rise of technology and how that's impacting translation. But for I think years now, when our industry, we've heard that it's going to like everything's going to be shook and up right by artificial intelligence. And yes, we've seen like a rapid progression in this. I think even within the past five years, when it comes to the accuracy of the tools that are out there. But obviously still they're far from perfect. So, you know, for example, when we're putting something into Google translation, it's kind of not going to properly capture local organisms. Like the idioms you're just talking about in that song translation, like it's going to be a bit off or even though when it comes to more straightforward translations, they're pretty accurate. But I was just wondering like as someone that works in the industry and someone that does use these tools in their day to day work, like what's your opinion about like computer assisted translation tools or cat tools around do you find them helpful or do you think they hinder your experiences in translator? Yeah, well, maybe it's a hot take, but I am really pro tools like tech tools in translation. And I think all translators should be because if we try to fight technology and automation, it's only going to go bad for us. We should really be using those tech tools to the best of our abilities so that we can be better translators and more efficient. I'm definitely not advocating for only using automatic translation machine translation. I think we should be using it as a really strong base to work with. This is more helpful for less creative techs, of course. You know, like with the Nathipaluso project, for example, it wouldn't be super helpful for me to use cat tools just because every single line would be totally rewritten. But for a legal project or for a business project or something that has repetition, there are a lot of aspects of cat tools that go beyond just machine translation. For example, we work with MemSource and MemSource has a really good machine translation, but also it facilitates project management and it communicates deadlines as they're approaching and it tells the editor when the text has been translated and it's ready for them. And so it has that aspect of it. And then it also has this aspect that I think it's fantastic which is having a translation memory in a term base. And so if I'm translating for a client and we have an ongoing relationship, as they start sending me new documents, I can have things in the memory that pop up and say, "Hey, this is how you translated this before for this client do when you used it again." In most cases, I'm saying, "Absolutely, yes, thanks for reminding me technology, but that's how I did it." And so there are all these ways that it can supplement your work to actually make you more efficient and make you consistent in your work and to just be sort of an assistant as throughout your process. And so I am very pro cat tools or any kind of automation that can do the sort of repetitive easy work for us and leave them more creative bits to us. Exactly. I think it's really important point that you made is like we have to kind of embrace change if you kind of work against it and it's not going to help. But I think another thing that's important to highlight is that at the end of the day, a human still needs to be involved in some extent, right? To like make sure that things are expressed the right way and that everything flows well. And like you can't, I think that maybe something that artificial intelligence may never get to. We're never going to get to the point that unless I don't know who knows how these things are going to involve. But it's always important to have that human that's working on it. But it's really cool to see how these tools help streamline different tasks but also help different companies, for example, scale up their translation work because if you have tools that are everyone's going to notify when a translation is done, it's just like all on the same process with the term base. And the translation memory is going to help multiple people working on the same project box being consistent because they're going to know how to translate the terms the way the client wants is super important. So I think it's really cool to hear like you're perspective on that. Because I feel like, yeah, like it is a maybe hot point. I don't know like it's a controversial thing to say as a translator because you know, you have the traditionalists who are like, we have this is like a disgrace to the industry. But I do appreciate like your approach is kind of like working alongside technology rather than against it because what are you going to achieve otherwise as the world changes. Now to end like to kind of before we sign off on the interview, I feel like everyone has seen like funny, you know, translation memes or like, you know, unread it or something like that. Like funny translations that they see on different signs at restaurants, like that. So I have to ask and we're doing a different episode today. So I think it's appropriate. But I kind of want to know like if you have any funny translation stories that you've come across, like different like situations or anything like that that you've had in your time is a translator. I have had so many and not just things that I've seen, clients do or businesses do, but things that have happened to me or like, you know, translation mistakes that I've almost made that could have been very dire. And this actually something like this actually happened really recently a few weeks ago. So there's this guy called Ian Schreiger who he was the person who ran studio 54 in Manhattan. And he now is in the hotel business. He makes these beautiful luxurious hotels. And he just opened one in Madrid I think about two weeks ago. And so I was translating a text that was sort of, you know, an article about this and why it's important and everything. And something you have to know about Ian Schreiger is that he's a very edgy guy. He's known for being quite crude and studio 54. You know, there were a lot of whispers about what goes on in there, you know, where they're potentially orgies happening. And so I had this in mind because you know, I was doing my research before I started. I was, I needed to read about this guy and any context that might come in handy when I'm translating about this new hotel. And so there was, they were interviewing him. And one of the questions was, you know, you've had some, you've, your thing has been being quite edgy. Do you think that your new hotel in Madrid is also edgy or subversive? And he was like, oh, you know, it's funny you ask because during the design process, one of my design guys asked if we should put up framed pictures of curridas de toros and see the problem here that I didn't realize at the time is that there was a typo in the Spanish and it was supposed to say, "Curridas de toros", which would be bullfighting. But since it's had curridas de todos, with Adi, then in slang and Spanish, that could be everyone having an orgasm. And so I was like, you know, based on what I know about this guy and the fact that you know, well, the next line was that when the good, when the design guy proposed this, the local Spanish team said, no, I think that would be passing, like, that would be crossing a line that would be too much. And so I'm thinking, everything I know about this guy, he loves to push people's buttons, you know, the team said no, the team said that that was too crude. And so I went ahead and translated it as, you know, framed pictures of everyone having orgasms, but I told him, I know. And this was for L.P.E.S. Which is like one of the biggest Spanish, like Spanish language newspapers in the world. So I, I flagged it to the client because I thought, you know, even though it kind of makes sense in the context, it would be really bad if this was wrong. And it does feel like quite crude to put in a newspaper. And so I asked the client and she just lost it. She thought it was hilarious. And she didn't realize that there was a typo in the original. It was also important that that I flagged it to her because I could fix the, the target text, the translation, but she could also get it fixed in the original because it would have the same meaning in Spanish. And so that's just an example of, you know, why we have to work with machines, but also with the human element because it was only context and background research and everything that told me, it could be this, but it could also not be this. And so, yeah, that I think the takeaway there is that we, we as human translators can have the big picture and in the sense of something might be wrong. Exactly. And like grammatically it was correct, but just keep the fun. I mean, a machine may not pick up on it. And I also, I think highlights the importance of like attention to detail and how transiting really need to focus on every little aspect of the source text and a target text and every part that goes into a project. Now we've come to the end of the interview. Unfortunately, I feel like we could talk about this topic for a long time because we are both translation nerds in that sense, but it's really special to have you on the show. today, Meg, because we don't often have people from very content, like the people that make up the work that we do come on the show and share with our audience, like the craft and what everything that goes behind translating, especially with different marketing pieces of marketing content. So it was really great to have you here and to kind of give you the chance to talk about something that you're so passionate about, something that's kind of trained your trajectory, your professional trajectory as a translator, and someone working in a different market in a different country. Now, I just wanted to always ask this too, but is there, if anyone was listening to this episode and they wanted to talk to you or reach out to you, like, is the best way to connect with you, LinkedIn? Yeah, LinkedIn is fine. I think I have my email on there. Either one's completely fine. Awesome. So yeah, so if you want to reach out to Meg, you can find her on LinkedIn. It's Meg Gardner, and she's also connected with me. So if you connect with me, she should be there. But thank you again so much, Meg, for sharing all your wonderful insights with us on today's episode. And thanks everyone else for listening in, as always. And for more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, you check out varicontent.com/mix and keep tuning into the podcast for more interviews with content experts, experts, and also maybe some future interviews with other people of parts of the varicontent team. So we hope to see you next time and thanks again for tuning in. Thanks, Meg.