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Spanish to English: Extract from a research project carried out in Colombia General field: Social Sciences Detailed field: Education / Pedagogy
Source text - Spanish GOBIERNO ESCOLAR, PROYECTOS EDUCATIVOS INSTITUCIONALES (PEI), MANUAL DE CONVIVENCIA
El Gobierno escolar: sigue siendo de forma pero no de hecho, es decir, existe, se reúnen los representantes de los diferentes estamentos, pero las decisiones están de manera prioritaria en manos de las directivas. El protagonismo de los representantes estudiantiles, personeros y padres de familia es poco o muy bajo. Al mismo tiempo, siguen existiendo problemas de representatividad y falta de mecanismos de participación y decisión.
Proyectos educativos institucionales: están establecidos en las instituciones. Algunas han cambiado sus énfasis siendo más notorios los proyectos que tienen que ver con convivencia, comunicación y técnicos; sin embargo, se perciben tres problemas que afectan su implementación:
• El proceso de integración y los continuos cambios de docentes han generado que de manera permanente las discusiones y acuerdos logrados con respecto a los énfasis y formas de intervención se reinicien de manera permanente siendo difícil evaluar su desarrollo.
• No ha sido posible que el PEI sea realmente el eje que determine el currículo y su sentido, es decir, no existen procesos transversales y tampoco es posible evaluar su desarrollo más allá de la implementación de actividades.
"El PEI, es un proceso de construcción; antes existía otro PEI, que tenia una tendencia hacia lo ecológico, pero se cambió por uno nuevo, con énfasis en competencias comunicativas e informáticas, pero hasta ahora solamente hay unos breves borradores, Pero lo más grave y que siempre he criticado: aquí nació primero la hija antes que la mamá porque estamos trabajando sobre un plan de estudio, para un currículum, pero no tenemos un PEI, y eso, yo no lo he podido entender como maestro. Si tú tienes una carga como docente, ese es el producto educativo y al interior de él, tú lo fortaleces como currículo, ya sea transversal o de alguna manera, elaborando unos planes de estudio, de una u otra forma, se van haciendo afianzamientos pedagógicos y construcciones de discurso pedagógico". Docente 2004
Translation - English SCHOOL GOVERNING BODY, SCHOOL EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS (PEIs -1), ‘GUIDELINES FOR COEXISTENCE -2 ’
The school governing body continues to go through the administrative motions without having much practical power. That is to say, it does exist – representatives from various levels meet up – but decisions are made first and foremost by the school Head or Principal. The role of student representatives, welfare officers, and parents is limited or very small. Accordingly, there are still problems to do with representation and a lack of procedure for participation and decision-making.
School Educational Projects (PEIs) have been set up within schools. Some have changed their emphasis, with key projects involving co-existence, communication and technical issues. However, three drawbacks have been identified which hinder their implementation:
• The process of integration and the continual replacement of teaching staff have meant that discussions and agreements made with regard to the forms of intervention and their emphasis are permanently interrupted, making it difficult to evaluate their development.
• It has not been possible for the PEI to be the real driving force behind the curriculum and its content. That is to say, there are no cross-curriculum procedures, neither is it possible to evaluate its development beyond the implementation of teaching activities.
“The PEI is a building process; previously we had another type of PEI, which tended towards ecological issues, but this was replaced by a new one, with a focus more on communication and computer skills, but up until now there have only been a few short drafts. However, the most serious thing, which I have always criticised, is that we’re putting the cart before the horse here, because we’re working on a study plan for a curriculum, but we don’t have a PEI, and that’s what I haven’t been able to understand as a teacher. If you have a responsibility as a teacher, it is the educational end product – and at the centre of it, you strengthen the curriculum, be it in a cross-curricular way or otherwise, devising study plans of one sort or another, making improvements and consolidating all aspects of teaching along the way.” Teacher, 2004
[Footnote 1: "Proyecto Educativo Institucional”. Project with a particular theme (e.g. school environment, communication, productiveness) aimed at providing curricular and administrative unity within the school. Endorsed by the Government and educational organisations.]
[Footnote 2: “Manual de Convivencia”. Document tailored to individual schools, identifying the rules, rights and responsibilities of students, teachers and administrative staff, with the aim of resolving conflict.]
French to English: Magazine article General field: Art/Literary
Source text - French YSL au cœur d’une légende
Il a souvent habillé la femme en noir. Il référait l’ombre à la lumière. Fragile, tourmenté, il connut souvent des périodes sombres. Et pourtant, Yves Saint-Laurent a illuminé la mode et le monde de l’éclat intense d’un talent sans égal.
Yves Saint-Laurent aimait Velasquez, Picasso, Delacroix, Monet, Van Gogh, Mondrian… « Je suis un artiste raté, confessait-il, trop modeste. Je n’ai eu que l’amour de la peinture. » Aussi ne pouvait-on rêver plus bel endroit pour lui rendre hommage que le Petit Palais, le Musée des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris. Jusqu’au 29 août, ce beau bâtiment construit pour l’Exposition Universelle de 1900, voisin des Champs-Élysées, accueille en effet la première rétrospective intégrale de l’œuvre du couturier. Curieux mélange des genres ? Pas si sûr. Pour beaucoup, l’enfant d’Oran était plus qu’un créateur de mode : un artiste. Ainsi les 307 modèles de haute couture et prêt-à-porter, les photographies, les dessins et les films qui composent cette exposition exceptionnelle racontent bien plus que 40 ans de carrière, quatre décennies d’élégance féminine : elles forment véritablement une œuvre. Saint-Laurent ne s’y était pas trompé qui évoqua, un jour la haute couture en ces termes : « J’ai toujours placé au-dessus de tout le respect de ce métier, qui n’est pas tout à fait un art, mais qui a besoin d’un artiste pour exister ».
Les débuts chez Dior. Cette « œuvre » est initiée le 30 janvier 1958 avec la présentation d’une première collection, baptisée « Trapèze », imaginée pour Christian Dior. « C’est la meilleure collection Dior jamais vue », ose le New-York Herald Tribune. Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent (son vrai nom) est entré dans la célèbre maison de l’avenue Montaigne quatre ans plus tôt. Il n’avait alors que dix-sept ans. Michel de Brunhoff, Directeur de Vogue, avait adoré les croquis que lui avait présentés ce jeune homme aussi fluet que discret (les mannequins de Dior le surnommèrent « le petit curé »), tout juste arrivé de son Algérie natale : « De ma vie, je n’ai rencontré quelqu’un de plus doué », confie-t-il à l’inventeur du New Look. Celui-ci engage aussitôt le prodige. Il n’a eu qu’à s’en féliciter. Si bien qu’en juillet 1957, Christian Dior l’annonce : « C’est Yves qui me succèdera un jour ». Trois mois plus tard, le maître décède d’une crise cardiaque. Comme prévu, son élève prendra la relève, avec le succès que l’on sait. L’aventure Dior a démarré comme un rêve ; elle s’achève par un cauchemar. Appelé sous les drapeaux en 1960, Yves Saint-Laurent fait une dépression nerveuse. Vingt jours à peine après son incorporation, il est hospitalisé à l’hôpital militaire du Val-de-Grâce. Yves est en souffrance, encaissant moults électrochocs, des sédatifs et… les papiers venimeux de la presse française qui lui reproche sa faiblesse à l’heure où la jeunesse française se bat sur ses terres natales, pour le maintien de l’Algérie dans le giron tricolore. Pour ne rien arranger, Dior a confié son fauteuil à Marc Bohan, un autre protégé de Christian Dior, qui n’entend pas le lui rendre. « Il n’y a plus qu’une chose à faire, confie-t-il à Pierre Bergé, son compagnon de toujours : créer une maison de couture. Tu vas la diriger. »
Il était une fois YSL. En 1961, c’est donc un Yves Saint-Laurent, réformé, reposé, ambitieux, toujours aussi créatif, qui se met à son compte, s’installant avec Victoire, son amie la plus proche, un ancien mannequin connu chez Dior, dans un petit deux-pièces au cœur de la capitale. Il est sans un sou ou presque. Pierre Bergé se charge de trouver les fonds nécessaires pour lancer la première collection de la maison de couture Yves Saint-Laurent. Il convainc J. Marck Robison, un milliardaire américain, d’apporter les fonds nécessaires à ce projet. Le 29 janvier 1962, sous les yeux de Lucienne, sa mère, il présente la bagatelle de 100 modèles. Le succès est immédiat. Le voilà revenu sur le devant de la scène. Il ne le quittera plus ! Avec Pierre Bergé à ses côtés, Saint-Laurent va révolutionner l’élégance féminine. Comme Paul Poiret et Coco Chanel, il ne se contente pas de les habiller : il les émancipe. Il leur imagine pour cela une garde-robe tout à fait nouvelle, inspirée de celle de leurs maris ou amants : des costumes-pantalon, des smokings, des cabans, des sahariennes. « Mais ma femme est une vraie femme, précise-t-il. Ce n’est pas une amazone, ce n’est pas une Barbarella, une cosmonaute non plus. C’est une femme souvent en noir. » Il sait aussi mettre de la couleur dans ses créations. Les couleurs de l’art, souvent, avec des collections inspirées de Mondrian, Warhol, Picasso, Buffet, Van Gogh et bien d’autres. Et pour que le plus grand nombre de femmes puisse goûter à son univers, fait de beauté et de liberté, il crée en 1966 Rive Gauche et invente le prêt-à-porter de luxe. Même les plus belles histoires ont une fin. Celle d’Yves Saint-Laurent, génie oblige, en a connu deux. La première ? Le 7 janvier 2002 quand le créateur annonce aux média médusés qu’il met un terme à sa carrière. La seconde ? Le 1er juin 2008, il disparaît après une longue maladie. L’homme est parti, pleuré, loué unanimement par ses proches et ses fans. Mais le mythe, lui, semble éternel. Une visite au Petit Palais en témoigne : Yves Saint-Laurent continue de faire rêver les femmes et tous ceux qui les aiment.
Translation - English YSL: At the heart of a legend
He frequently dressed women in black. He preferred darkness to light. Fragile and tormented, he often suffered dark times in his life. Yet Yves Saint-Laurent illuminated fashion, and the world itself, with the brilliance of his unequalled talent.
Yves Saint-Laurent loved the greats like Velasquez, Picasso, Delacroix, Monet, Van Gogh and Mondrian. “I’m a failed artist,” he would confess, overly modest. “I have only ever had a love of painting.” Hence, we couldn’t have imagined a more beautiful place in which to pay him homage than the Petit Palais, City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts. Until 29th August, this splendid building, constructed for the Exposition Universelle of 1900 and neighbour of the Champs-Élysées, is indeed home to the first complete retrospective of the works of a fashion designer. Not such a surprising combination of genres as might at first appear; in the eyes of many this child of Oran was more than a creator of fashion, he was an artist. The 307 haute couture and prêt-à-porter models, the photography, the designs and the films which make up this extraordinary exhibition speak of a career spanning over 40 years – four decades of feminine elegance, a true work of art. In fact, Saint-Laurent once said of his career in haute-couture, “I have always given the highest importance of all to respect for this craft, which is not exactly an art, but which needs an artist to exist.”
His début was with Dior. Setting this ‘life’s work’ in motion, on 30th January 1958 he presented his first collection for Christian Dior entitled ‘Trapeze’, hailed by the New York Herald Tribune as “The best Dior collection yet”. Four years earlier, Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent (his real name) had joined the famous house in Avenue Montaigne at a mere 17 years old. Michel de Brunhoff, Director at Vogue, had loved the sketches shown to him by this young man, who was as slight as he was unassuming (the Dior models nicknamed him “The little priest”) newly arrived from his native Algeria. “I’ve never met anyone as gifted in my entire life,” he told the creator of the New Look. It was this creator, Christian Dior, who immediately hired the prodigy – and never looked back. So much so, that in July 1957 he announced, “Ives will succeed me one day.” Three months later, the great Master died of a heart attack; as anticipated, his pupil took over the reins and the rest is history. But if his Dior venture began like a dream, it ended with a nightmare. Conscripted to serve in the French army in 1960, Yves Saint-Laurent had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to the Val-de-Grâce military hospital, barely twenty days after being enlisted. A great deal of suffering ensued for Yves, as he endured constant electroshock therapy, sedation and malicious publications by the French press, who reproached him for being weak at a time when the French youth was fighting in his native land to keep Algeria part of France. To make matters worse, Dior gave his position away to Marc Bohan, another of Christian Dior’s protégés, who didn’t expect to relinquish it. “There’s only one thing for it,” he confessed to Pierre Bergé, his long-time friend. “Create a fashion house. You will be in charge.”
And so, YSL was born. In 1961, it was a reformed and refreshed Yves Saint-Laurent, ambitious and still as creative, who set up his own business in partnership with Victoire, his closest friend and former Dior model, in a little two-room apartment in the centre of the capital. Practically penniless, he enlisted Pierre Bergé to find enough money to launch the first collection from the Yves Saint-Laurent fashion house and convinced American multimillionaire J. Marck Robison to provide the necessary funding for the project. On 29th January 1962, watched by his mother Lucienne, he presented his first collection featuring 100 models. It was an immediate success, propelling him back into the spotlight for good. With Pierre Bergé by his side, Saint-Laurent would go on to revolutionise feminine elegance. Like Paul Poiret and Coco Chanel, he didn’t just dress women, he emancipated them. He dreamt up a whole new wardrobe for them, inspired by that of their husbands or lovers – trouser suits, tuxedos, sailor’s jackets and safari jackets. “My woman is a real woman,” he explained. “She’s not an Amazon, not a Barbarella or an astronaut either. She is a woman who often wears black.” He nevertheless knew how to work colour into his creations – colours found in art, usually – creating collections inspired by Mondrian, Warhol, Picasso, Buffet, Van Gogh and many others. In order to allow as many women as possible into his universe of beauty and freedom, he created Rive Gauche in 1966, thus inventing luxury ready-to-wear. But even the best stories come to an end. That of Yves Saint-Laurent, unwitting genius, had two. The first came on 7th January 2002, when the designer announced to the astounded media that he was retiring. The second occurred on 1st June 2008, when he passed away following a long illness. The man was gone, mourned and praised unanimously by those close to him and his fans. But the man – the myth – lives on. A visit to the Petit Palais bears witness to this fact; Yves Saint-Laurent continues to inspire women and all those who love them.
Spanish to English: Extract from an architecture report General field: Tech/Engineering Detailed field: Architecture
Source text - Spanish Los Muros portantes
Para la mejor comprensión del edificio queremos distinguir entre dos tipos de muros portantes.
Los de 50 cm de grosor (color amarillo), realizados con mampostería y argamasa que presentan en general un buen estado de conservación y no presentan patologías evidentes.
Los de 25 cm de espesor (color rojo) realizados con adobe y otros materiales de escasa resistencia y que presentan problemas de agrietamientos y desplomes debidos a las sobrecargas y a los empujes oblicuos de la estructura de cubierta y por asentamientos en el terreno
Clasificacion de grietas en los muros.
Desde el punto de vista estructural, el informe distingue el agrietamiento de las paredes asociado a ese tipo de edificios en la siguiente clasificación:
• Grietas de contracción el punto de medio aproximado de una larga sección del muro y la sección de estrechamiento de la pared, como a través de una puerta o ventana de cabeza y son prácticamente uniformes de ancho de arriba a abajo y por lo general se extienden desde la parte superior de la pared
• Grietas de asentamiento el resultado de un fallo de una condición de apoyo.
• Fisuras de carga. Una grieta de carga es el resultado de la carga a la que es sometido el muro y una pared mal diseñada es muy susceptible a este daño.
• Fisuras estructurales sobre los elementos del edificio que producen la resistencia significativa, la estabilidad y la integridad del mismo, como forjados, muros de carga, vigas, pilares marcos y cimientos.
Translation - English Supporting walls
To best understand the building, we wish to distinguish between two types of supporting wall.
Walls 50cm thick (yellow coloured), built with brick and mortar, which in general are in good condition with no obvious pathological defects.
Walls 25cm thick (red coloured) built with adobe and other low-strength materials, which display problems of cracking and collapse due to overloading and oblique thrust faults in the roof construction, as well as due to subsidence of the ground.
Classification of cracks in the walls
From a structural point of view, the report classifies the wall cracking associated with this type of building in the following way:
• Shrinkage cracks - the approximate midpoint of a large section of the wall and the section of narrowing of the wall, such as across a main door or window, are of practically uniform width from top to bottom and generally extend from the upper part of the wall
• Settlement cracks - the result of a fault in a support condition
• Load cracking. A load crack is the result of a wall being subjected to a heavy load. A badly-designed wall is very susceptible to this kind of damage.
• Structural fissures on elements of the building that produce significant endurance, the stability and condition of the same, such as floor frameworks, load-bearing walls, beams, pillars, frames and foundations.
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Translation education
Master's degree - University of Surrey, UK
Experience
Years of experience: 17. Registered at ProZ.com: Oct 2009.
French to English (University of Kent at Canterbury) Spanish to English (University of Kent at Canterbury) French to English (University of Surrey) Spanish to English (University of Surrey)
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Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Trados Studio
I am a qualified freelance translator based in the UK, offering high quality translations from French and Spanish into English.
A mother-tongue UK English speaker, I provide a friendly and reliable translation and proofreading service. I always deliver on time, ensuring that all texts are accurate and culturally accessible to the target readership.
Having specialised in technical, scientific and business-related translation, I also have professional experience in the following areas:
Official documentation (governmental documents, architecture reports, general medical questionnaires, industrial inspection reports) Marketing and creative writing (magazine articles, advertorials, advertisements, promotional texts, book reviews, website text) Food and drink (menus, recipes, winemaking texts) Travel and tourism (destination reviews, brochures) Film and TV (screenplay proposals, screen and voice-over prompts for promotional films)
Translation Education:
MA in Translation from the University of Surrey, awarded Distinction.
Expertise