Nelda Gaydou
Translator
I never considered being a translator when I grew up, but my life, educational, and work experiences gave me an ideal background for it.
I am natively bilingual in English and Spanish. My parents are from the U.S., and I was born and raised in Argentina. My parents tell me that as a one-year-old I was already a consecutive English-into-Spanish and Spanish-into-English interpreter, insisting on learning every new word in both languages.
My mother taught me to love books and kept me well supplied with reading material. She gave me an early start in research by making me find the answers to my questions in dictionaries and encyclopedias (this being well before the home PC era). I also inherited her “stickler” genes.
I followed my brother’s footsteps in learning French in high school with an extremely demanding teacher and the wonderful “Voix et image” method. I never considered studying anything but literature, so I have a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Spanish. My five-year Italian certificate was strictly for fun. To be Argentine is to be half-Italian, regardless of one’s ethnic origins.
Before becoming a translator, I worked both as a teacher and as a secretary. I have taught English, Spanish, and Italian as second languages. I started off in offices with manual and electric typewriters, dictaphones, stencils, mimeographs, and teletypes, and worked my way up to photocopiers, fax machines, computers, and laser printers.
My first translations were literary, in the religious field, and I continue to translate around one book per year in this area. In 1990 an Argentine friend asked me to get him a certified translation of his college transcript. The only certified translator I was able to find in Albuquerque, New Mexico at that time preferred interpreting, but agreed to review, edit, and certify my translation. He began giving me the interpretation and translation assignments he couldn’t accept. He also initiated me into the American Translators Association and the certification process.
After I was certified, I worked at home as a Spanish interpreter with the AT&T Language Line for two years. We moved to Austin, Texas in 1991, and I sent out resumes to every translation agency I could find. Initially, only one answered. That was the Ralph McElroy Translation Company. My very first assignment was to record an Italian text. The week after that I began translating a large set of documents related to a lawsuit between pharmaceutical companies from Italian into English for McElroy Translation. I’ve been a full-time independent translator ever since.
Being an independent translator allowed me to work my schedule around that of my children as they were growing up. We were also able to move back to Argentina, where the economy is always uncertain, with the knowledge that we could count on a steady income wherever we went.
Translation is a profession that keeps me humble by showing me every day that there are many things I do not know. It is also stimulating because I am always learning something new. And it keeps me from becoming set in my ways by forcing me to keep up with advancing technology.
It’s also a family thing. My husband, with training and experience in industrial maintenance mechanics and gastronomy, is an invaluable resource. He and my three children have helped me proof innumerable chemical patents to make sure I haven’t skipped anything. Our son is beginning his career as a translator. And our three grandchildren? It’s too soon to tell, but we are making sure that they start off with two mother tongues.
