One of the things I enjoy the most about being a translator is how much I learn from the different topics that land on my desk.

watch boxAlthough I specialise in legal and marketing texts, these two areas are quite vast, and clients come from different backgrounds. For example, a legal translation may be anything from a certified translation of birth certificates to the Certificate of Incorporation translation of a company expanding abroad; and a marketing translation could be a website translation for a local surgery to an ad banner translation for a famous furniture brand.

No matter how much or little the backgrounds differ from my clients, I always learn new things when doing my job.

Not long ago, I completed a very interesting project that I got through a colleague of mine. The subject: watches, accessories and watchmaking tools; the client: a local fast-growing company specialised in watch straps and pilot and diving watches. I was asked to translate their product listings, website and other marketing material and to research the Spanish market and vocabulary.

When I met the client, I had never thought of changing my watch strap and didn’t know that people actually purchase more than one strap for their watches; that’s how little I knew about this world that was opening its doors to me.

However, such was my intrigue to know more, that I took some time to read about watches and straps (in English and Spanish) and plunged into the project.

I was fascinated by how many watch lovers there are out there, and by “lovers” I mean people who spend some time every day on watch forums, who buy and sell really expensive watches just to look at them and who publish youtube videos of them opening the box containing their newest watch. Obviously, not every watch lover goes to these extents, but this is just to give you an idea of how passionate the world of watches is.

You can see this passion reflected on how articles and reviews about watches are written in both English and Spanish, the writing style is very similar despite the language difference. It is also amazing how many watch-specific words and phrases there are.

I worked on this project for a few months and learnt so much that I compiled a large bilingual English-Spanish glossary of terms that I am planning to grow even more.

There aren’t many translators out there who specialise in translations for the watch industry, so if you or someone you know could benefit from my services, I would be pleased to help.