State of the Union in Spanish

For those of you who would like an exercise in translation, here's a suggestion. President Bush just gave the State of the Union address last night and then English text of the speech can be found here. If you'd like to see how well your Spanish translation abilities are (and if you have some time), try and translate the speech into Spanish. Or, if you'd rather try to translate from Spanish into English, you can access the Spanish translation here.

After you do the translation, compare your translation to the one given by the White House (if you're going from English to Spanish), or check it against the original English (if you're practicing from Spanish to English).

I like this kind of exercise because you really have to know the context of the speech. What kind of speaker is President Bush? Who is he speaking to? What are some things that have happened in the past that could give you a clue as to how to translate certain passages?

Translators often get caught up in transmitting just the written message. Sometimes, you need to step back and see what the overall tone or feeling of the message is and make sure that gets transmitted as well. A speech by a well-known person (such as President Bush) is a good exercise in practicing just that.