Translator
Name false friends, weigh translations, and shift register like a professional — out loud.
Los falsos amigos are the words that betray English speakers: embarazada means pregnant, not embarrassed; actual means current; realizar means to carry out; sensible means sensitive. The profession's own vocabulary splits by region too — Spain's intérprete jurado is Latin America's perito traductor, and Spain's traducción jurada is usually traducción certificada across the Atlantic. In these lessons none of it comes from flashcards: you learn each term by using it in a live discussion of real translation problems.
Below: the vocabulary lesson by lesson — false friends, interpreting, localization, register — the Latin America vs Spain differences that matter professionally, and a way to rehearse it all out loud.
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Regional Spanish
Textbooks teach one word. Locals use several — pick your region's and stay consistent.
| English | Latin America | Spain |
|---|---|---|
| sworn interpreter | el perito traductor | el intérprete jurado |
| certified translation | la traducción certificada | la traducción jurada |
| translation memory (office jargon) | la TM | la TM |
Watch out
The part no drill site can do
Olivia
Your vocabulary teacher for this pack
There are no flashcards and no matching exercises. In the Translator lessons, Olivia hands you working problems: an idiom with no direct equivalent, and you argue for la traducción libre over la traducción literal; a product text that needs la adaptación cultural for two different markets; a phrase that suena muy traducido — sounds translated — and you fix it. You talk each decision through out loud, which is how the vocabulary becomes reflex.
Blank mid-sentence and nothing bad happens — she waits. That's the practice, without unnecessary judgement.
Finish the 6 lessons and Translator is yours — earned, not given.
First 10 lessons free · 10-minute spoken lessons · your AI coaching team remembers you
Quick answers
Los falsos amigos — words that look like English but mean something else. The classics: embarazada (pregnant, not embarrassed), actual (current), realizar (to carry out), sensible (sensitive). Translators warn each other with ¡ojo con los falsos amigos!
The same service, named by region: Spain says la traducción jurada (sworn translation), done by el intérprete jurado; Latin America more commonly says la traducción certificada, and the court-appointed expert is el perito traductor.
Formally la lengua de origen and la lengua meta. In everyday Latin American usage you'll hear el idioma de partida and el idioma de llegada — the departure and arrival languages.
La localización is adapting a product for a market — beyond translation, it's la adaptación cultural. Latin American tech teams have their own verb for it: tropicalizar el producto. Creative adaptation of marketing copy gets its own term, la transcreación.
El calco lingüístico is a word-for-word copy of an English structure, and la interferencia is your first language leaking through. The everyday verdict for both: eso suena muy traducido — that sounds translated.
