Hi Silvia,
As a museum in Deep South Texas, our museum tries to translate all of our text into Spanish, since over 80% of our population speaks a language other than English at home. So major steps for us:
Perception:
Your Spanish speaking community will be thankful, and I think that's all that matters. You are adding something, not taking anything away. Don't be scared to do this! It is a step in the right direction and makes your worth more to 46% of your community.
Be consistent!
We have ONE person who translates all museum text into Spanish. This helps weed out inconsistencies with tone and sentence structure. Once a text is complete it will be reviewed by other Spanish speakers on staff for edits. We use Mexican Spanish as our Spanish of choice because it is where our Spanish speakers come from. If your population comes from a different part of Latin America (solely Puerto Rican or Guatemalan, and so on) I would think about which Spanish you want to use, but Mexican Spanish is well rounded and is understood throughout Spanish speaking communities.
Give yourself enough time.
Translation takes time and some texts come with complex words and structures which take time to transfer into another language. We try to give a direct translation from English into Spanish, but translating more academic terms takes time.
Should We/Shouldn't We
So didactic labels and titles... we usually don't translate those because they have meaning to the artist that could be lost in translation. We will ask them if they mind a translation of titles and go from there. We will do partial translation of didactic labels of the art medium if it is interesting or wasn't mentioned in the main exhibit text.
I've attached an example from one of our recent exhibits.
Hope this helps!
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Amelia Whitehead
Director of Collections and Exhibitions
International Museum of Art & Science
McAllen TX
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-08-2021 03:19 PM
From: Silvia Perea
Subject: TRANSLATIONS!
Hello!
We are working on a project to turn our museum into a bilingual institution, since 46% of our community identifies as Spanish speaking.
Our resources are very limited and do not allow us to translate all of the didactics of our exhibitions, just our exhibitions' intro texts.
I am unsure about how this would be perceived, so we´ll be sending out a survey to gauge interest and reactions. Nonetheless, I'd appreciate to hear from those of you who are dealing with similar limitations.
Is a partial translation of didactics worth? What can we expect to hear from members of the Spanish-speaking community?
Thank you for your feedback,
Silvia Perea
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Silvia Perea, M.Arch, Ph.D.
Acting Director (she, her, ella)
Curator, Architecture and Design Collection
Art, Design & Architecture Museum
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-7130