Munusal 2012 and a festive atmosphere

Last week was very exciting for me, both as a translator and as a balletomane.

But since they are very different issues, I'm going to divide the story into two blog posts, being this one the entry on translation.

You may have noticed that I haven't written anything here for long. Well, let me explain why:

Firstly, because just like every year in March, my faculty celebrated an entire week of festive events, like a Trivial competition, an Eurovision-like contest called 'TraDocVisión' and a costume contest among others.

I participated in many of them. I even played Christine Daaé from 'The Phantom of the Opera' in TraDocVisión. And this is the proof:

Yep, that's me, and I'm singing. I never thought this could ever, EVER happen.

Secondly, because as a translation student, I can ask for an internship period with an institution, such as the UN, the Spanish Police, the University of Salamanca and many others. I decided I wanted to work for the Model of the United Nations of the University of Salamanca, also known as MUNUSAL. So after two weeks receiving and translating texts, my colleague and I were asked if we would like to work as press translators during the actual conference. We said yes, even though we didn't really know how it worked.

For those of you who've never heard of MUNs, they are basically simulations of the United Nations system, with all the organs and their respective committee sessions. They are held in many cities around the world and this one is called MUNUSAL because it takes place at the University of Salamanca once a year.

So that's what I did last week. I was one of the five translators at The Globe, the Munusal News Network.

Basically our work consisted of translating all the articles written by the journalists at MUNUSAL, from English into Spanish. At the beginning the texts were all abstracts of the sessions, but at some point, the committees simulated a global crisis, so the whole situation became very exciting! We received lots of articles and press statements from many countries, we all got very stressed and we really had to work as a team in order to hand everything in on time! It was such an amazing experience!

I really loved translating in a "real" context with my four colleagues, meeting our editors in chief and all the nice people at MUNUSAL. I enjoyed all my time at the "office" -some days I was there from 9 am. until 6.30 pm.-, the coffee breaks, the hours we spent at the canteen, having lunch together along with the delegates and chairpersons.

So basically it was fun, fun, FUN! I can't wait to do something similar again!

Look! I even got a Translator Pass with my name on it!

That's all regarding the translation matter. The balletic part is yet to come... :)

Keep translating!

Nerea.