Services

Spanish-to-English translation

I bring your literary, cultural, or academic work to life in English because I have been translating work in the arts and humanities for eighteen years and specializing in texts about art, literature, gastronomy, history, music, film, etc. Known for my perceptive translations of contemporary authors, I am particularly informed about Mexico because I lived there for over two decades. I can also translate texts from or about early modern Spain and colonial Spanish America since I have studied this subject in graduate school. My clients describe my work as being both precise and creative. They know I won’t stop until I capture the text’s exact meaning and express it in a way that sounds natural in English.

Copyediting

There are different types of editing: developmental editing, copyediting, line editing, and proofreading. The first three types of editing happen before your work is typeset. Most authors need more than one round of editing before their work is ready to print.

Copyediting—heavy or light—involves the following:

monolingual or bilingual correction of spelling, grammar, syntax, capitalization, and punctuation
ensuring consistent use of terms
some fact-checking

Don’t worry. Your manuscript will be recognizable when it’s returned to you, but your voice will sing even more after I copyedit your manuscript. And you’ll have control over which suggested changes you accept through track changes.

Line editing

My monolingual and bilingual line editing does all the things copyediting does but also focuses on:

flow
conciseness
word use/avoiding repetition
comprehensibility
creating a style sheet

Even with these changes, which you ultimately approve or disapprove, your writing style will be preserved and your ideas will sparkle.

Proofreading

Proofreading often occurs after the type is set and the galleys are ready for their final proofing. It involves checking the spelling, grammar, and punctuation of your monolingual or bilingual text for the last time, but it also entails tweaking the typesetting to make it more aesthetically pleasing. I have particular skill in this area because I was trained as a typographer/typesetter before desktop publishing existed. This means I will correct items that many others miss, such as:

widows and orphans
stacks
rivers
double spaces
dreaded straight quotes
kerning
hyphenation

Employing these changes will assure your text is easily readable so your reader can focus on the content instead of what gets in the way of it.

Contract research on the early modern period

I can do the leg work of bibliographical and archival research—including virtual research—for your scholarly book or article about the early modern period. My areas of expertise are religion, literature, and gender—especially in Spain and Spanish America—and I am

well versed on the historical context of the time and critical theory in the humanities.

Transcription of early modern print books in English and Spanish

Through my own scholarly work, I have acquired experience in transcribing early modern print books, especially ones in Spanish. I also like working with PDFs of these books. One of my annotated transcriptions of a Peruvian nun’s seventeenth-century book in Spanish and Latin was recently published by Academia Editorial del Hispanismo in Spain.

FAQ