I think most of you have already seen my final project for dm4change, but just in case, I wanted to post it just in case. Specially for you, Lynn! Please let me know whatever you think I should work on or improve.
I am really happy I got to do this as my project, I’d been thinking about for a long time but never tried until now so, thank you!
Here it is:Â http://martinoprada.wordpress.com/
Thinking about my portfolio, I remembered that not long ago, I used to do some video editing and producing for my research group. One of our projects was the creation of a on-line TV show made by and for translators for the on-line UvigoTV. These are the first two chapters, where I worked as an editor, producer, post-producer, camera and a little bit of everything. I hope you enjoy it. Chapters III and IV are ready and waiting to be published.
While working on my intersection project, I decided to include some fragments of the movies I translated for TV stations and movie companies in Spain. For some reason, I just thought that I could be lucky and find some on the internet. And look what I got, several fragments of one of my best and most difficult translations, the translation from English to Galician of the movie Heartbrake Ridge. And people uploaded them in youtube because they thought they were great translated! Oh yeah! I know you are going to laugh at Clint Eastwood speaking in Galician. Enjoy:
This is the video I came up with after writing a story and taking pictures of my glasses in the last DM4C class. I just wanted to use the pictures I got that day plus the voice recording and see what I could do. This is it. A story about my glasses.
I love the way the have played with words in order to show their meaning by telling this story (in Spanish, but it is worthy to watch).
Click here to see the introduction of our presentation.
I have been thinking for a while about my intersection project. I tried to think of a course where I could use the story-telling abilities I am learning, but it seems like translation students don’t get many chances to present stuff in class. So I decided to stick to my original idea, to add value to my professional experience. I would like to do that by bringing my CV to life, to go over the limits of words and show people what I have done as a teacher or as a translator or in any other jobs that I have had by using other kind of media, like images, audio and video. I would also like to go over the paper format and upload it on-line. It would also be great to develop a kind of a web-site where I could show my portfolio. I am not sure which tools I will need in order to reach my goal, so I guess I will need the DMC team help!
It is interesting what happened to me while writing this story. I wanted to talk about my experience as a teacher, because that year teaching in United States changed my life in many different ways. I was watching videos of my students, trying to elaborate a kind of a fun story about the experience, and I started thinking about their real stories, how difficult were things for some of them. And then the connection happened. Some days ago I had watched the story of Derrion Albert, a 15 year old student who was beaten to death by other kids in the streets of Chicago, where some of my kids used to live, and maybe they still do. I was shocked by that video, and I felt very sad when I saw it, haunted by a great sorrow, and I couldn’t help thinking about the two kids that were shot in my school the year I was a teacher in United States. The video of the death of Derrion Albert has been shown in many different TV stations, too many times, probably they shouldn’t have, but that is another question. I started thinking about that kid, about all those kids, and I felt mine weren’t too different from them. Many of them don’t have a future, and they grow up in a violent environment. And that made me feel fear, fear for them. Suddenly the videos I was watching, which I recorded in my class while we were having a food fest –I cooked for around 150 kids– became a horror movie for me. My initial idea changed completely, from a celebration to a nightmare. So I decided I wanted to show both sides of the story. How wonderful and fun these kids are, and how much they can learn and enjoy a class if someone cares enough about them. So I started my movie in a “horror-movie styleâ€, playing with the viewer’s expectations by ending up my short-movie with my students having fun and “taking control†of my Spanish class, showing how much they can learn and enjoy a class if someone cares enough about them. After that, I felt I also had to show you Derrion Albert’s story. But this one is not a movie, it’s real and it’s happening in one of the more developed countries in the world.
