Translator Guide for Spanish

“Story” is the key part in the word “history”, and our content should reflect that.

Make your text a pleasure to read.

You do not need to translate word for word, not even sentence per sentence. Languages are all different and use what works best for your own language. Do make sure that the meaning remains the same, though.

Language

• Check your spelling and grammar!
• Foreign terms must be italicised.
• When referring to places or people, always use the name most commonly known in Spanish: “London” should be “Londres”, “William the Conqueror” should be “Guillermo el Conquistador”.

Numbers, Dates & Measurements

• Numbers up to twelve should generally be written as words; numbers from 13 upwards should be written with digits.
• The English text uses BCE / CE for dates. Please use a.C./ d.C. in Spanish without a space in between.
• If you are translating an article on ancient history, every single date must have the equivalent of a BCE or CE following it. From 500 CE onwards, it is no longer necessary to specify the era.
• When writing numbers, the punctuation works the other way around from English. For example “5,000” should be translated as “5.000”, while “8.2” should be “8,2”. Do not punctuate the years in the given dates, so “1250 BCE” should be “1250 a.C.”.
• All measurements must be in the unit system used in your culture. You can keep the imperial units in brackets so as to cater for Spanish speakers living in the U.S.A., for example.
• Centuries are always written in Roman numerals: siglo X, siglo VIII.

Common issues when translating into Spanish

• Capital letters
  • The use of capital letters is much more common in English than in Spanish. In Spanish, we do not use capital letters on the following occasions:
    • Religious, political, philosophical, artistic tendencies (e. g. Buddhism → budismo, Communism → comunismo)
    • Languages, nationalities (e. g. The English people speak English → Los ingleses hablan inglés)
    • Titles, positions (e. g. Cardinal Newman → cardenal Newman, Prince Charles → príncipe Carlos, Librarian of Trinity College → bibliotecario de Trinity College)
    • Eponyms (e. g. Homeric → homérico, Victorian Era → era victoriana)
    • Days of the week and months (e. g. Monday → lunes, February → febrero)
  • Here there are quite a few other examples especially related to history.
  • You are expected to check this or any other reliable source when in doubt.
• Passive voice
  • Use active instead of passive constructions whenever possible as passive voice is less common in Spanish than in English. Bear in mind that a great resource to solve this issue is the impersonal form “se”. For example: The castle was built in the 12th century → El castillo se construyó en el siglo XII.
  • If there is mention of the agent, consider using the active voice. For example: The castle was built in the 12th century by the Normans. → Los normandos construyeron el castillo en el siglo XII.
• Gerunds
  • The Spanish gerund marks an action in progress which takes place before or at the same time as the main action. It is incorrect to use the gerund to mark an action that takes place after the main one.
  • For example: Most Mesopotamian states were either destroyed or weakened following the Bronze Age Collapse, leading to a brief "dark age". → La mayoría de los estados mesopotámicos se destruyeron o debilitaron tras el colapso de la Edad de Bronce, lo que dio lugar a una breve "edad oscura".

Images

• To insert the images into your translations, copy and paste the codes from the original definition and insert them in the same place. Do not translate them nor modify the codes in any way. Images are usually inserted automatically but not videos. Please check if the original text has a video in it and copy and paste the video code into your translation.
• Please check the text under the images within the translation. It has been automatically translated. If it needs changing, please do so. You will find the images translation boxes underneath the main translation box.

Biographies

• Please translate your biography into your own language and check if the original author’s biography has already been translated. The boxes are on the right of the picture translation boxes. Your biography should be no more than 255 characters.

Questions & Answers

• Some articles have a section at the end with questions and answers. This is part of your task and you should translate those as well.

Formatting

Please respect the same paragraphs as in the original text.

• Headings
  • Use “Heading 3” for subheadings: highlight the text and click on Heading 3 in the drop down menu.
• Big quotes (in red)
  • To create a big quote, write the big quote text as a separate paragraph before the paragraph where it should be inserted.
  • Highlight it and click on BIG QUOTE in the drop down menu
  • Big quotes will automatically capitalize all letters in the text. Simply type the text using normal capitalization.
• Quotations
  • Use the quote function of the online text editor, without any quotation marks for longer quotes.
  • The name of the person quoted should be included within the quotation block, in brackets.
• Other
  • Book titles should always be italicised. If there is a translation, use that. If there isn't, then keep the original title in italics and then add your translation in Spanish between brackets in regular letters. Same goes for film titles (in this case, if the translation differs between countries, which is very common, go with the most widely-used version).
  • For quotations within the text, we use the angular quotation marks: «» (Alt+ 0171, 0187)
  • Please, do not add footnotes nor extra information. The original article has been edited to match WHE standards.
  • Abbreviations: some articles still have abbreviations for some terms. In order to get the audio version to read it correctly, please write the terms out:
    • c. «circa» > en torno a
    • r. «reigned» > que reinó de
    • d. «died» > muerto/a en
    • l. «lived» > en este caso no ponemos nada
    • fl. «flourished» > floreció, perduró, prosperó…

Booking a translation

To avoid having two translators working on the same translation, please book your translation. Here is how to do it.

• Do as if you wanted to submit a translation.
  • Put WIP in the title (this is what I see in the pending queue), and WIP in the text box.
  • Accept the conditions and submit.
• It will go straight into the pending queue (with WIP as a title). When your translation is complete:
  • Paste it in the text box, format it (if you can).
  • Remove WIP in the text box and in the title box.
  • Put the correct title.
  • Accept the conditions and submit.
• When I see the title I understand it is ready to be edited!

AI Policy

AI can be a useful tool for drafting an initial translation, helping to speed up the proccess and provide a solid starting point. However, machine-generated text cannot fully capture nuance, tone, cultural context, or stylistic flow. For this reason, every AI-assisted translation must be carefully reviewed, amended, and improved by a competent translator. To maintain quality and credibility, no translation produced entirely by AI, without human supervision, may be published on the website. WHE Editors may use AI tools to check and confirm the meaning of some translations is accurate and as faithful to the original as possible.

Please bear in mind that if a booked translation has been left untouched for three consecutive months, it will be automatically deleted. Our pending queue is sometimes a nightmare due to abandoned translations. So, make sure you show some kind of progress on a regular basis. Thank you!