Curriculum / Track 02 · The Translator
Track 02 // The Translator

Semantic Mediation.

Master of Arts in Translation. The Romance languages — French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese — studied as one branching system, anchored by a thesis on Jorge Castañeda. Certified copyeditor; essayist on the architecture of words.

Module 02.1

02.1Academic Foundation

A Master of Arts in Translation from the CUNY Graduate Center, where the Romance languages were studied not as separate subjects but as a single branching system descended from Latin — each tongue a different settlement of the same grammar. Translation here is read as an act of structural analysis: taking a sentence apart in one language and rebuilding it, load-bearing, in another.

  • M.A. Translation — CUNY Graduate Center. Graduate study of French and Spanish, with the wider Romance family approached as a comparative system.
  • Thesis · Jorge Castañeda. Extended translation and critical study centered on the Mexican political scientist, foreign minister, and writer.
  • Immersion. The languages kept current in the places that keep them alive — Paris, Madrid, and Quebec.
M.A. CUNY Castañeda Thesis FR · ES Immersion
Module 02.2

02.2Financial & Multilingual Mediation

At JPMorganChase, translation moved from the seminar room to the floor of a global bank — financial documents rendered across French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, where a mistranslated clause is not a stylistic note but a liability. The work is mediation in the strict sense: standing between two parties and two grammars so that meaning, and money, arrive intact.

Specimen · One Line, Four Tongues FR · ES · IT · PT
EN · Source “The word carries the weight of its history.”
FR Le mot porte le poids de son histoire.
ES La palabra lleva el peso de su historia.
IT La parola porta il peso della sua storia.
PT A palavra carrega o peso da sua história.
Fig. 2.2 · parola → palabra → palavra — one Latin root, four settlements.
  • Financial Translation. Source material in French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese rendered for a global banking institution.
  • Four-Language Reach. Professional command of French and Spanish; working command of Italian and Portuguese.
JPMC FR · ES · IT · PT Financial Mediation
Module 02.3

02.3Editorial Practice

Where translation rebuilds a text across languages, copyediting tightens it within one. A certified copyeditor and proofreader through Edit Republic (2024), running an active editorial practice as Sherlock Editorial and holding membership in the field's two principal bodies — ACES, The Society for Editing, and the EFA, the Editorial Freelancers Association. The craft is the same instinct as the architecture: find the load the sentence is carrying, then remove everything that isn't.

Specimen · Copyedited Line Delete · Insert · Transpose

He reads the the whole sentence twice for clairty.

Fig. 2.3 · Result — “He reads the whole sentence twice for clarity.”
  • Edit Republic. Certified copyeditor & proofreader, 2024.
  • Sherlock Editorial. Active independent editorial practice across manuscripts and institutional copy.
  • ACES · EFA. Member of The Society for Editing and the Editorial Freelancers Association.
Edit Republic Sherlock Editorial ACES EFA
Module 02.4

02.4The Wording

An ongoing essay practice at The Wording on Substack — close readings of single words, following each one back through its languages to see what it still carries. Three pieces stand for the method.

§ 2 · On “Ago”
“Ironically, the only word where the perfective aspect is still functional but no longer serves as a verb is ago.”

The grammar of time. A study of the perfective aspect and its one quiet survivor — a verb that shed its verbhood and stayed on as the way English measures distance into the past.

§ 3 · On “Person”
“We seem to have come full circle with the word traveling through time from the theatre of ancient Greece to the current day theatre of the Internet.”

From the stage to the profile. Person begins as a theatrical mask and returns, centuries later, as the face we wear online — the same word, completing its circuit.

Etymology · The Word Travels PERSON
FROM THE STAGE TO THE SCREEN prósōpon GREEK · FACE, MASK phersu ETRUSCAN · MASKED FIGURE persōna LATIN · MASK IN THE PLAY persone OLD FRENCH · HUMAN BEING person ENGLISH · THE SELF @persona INTERNET · THE PROFILE full circle one root · many tongues
Fig. 2.4 · prósōpon → persōna → @persona — the mask returns as the profile.
§ 5 · Synthesis
“Language is a living architecture; it is the framework through which we perceive time, define our identities, and submit to or exercise governance.”

Where the tracks meet. The thesis that ties the repertoire together: words are structures we inhabit — the same engineering instinct that holds up a system, a sentence, or a self.

The Wording Substack Etymology Essays