Babel - Volume 55, Issue 4, 2009

Project) developed at the University of León (Spain) for identifying instances of low-quality rendering of grammatical features when translating from English into Spanish using translation universals. The analysis provides information about: i) the resources available (or absence thereof) in each of the languages to express a given meaning and their relative centrality; ii) the solutions favored by translators to bridge the cross-linguistic disparities and/or gaps; iii) the erroneous or non-existent uses and structures transferred from the source language into the target language. These results can be systematized in terms of simplification, interference, or unique grammatical features. Additional areas that can benefit from this type of research are translation practice, translator training and foreign language teaching (FLT).Assessing translation quality is generally seen as a difficult task because of the inadequacy of the tools available. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of a corpus-based contrastive methodology (ACTRES

All aspects of human life rely on the most important cognitive ability that man has been endowed with, namely, memory. Some cognitive tasks such as consecutive interpreting put high demands on this powerful ability to the effect that it needs special training to cope with those demands. The interpreter is required to perform a number of complex cognitive activities in order to transpose the original message from one socio-cultural environment into another. Unless his memory is able to perform well, his task will be adversely affected.In this paper, an attempt is made to suggest a number of steps that provide special training to novice interpreters with the aim of improving the performance of their memory. This is done in a preparatory training course that does not involve consecutive interpreting but working from and into the same language. If the instructor manages to help the trainee overcome memory problems in advance, he can smoothly introduce him to the process and strategies of consecutive interpretation proper. The steps suggested proceed over three phases: (1) attentive listening, meaningful analysis and visualizing, (2) anticipation and note-taking, and (3) rephrasing.


International medical meetings are nowadays one of the events most frequently held in Spain and one of the meetings that usually turn to interpreting services. Consequently, medical congresses offer an interesting field to conference interpreters, especially those whose linguistic combination is English-Spanish. As a matter of fact, English is currently the language par excellence of international medical community. Nevertheless in spite of all those possibilities, we detect a lack of research studies in the field of medical interpreting. For this reason we initiated a research study in this field whose main purpose is to know the opinions and perceptions of one of the actors most involved in the act of interpreting: doctors that attend frequently international medical meetings and that turn to interpreting services.This article aims at describing the most relevant results of our study with the ultimate goal of offering a general vision of the professional market situation of medical interpreting in Spain from the point of view of doctors.


The choice of the appropriate address pronoun is notoriously difficult in spoken and written communication. In French, there are two parallel address systems, with either unmarked T (tu) or V (vous). In Swedish, on the other hand, the T form du has been the general, usual form since the 1960s. In recent years, V (ni) has started to reappear, at least in service and business situations. The choice of the appropriate address pronoun may thus constitute a problem in French–Swedish translation. Process and product data were collected with 20 trainee translators and professional translators who were asked to translate a text or revise a draft translation respectively, while thinking aloud. The analysis of the Swedish target texts reveals both interindividual variation in the choice of the address pronoun, and intraindividual variation, with several participants showing inconsistent address use. Process data from the think-aloud protocols highlight the effort even experienced translators invest in finding the appropriate address pronoun.

Translation, like any other mechanism of text production, has the intrinsic potential of both producing and reinforcing a specific discourse. In spite of the never-ending debate about the discursive character of academic knowledge and Edward Said’s particular interpretation of Foucault in Orientalism, it is difficult to deny that for a long time many European universities have fostered some of the most important misconceptions about Arab culture(s). In this kind of academic discourse, translation plays a central role. Translated texts are one step further than those texts written about the other, for they are themselves the other (or at least a part of it).We are indebted to countless generations of scholars responsible for most translations from Arabic. Nevertheless, the time has come to ask ourselves some important questions. Which texts have been translated from Arabic by European scholars and why? Which criteria have been used to translate these texts instead of others? What has been the influence of these translations on the target culture? Which representations of Arab culture can we find in these translations and their paratexts (introductions, forewords, reviews, footnotes, etc.)?
 Arabic studies in Spain have been reviewed by J. T. Monroe, Manzanares de Cirre, López García, etc., yet none of them have approached directly the problem of translation or its implications for the construction of a specific canon. In Spain, this canon has been restricted to the Andalusian heritage for a long time (especially in the fields of history, philosophy, theology, sciences and poetry) and to some universal works, such as The Arabian Nights, and has only opened itself to other spheres of the Arab culture in the last decades.
 My aim in this paper is to present, from a critical perspective, some of the results of my analysis of a corpus of translations from Arabic — carried out by an eminent Spanish Arabist — and to use these results to understand how translation has helped to construct a specific academic discourse in Spain about Arab culture and particularly about al-Andalus.