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- Volume 30, Issue, 2017
Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 30, Issue 2, 2017
Volume 30, Issue 2, 2017
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The invisibility of the translator in environmental translation
Author(s): Llum Bracho Lapiedra and Penny MacDonaldpp.: 440–464 (25)More LessThe question concerning the visibility of the translator has been widely discussed in translation studies from different ideological positions, especially during the so-called post-structuralism period. Unlike other types of translation such as audiovisual or literary translation, in the case of specialized translation the translator’s name rarely appears, as demonstrated in previous research, in which, from an ambidirectional corpus in Catalan of environmental texts, in only 16% of cases was the translator’s name made explicit ( Bracho, 2004 , p. 318). In the present article, therefore, we study a current sample with similar features to that of the original corpus, with the aim of analyzing its profile and determining the behaviour, in this sense, more than a decade after our previous conclusions.
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Researching the European Parliament with Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies
Author(s): María Calzada-Pérezpp.: 465–490 (26)More LessParliaments are important and complex institutions. However, they are notably under-researched within linguistics and related fields. This is certainly the case with the European Parliament (EP). Drawing both on Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) and prior, manual research on parliamentary communication, this paper proposes and applies an analytical protocol to examine EP speeches. Although these are disseminated in various forms and through dissimilar means (e.g., live at the EP; the audiovisual format via streaming or recorded videos; or published as parliamentary proceedings), here we focus on proceedings – one of the EP’s main sources of official representation. Following the EP’s (unique) practice, where official proceedings do not distinguish between original and translated speeches but consider all texts of equal (legal) status, this study delves into all speech production in English, without separating source and target texts. In the most orthodox of CADS traditions, analysis proceeds from micro and macro-levels of texts into the macro-context (unlike other academic approaches, in which it proceeds in the opposite direction). This direction forces us to move from tangible, specific data to the enveloping setting in which these data are exchanged.
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Analysis of the new examination process and German tests for sworn translators in Spain
Author(s): María Pilar Castillo Bernalpp.: 491–513 (23)More LessThe recent changes in the legislation on sworn translators and interpreters in Spain (Royal Decree 2002/2009, Order AEC/2125/2014) have brought about some modifications in the requisites and the access tests for this professional figure. Following the Resolution of 19 January 2015, new tests were conducted in 2015 in order to qualify translators and interpreters. This paper aims to analyze the new format of examination and the statistics of success of the candidates, with special focus on the German language. The current process shall also be compared to the now extinct academic process of qualification of sworn translators and interpreters in the framework of official translation degrees in Spain, in order to ascertain the most appropriate qualification method.
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Hybrid texts and their influence on the work carried out by specialized translators
Author(s): José Sergio Pajares Nievas and Elena Alcalde Peñalverpp.: 514–537 (24)More LessA genre can be defined as a conventionalized text form that has a specific function. Nevertheless, the complexity and uses given to texts have contributed to create new relations between genres, resulting in what we call hybrid texts. The traditional categorization that is commonly perceived as independent sections has to be analyzed and treated in a different way. In this study, we abandon this idea to show the importance of hybrid texts or genres and how these relations can determine the tasks and strategies followed by professional translators. In this case, we will focus on medical-legal texts, financial-legal texts and also other texts combining these three disciplines.
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The audio describer as a cultural mediator
Author(s): Raquel Sanz-Morenopp.: 538–558 (21)More LessAudio Description (AD) is a modality of audiovisual translation that consists of making cultural products accessible to people who are blind or partially-sighted. Our study focuses on the contrastive analysis of the AD of four films in English and Spanish, our objective being to determine how the same visual cultural reference is described in two languages and for two target cultures. Using a descriptive methodology, we categorise and analyse cultural references following Díaz Cintas and Remael’s (2007) classification and determine the translation strategies used. Our research shows that the decisions that the describer makes are conditioned by the distance, not only geographical but above all cultural, that exists between the audience and the culture that is reflected in the film. The describer becomes a mediator between cultures; that is why the greater the cultural distance, the higher their presence and involvement.
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Informational pamphlets for asylum seekers in English
Author(s): Cristina Toledo Báez and Claire Alexandra Conradpp.: 559–591 (33)More LessThe aim of our study is to examine the legal and administrative English used in the informational pamphlet the Spanish Ministry for Home Affairs created to explain Law 12/2009 to international protection applicants. To do so, a linguistic revision of the translated pamphlet was carried out in order to identify the linguistic and discursive elements which make comprehension difficult. Then, using translation techniques developed by Molina and Hurtado Albir (2002) , an intralinguistic translation was proposed with the goal of rewriting the text in easily-understandable English. Additionally, errors were classified and corrected in accordance with Toledo Báez’s ( 2010 , 2015 ) analytical assessment scale and the pamphlet’s design was updated. Lastly, the readability of both the original and simplified translations was evaluated using the Flesch Reading Ease Formula.
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Understanding and enhancing comprehensibility in texts for patients in an institutional health care context in Spain
Author(s): Isabel García-Izquierdo and Vicent Montaltpp.: 592–610 (19)More LessThis paper aims to analyse text comprehensibility in a corpus of Fact Sheets for Patients (FSPs) in Spanish as used in a real clinical and institutional setting in Spain; and to provide data and criteria that can help writers and translators to enhance text comprehensibility when dealing with FSPs. Regarding the methodology, we analysed a corpus of FSPs in Spanish in three subsequent stages: (1) readability formulae, (2) expert analysis, and (3) questionnaires and focus-groups addressing the real target readership of patients. Experts produced improved versions of two of the texts that were then compared and judged by the patients. According to the Inflesz/Word correlation we used in our analysis most texts of the corpus fall within normal difficulty values. However, the communication experts made critical comments about some of them regarding both readability and legibility and patients expressed the need for improvement of some aspects of the texts. This fact leads us to conclude that there is considerable room for improvement in FSPs in Spanish. Highly-sensitive patients and situations require the participation of real patients as readers in order to achieve the optimum degree of quality of originals and translations. Therefore, patients’ perceptions can be crucial to medical writers and translators when writing FSPs in a more comprehensible and empathetic way.
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The expression of emotion in institutionalized legal opinion
Author(s): María Ángeles Orts Llopispp.: 611–635 (25)More LessThe present work carries out a contrastive study of interpersonal devices between two corpora of legal opinion in English and Spanish, with a view to assessing the different use that is made in these languages of the indicators of emotion, evaluation and appreciation as to the ideational context of these texts. The antecedents of the present study are found in the Appraisal theory, which constitutes the interpretation of Halliday’s (1994/2004) Systemic-Functional Linguistics by the Sydney School. Through the analysis of an ad-hoc corpus of forty opinion columns from two prestigious and influential newspapers, El País and The New York Times, aims to understand how the use of the different evaluation resources advocated by Appraisal theory (Affect, Judgment and Appreciation) varies depending on the way legal opinion articles as genres are conceived in the languages and cultures under scrutiny. In other words, it tries to deepen into the different application of the prototypical rhetorical strategies used to express emotion and evaluation, through which the different ideological positions of the institutionalized press are naturalized.
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The multilingual university website (MUW) genre ecology
Author(s): Pilar Ezpeleta-Piorno and Anabel Borja Albipp.: 636–661 (26)More LessThis article analyzes the content of Spanish university websites and the processes involved in translating them, with the aim of identifying the challenges internationalisation poses for these institutions and the technical, organisational, and translation-related solutions that have been adopted for managing their multilingual content, particularly in the case of universities in autonomous communities with two official languages. It examines the communicative situation of the multilingual university website (MUW) genre by applying textual genre analysis, with special emphasis on translation and localisation processes. The empirical study of the macrostructures, multilingual content, and strategies used by each university to translate its website is articulated through the notion of a genre ecology, as a complex conglomerate of genres based on distributed cognition and shared authorship. The analysis shows that the processes involved in creating multilingual content require adopting comprehensive translation and localisation strategies, establishing sole decision-makers for translation management and quality control, and providing the necessary resources to ensure the multifunctionality, dynamicity, interactivity, and adaptability we have identified in monolingual university websites. Finally, we offer suggestions for improving the creation, management and control of multilingual content, and define the profiles of the specialized translators required for this type of institutional website.
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Metonymy and the way we speak
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