Gallego Hernandez, D. (2012). Traduction Economica Y Corpus: Del Concepto a la Concordancia. Aplicacion Al Frances Y Al Espanol

Abstract

Gallego Hernandez, D. (2012). Traduccion economica y corpus: del concepto a la concordancia. Aplicacion al frances y al espanol. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante As its title would indicate, this volume addresses economic translation and the use of corpora from both a theoretical and conceptual approach, which the author Daniel Gallego illustrates with a number of examples applied to translation in the French-Spanish language pair. However, this book is far more ambitious and interesting than the title suggests at first glance, given its two main objectives and its potential usefulness for different types of readers. The first aim of the author is to lay the theoretical foundation for defining the concept of economic translation, understood as translation applied in the fields of economics, trade and finance. The second aim is to present a documentation model to use and create corpora in the practice of economic translation. The documentation methodology proposed by Dr Gallego is based on the use of Internet as a primary tool both to obtain information from textual resources (web as corpus), as demonstrated by the author in his doctoral thesis, and to compile such resources (web for corpus). To achieve his purpose, Gallego has structured the presentation of the results of his exhaustive research work into seven chapters, of which I will only present the most significant aspects. In the first chapter (1), the author considers diverse variables, realities and interpretations to analyse the concepts of economic translation and economic language, providing a framework to identify the parameters for defining these two notions. Of special interest is the concept of economic language--in a broad sense (through verbal statements on economics as a discipline and in its professional dimension) and also a more limited one--as well as the relationship of the many denominations and labels attributed to it (economic language/academic language and business language/professional languages) according to each communicative situation. In the second chapter (2) Gallego analyses in depth the different names used to refer to economic translation. To this end, he presents the relevant definitions considering the agents (socio-economic, commercial) and entities (organizations) involved in this type of translation. He concludes by providing two definitions of economic translation (one broad, the other more limited), opting for the former (the broad one) which he proceeds to address in a coherent manner in the next chapter covering the literature on economic translation. The author's analysis in the third chapter (3) of works related to economic translation in its broadest sense offers a bibliographic classification to characterise this activity and identify the problems involved in practising and training for it. The criteria used for this purpose include subject matter categories--such as economic terminology and its variants; the terminology creation process and its translation (cultural anisomorphism or intercultural asymmetry); the debate on the use of Anglicisms in economic translation; the use of metaphors (one of the most common features in economic and financial discourse)--and the methodological approach of several works. Chapter four (4) deals with the implications of using the Internet in the documentary process (sources and available resources) for the translation of economic texts. The nature of the primary documentary sources, classified by the author as linguistic, thematic and personal, determines the types of queries and tools according to the corresponding digital environment. Particularly interesting is the analysis of the use of parallel texts (as a thematic and linguistic documentary source), which is the basis of the work methodology proposed by the author, and the need to verify information due to the complementary nature of resources used depending on various factors. …