Qian Zhongshu parla de traducció

La majoria dels estudis sobre la vida i l'obra de Qian Zhongshu se centra exclusivament en les seves tres grans obres monogràfiques, L'art de la poesia, El tractat del tub i el punxó i Weicheng. En l'entorn cultural xinès, tanmateix, també es publiquen periòdicament articles sobre altres textos en què l'autor ha plasmat els seus pensaments al llarg de la seva vida. Un dels camps en què Qian Zhongshu es va mostrar més actiu, a part del de la literatura comparada, és el dels estudis sobre la traducció. El present article pretén omplir un buit en l'entorn acadèmic euroamericà aplegant les reflexions de Qian Zhongshu entorn de l'art de traduir, unes aportacions que, tot i que s'hagin difós de manera disgregada en textos diversos, permeten considerar-lo un dels teòrics més destacats dels estudis sobre la traducció.Most of the studies on Qian Zhongshu's life and work focus exclusively on his three major monographic works, On the Art of Poetry, The Tube and Awl Chapters and Fortress Besieged. In the Chinese cultural setting, however, articles are regularly published about other texts in which the author has expressed his thoughts throughout his life. One of the fields in which Qian Zhongshu has been most active, besides the field of comparative literature, is the field of translation studies. This article attempts to fill a gap in the Euro-American academic environment, collecting the thoughts of Qian Zhongshu on the art of translation, a contribution which, although published in a series of separate texts, enables us to consider him one of the most significant theorists of translation studies

La traducció de la interculturalitat

La recerca que presenta aquesta tesi doctoral aporta un nou enfocament als elements implicats en la traducció. Els resultats desafien la tradicional distinció entre elements lingüístics i elements culturals, a través de l'estudi de l'obra Weicheng, de l'escriptor xinès Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998), i de les traduccions al castellà i a l'anglés. La globalitat cultural d'aquesta novel·la i la seva riquesa literària posen de manifest que la traducció és quelcom més que una simple eina de commutació lingüística.The research presented in this doctoral thesis provides a new approach to the elements involved in translation. The thesis challenges the common practice of distinguishing between linguistic and cultural elements through the study of Weicheng, a novel by the Chinese author Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998), and its translations into Spanish and English. The presence of cultural globalisation in the novel and its literary richness make it clear that translation is something more than a simple tool for linguistic commutation

Frozen orbits for scientific missions using rotating tethers

We derive a semi-analytic formulation that permits to study the long-term dynamics of fast-rotating inert tethers around planetary satellites. Since space tethers are extensive bodies they generate non-keplerian gravitational forces which depend solely on their mass geometry and attitude, that can be exploited for controlling science orbits. We conclude that rotating tethers modify the geometry of frozen orbits, allowing for lower eccentricity frozen orbits for a wide range of orbital inclination, where the length of the tether becomes a new parameter that the mission analyst may use to shape frozen orbits to tighter operational constraints

Example-driven meta-model development

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10270-013-0392-yThe intensive use of models in model-driven engineering (MDE) raises the need to develop meta-models with different aims, such as the construction of textual and visual modelling languages and the specification of source and target ends of model-to-model transformations. While domain experts have the knowledge about the concepts of the domain, they usually lack the skills to build meta-models. Moreover, meta-models typically need to be tailored according to their future usage and specific implementation platform, which demands knowledge available only to engineers with great expertise in specific MDE platforms. These issues hinder a wider adoption of MDE both by domain experts and software engineers. In order to alleviate this situation, we propose an interactive, iterative approach to meta-model construction, enabling the specification of example model fragments by domain experts, with the possibility of using informal drawing tools like Dia or yED. These fragments can be annotated with hints about the intention or needs for certain elements. A meta-model is then automatically induced, which can be refactored in an interactive way, and then compiled into an implementation meta-model using profiles and patterns for different platforms and purposes. Our approach includes the use of a virtual assistant, which provides suggestions for improving the meta-model based on well-known refactorings, and a validation mode, enabling the validation of the meta-model by means of examples.This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity with project “Go Lite” (TIN2011-24139), and by the R&D programme of Madrid Region with project “eMadrid” (S2009/TIC-1650)

Reusable abstractions for modeling languages

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Information Systems. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Information Systems, 38, 8, (2013) DOI: 10.1016/j.is.2013.06.001Model-driven engineering proposes the use of models to describe the relevant aspects of the system to be built and synthesize the final application from them. Models are normally described using Domain-Specific Modeling Languages (DSMLs), which provide primitives and constructs of the domain. Still, the increasing complexity of systems has raised the need for abstraction techniques able to produce simpler versions of the models while retaining some properties of interest. The problem is that developing such abstractions for each DSML from scratch is time and resource consuming. In this paper, our goal is reducing the effort to provide modeling languages with abstraction mechanisms. For this purpose, we have devised some techniques, based on generic programming and domain-specific meta-modeling, to define generic abstraction operations that can be reused over families of modeling languages sharing certain characteristics. Abstractions can make use of clustering algorithms as similarity criteria for model elements. These algorithms can be made generic as well, and customized for particular languages by means of annotation models. As a result, we have developed a catalog of reusable abstractions using the proposed techniques, together with a working implementation in the MetaDepth multi-level meta-modeling tool. Our techniques and prototypes demonstrate that it is feasible to build reusable and adaptable abstractions, so that similar abstractions need not be developed from scratch, and their integration in new or existing modeling languages is less costly.Work funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity with project “Go Lite” (TIN2011-24139), and the R&D programme of Madrid Region with project “eMadrid” (S2009/TIC-1650)