Translating news from the inner circle : imposing regularity across languages

This paper examines the effects of using certain translational strategies in the construction of news headlines in the Internet Spanish services of Anglophone news media, namely the BBC, the CNN and the Reuters Agency. The introduction presents a succint discussion of news headline structure, questioning Bell's view that it is fairly regular across languages (1991). Examples from Spanish and English media will establish differences and we will also compare them with the headlines produced in American Spanish news media as well as in other Romance languages. Then we will move to analyse the ways in which the translational processes have an effect on the informative and persuasive functions of news headlines with regards to the target laguage readership. We shall compare the headlines used in the BBC, the CNN and Reuters Internet services in both English and Spanish to establish the extent to which the informative function is truly achieved in the two versions. Finally, we will cover the semantic and ideological consequences forced upon the Spanish texts by the translators, and will attempt to provide an explanation for these deficiencies. We shall discuss whether the insights gained by linguistics on news discourse over the past decades have had an effect on the translational strategies used by these media or whether the two disciplines remain estranged from each other in this particular area.L'article estudia els efectes que té l'ús de certes estratègies de traducció en la redacció de titulars de notícies en els serveis d'Internet en espanyol dels mitjans de comunicació anglòfons, en concret la BBC, la CNN i l'Agència Reuters. La introducció presenta un breu comentari sobre l'estructura dels titulars de les notícies, que posa en dubte l'afirmació de Bell, segons la qual aquesta estructura és força regular en totes les llengües (1991). Mitjançant alguns exemples de mitjans de comunicació espanyols i anglesos mostrarem les diferències i també els compararem amb els titulars redactats en espanyol americà i en altres llengües romàniques. Seguidament analitzarem la manera com els processos de traducció tenen incidència en les funcions informativa i persuasiva dels titulars de notícies respecte als lectors en llengua meta. Compararem els titulars emprats en els serveis d'Internet de la BBC, la CNN i Reuters en anglès i en espanyol per determinar fins a quin punt s'aconsegueix realment la funció informativa en les dues versions. Finalment, abordarem les conseqüències semàntiques i ideològiques generades en els textos en espanyol pels traductors, i intentarem donar una explicació a aquestes deficiències. Analitzarem si els enfocaments que han creat els lingüistes del discurs periodístic en el decurs de les darreres dècades han tingut cap efecte en les estratègies de traducció emprades per aquests mitjans de comunicació o bé si aquestes dues disciplines es mantenen separades en aquest àmbit particular

Maurice: Translating the Controversy, a Comparative Study of the English Text and its Spanish Version

This article presents an overview of the literary controversy surrounding the publication of E. M. Forster’s so-called homosexual novel, Maurice, in 1971 and its subsequent publication in Spanish. Some critics published revisionist works in which his other novels were presented in the light of the revelations about Forster’s own homosexuality whereas others claimed that the novel shares some of the author’s major preoccupations as well as the literary themes and techniques present in all his narrative. Then we proceed to review some key concepts in Translation Studies necessary to carry out a comparative study of the text and the Spanish version: communicative translation, translators as cultural mediators, translation competence, factory translation. The study of the two texts covers three major areas: text level (including an analysis of grammatical features, lexicon, narrative style, conversational English), cultural level (studying key cultural concepts in the novel) and literary level (covering some of Forster’s key literary features, the notion of muddle, the anticipatory technique). We then proceed to study all these aspects at play in chapter 25, regarded as the turning point in the novel and as a key chapter both at discursive and literary levels. In the final section, we discuss the inadequacy of the choices made by the translators and the way in which they fail to offer the Spanish readership an adequate version both as regards the text per se and as part of Forster’s literary production, and we claim that it shares some of the characteristics of what Milton has called “factory translation.”Le présent article propose un panorama de la polémique littéraire suscitée par la publication, en 1971, du roman de E. M. Forster, Maurice, qualifié de roman homosexuel, ainsi que celle provoquée par sa traduction espagnole. Quelques critiques littéraires publièrent des travaux révisionnistes, dans lesquels les oeuvres antérieures de l’auteur étaient analysées d’après la nouvelle perspective offerte par l’homosexualité de Forster. D’autres affirmaient que Maurice partageait certains des principaux centres d’intérêt de l’auteur, en plus des thématiques et des techniques littéraires présentes dans toute son oeuvre narrative. Nous nous proposons donc d’analyser quelques concepts clés de la traductologie, que nous considérons fondamentaux pour entreprendre une étude comparative du texte original et de sa version espagnole : traduction communicative, traducteurs et médiateurs culturels, compétence en traduction, « traduction industrielle ». L’étude de ces deux textes recouvre trois aspects principaux : le plan du texte (qui inclut l’analyse des faits grammaticaux, le lexique, le style narratif, l’anglais conversationnel), le plan culturel (qui analyse les concepts culturels clés dans le roman) et le plan littéraire (recouvrant quelques-unes des caractéristiques littéraires de l’oeuvre de Forster, la notion de « désorientation », la technique de l’anticipation). Tous ces aspects sont analysés dans le chapitre 25, considéré non seulement comme le point tournant du roman mais aussi comme un texte essentiel tant du point de vue discursif que littéraire. Dans la dernière partie de notre travail, nous revisitons les choix inadéquats faits par les traducteurs ainsi que les raisons pour lesquelles les lecteurs espagnols n’ont pas accès à une version juste, tant sur le plan du texte en lui-même qu’en tant que fragment de l’oeuvre littéraire de Forster. Enfin, nous affirmons qu’il partage certaines des caractéristiques de ce que Milton a nommé « traduction industrielle »

An Appraisal of the Writing Tasks of Advanced Spanish Students of English as L2

The communicative approach has based its teaching techniques on the division of the process of learning languages as L2 into four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. The importance attached to the spoken word has benefited the latter two at the expense of the reading and writing skills, which fell in a state of semi-oblivion. Course writers of the 1990’s have re-introduced the printed word as a fundamental part of the learning process, since foreign students will be required, sooner or later, to understand a written text or write an application or a letter. ELT specialists have also become interested in the written word and, thus, new books on the subject have recently been published while older ones have been revised and updated. This article aims at examining the importance of including the written skill in our syllabuses (from the evidence that correcting our students’s compositions provide) and at suggesting ways of making our students aware of the need to improve their writing tasks

THE ROLE OF DICTATIONS IN THE DETECTION OF STUDENT´S ERRORS.

In this article we concentrate on the use of dictations in the classroom as a means of detecting and classifiing students ' errors. This will enable feachers of English to concentrate on those aspects of the language which their students have greater difficult to assimilare. Dictations obviously show the learners' phonetic defficiencies, but they can also be a good method fo list syntactic or semantic mistakes. The article includes a detailed analysis of four different texts, two of them used with third year philology students and two of then with fourth year students.En esre trabajo se analiza un ejercicio tradicional en la enseñanza de lenguas segundas, el dictado, que a raíz de la implantación del enfoque comunicativo en los años 1970 y 1980 había sido desterrado del aula. Sin embargo, el dictado puede ser fuenfe de información valiosa para llevar a  cabo un análisis de las necesidades del alumno, ya que los errores cometidos en la realizacón de dictados reflejan deficiencias fonéricas, morfológicas, sintácficas y semánticas que los alumnos deben subsanar en el futuro para alcanzar un dominio global de la lengua. A ello hay que añadir el hecho de que este ejercicio nos permite comprobar fehacientemente la diferencia entre las expectativas del docente en la selección de textos y los errores que realmente cometen sus alumnos

On the presence of Scaurus puncticollis Solier, 1838 (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) in Qatar

As part of the biodiversity surveys conducted by the Department of Biodiversity at the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), we can report the presence of Scaurus puncticollis Solier, 1838 in Qatar, and confirm the first record for the tribe Scaurini Billberg, 1820 in the country. We found two living specimens and remains of a third one distributed over the year (February, April and October) in three different locations of the Al Rayyan Municipality in Qatar. These findings reveal that the fauna of darkling beetles of Qatar is, despite previous efforts, still underestimated. To document and report the actual Biodiversity Heritage of Qatar, new exhaustive field biodiversity surveys should be conducted to complete the catalogue of Tenebrionoidae for the State of Qatar.Peer Reviewe

¿Qué ha quedado del alma árabe en España?

Copia digital. Valladolid : Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Cultura y Turismo, 2009-201

Complex hybridization patterns in European pond turtles (Emys orbicularis) in the Pyrenean Region

Hybrid zones are natural laboratories allowing insights in genetic processes like lineage diversification, speciation and introgression. Using large sampling, 15 microsatellite loci and a mitochondrial marker, we examined the Pyrenean contact zone of three pond turtle taxa (Emys orbicularis orbicularis, E. o. galloitalica, E. o. occidentalis). The Pyrenees are a biogeographically important region separating many lineages endemic to the Iberian Peninsula from their Western European counterparts. We discovered limited admixture, reflecting a complex biogeographic scenario. Simulations using Approximate Bayesian Computing supported that E. o. orbicularis invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the Holocene, circumventing the Pyrenees along the Mediterranean coast, and hybridized in the northern peninsula with the local coastal subspecies galloitalica, and to a lesser extent, with occidentalis. While E. o. occidentalis, and in particular E. o. orbicularis, expanded their ranges considerably during Holocene warming, E. o. galloitalica remained largely confined to its former Iberian refuge. Admixture among the three taxa is surprisingly low, and a future taxonomic investigation that includes the unstudied subspecies of E. orbicularis from North Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia has to determine whether their current status properly reflects their evolutionary divergence or whether certain taxa should be regarded as full species

Contribution of citizen science to improve knowledge on marine biodiversity in the Gulf Region

Monitoring marine biodiversity is costly and practical solutions have to be implemented to identify species and their preferred habitats, particularly in this era of rapid global change. Citizen science has proven to be effective and with high potential for monitoring efforts, and has been extensively applied to biodiversity. We have used the citizen science approach to engage the general public and stakeholders to contribute improving the current knowledge of sea snake biodiversity in Qatar and the Gulf Region. Logistic regression analysis using demographic data from interview surveys conducted in Qatar has indicated that the people having seen more sea snakes are older than 30 years and are Qatari citizens and/or fishermen from India. Of the ten species of sea snakes listed in the literature to be present in the Gulf Region, most of them have been reported for Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. However, the number of species present is often assumed based on their occurrence within the Arabian Gulf rather than on actual captures and appropriate identification. The creation of marine reference biological scientific collections to properly identify the species and make accurate biodiversity inventories is an urgent priority for the countries in the Gulf region. To this end, contributions by stakeholders and the general public for this study have proven to be very useful. However a larger networking with local and international scientists and stakeholders is still needed to adequately survey the country''s current biodiversity, identify research priorities and eventually provide the scientific input needed to assist biodiversity management related to renewable resource management and marine conservation in the Arabian Gulf Region

Challenges in confirming eradication success of invasive red-eared sliders

12 páginas, 4 figuras, 3 tablasConfirming eradication success can be notoriously difficult and costly, especially when the species is still present but remains undetected, due to very low population densities and imperfect detection methods. There has been a lack of research on appropriate guidelines and estimation procedures for declaring eradication success for programs aimed at eradicating alien reptiles. Here we develop quantitative rules for confirmation monitoring in eradication campaigns of the red-eared slider turtle (Trachemys scripta elegans). We used a database of slider trapping data from control and eradication campaigns conducted in localities across the Iberian Peninsula and southern France to construct models for inferring appropriate trapping efforts for confirming slider turtle eradication. Basking traps were slightly more efficient than net traps in capturing sliders, although trapping was an inefficient monitoring method given the low capture probabilities estimated. The results of our spatially-explicit eradication scenarios revealed the importance of habitat configuration in declaring eradication success. Declaration of eradication success is contingent on the thresholds set to minimise false positives (i.e., falsely declaring eradication successful), but in any scenario large trapping efforts were required to confirm eradication. Given the low estimated capture probabilities, alternative methods such as eDNA and visual surveys should be considered for monitoring sliders. We suggest that if the costs associated with the impact of alien sliders can be adequately estimated, then eradication can be confirmed by rules minimising both false positive and negative error rates. Otherwise., rules minimising false positive errors would be more appropriate.This research was conducted thanks to the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources Invasive Plants and Animals Research Project When to stop: Defining rules for surveillance of red-eared slider turtles (Victoria State Government, Australia).Peer reviewe