BDAFRICA: Design and implementation of a database of Postcolonial African literature published in Spain

Este trabajo demuestra que no existe un repositorio que incluya los autores poscoloniales africanos publicados hasta el momento en España y que permita, por ende, realizar estudios cuantitativos y cualitativos del impacto de esta literatura con la precisión deseable. Esto supone una carencia tanto para investigaciones académicas como para el sector editorial a la hora de analizar tendencias de selección y recepción en el mercado. Ante esta situación, el objetivo primordial de este trabajo es diseñar e implementar una base de datos, basada en MySQL y delimitada por unos parámetros muy concretos, que recoja todas las obras de autores africanos publicadas en castellano en España entre 1972 (año en que España se unió al sistema ISBN) y 2014. Tras determinar unos criterios de diseño y unos protocolos de compilación específcos, el desarrollo metodológico se ha dividido en cuatro fases: recopilación, almacenamiento, tratamiento y difusión de los datos. Así, la base de datos BDÁFRICA consigue un doble objetivo: por un lado, proporciona a los investigadores datos fables en los que basar sus estudios y, por otro, permitiría ofrecer por primera vez datos estadísticos de la evolución de la publicación de obras de autores africanos en España en los últimos 42 años.English version of abstract: This paper evidences the absence of a repository or database that scompiles the publications of Postcolonial African writing in Spain, thus precluding comprehensive quantitative or qualitative studies on the impact of these works. This is a significant obstacle for both academic research and the book market, which up to now has been unable to analyse market selection and reception trends. To cater for this need, the aim of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of a relational database, based on MySQL and set up using specific and accurate parameters, that includes all the literary works penned by African writers and published in Spain and in Spanish from 1972 (when Spain first joined the ISBN system) to 2014. After determining a number of specific design criteria and compilation protocols, the methodology has been divided into four steps: data collection, storage, statistical processing and online dissemination. Thus, the database BDAFRICA achieves a twofold objective: firstly, it provides researchers with unbiased data as a framework for their studies, and secondly, it offers unprecedented statistics on the evolution of the publication of African literature in Spain over the last 42 years.Published versio

The reception in Spain of African literature written in English: Statistical data generation using the specialised bibliographic database BDÁFRICA

El presente artículo examina la recepción de la literatura africana en lengua inglesa en España basándonos en BDÁFRICA, una base de datos bibliográfica que recoge obras de autores nacidos en África y publicadas en español y en España entre 1972 y 2014. Se ofrece una reflexión crítica de las dificultades para definir la literatura africana como objeto de estudio, debido a su complejidad y heterogeneidad. Se propone, además, un conciso recorrido historiográfico por la conformación del canon de dicha literatura que se ha realizado desde Occidente. Asimismo, se demuestra la falta de estudios estadísticos sobre la recepción de literatura africana en lengua inglesa en España. Respondiendo a esta necesidad, el objetivo del artículo es detallar y analizar los datos estadísticos inéditos que proporciona la base de datos, adoptando una metodología descriptiva. Los resultados de este estudio, que aporta datos cuantitativos y cualitativos fiables y novedosos, son originales en tanto en cuanto reflejan y señalan los problemas de la traducción de la literatura africana en lengua inglesa en España. BDÁFRICA, que es gratuita y está disponible en red, pretende ser un recurso y una fuente que estimule el desarrollo de la investigación en literatura poscolonial en España. Sin duda, esta base de datos bibliográfica especializada es una herramienta muy valiosa, especialmente para investigadores, traductores y editoriales interesados en literatura africana.English translation of abstract: This paper explores the reception in Spain of African literature written originally in English by focusing on BDÁFRICA, a bibliographical database of works of fiction by African-born authors published in Spain, in Spanish between 1972 and 2014. It provides a critical reflection on the constraints of defining the object of study when African literature is discussed, due to the complexity and heterogeneity of such literature. It also proposes a concise historiographical journey through the Western canon formation of African literature in English. Additionally, it evidences the lack of quantitative studies on the reception in Spain of African literature in English. To cater to this need, the aim of this paper is to report and analyse the groundbreaking statistical data the database itself provides by following a descriptive approach. The findings of this study, which provides reliable and unprecedented quantitative and qualitative data, are original in the sense that they map and highlight the problems of the reception of African literature in English, and translated in Spain. This shows BDÁFRICA, which is free and available online, as a primary (re)source for work to pave the way for the development of postcolonial literature research in Spain. This specialised bibliographical database is undoubtedly an invaluable tool, especially for researchers, translators and publishing houses interested in African literature.Published versio

Comparing post-editing difficulty of different machine translation errors in Spanish and German translations from English

Post-editing (PE) of Machine Translation (MT) is an increasingly popular way to integrate MT in the professional translation workflow, as it increases productivity and income. However, the quality of MT is not always good enough to blindly choose PE over translation from scratch. This article studies the PE of different error types and compares indicators of PE difficulty in English-to-Spanish and English-to-German translations. The results show that the indicators in question 1) do not correlate between each other for all error types, and 2) differ between languages

Inteliterm: in search of efficient terminology lookup tools for translators

©De Gruyter, 2020. Published in Studies on Multilingual Lexicography, edited by: María José Domínguez Vázquez, Mónica Mirazo Balsa and Carlos Valcárcel Riveiro, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110607659 For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions

Multi-word unit processing in Machine Translation

The correct interpretation of Multiword Units (MWUs) is crucial to many applications in Natural Language Processing but is a challenging and complex task. In recent years, the computational treatment of MWUs has received considerable attention but there is much more to be done before we can claim that NLP and Machine Translation (MT) systems process MWUs successfully. This volume provides a general overview of the field with particular reference to Machine Translation and Translation Technology and focuses on languages such as English, Basque, French, Romanian, German, Dutch and Croatian, among others. The chapters of the volume illustrate a variety of topics that address this challenge, such as the use of rule-based approaches, compound splitting techniques, MWU identification methodologies in multilingual applications, and MWU alignment issues