This volume, which includes fifteen contributions, seems implicitly to propose wide interpretation of the concept of “Specialised Translation,” embracing not only the translation of highly or moderately specialised texts belonging to specific fields of knowledge, but also that of literary texts. So the main emphasis is found in the first section “Translation of humanistic and literary texts” (nine essays), while other issues which could be held typical for specialised settings, such as terminological and text type-bound problems of translation are discussed only in some contributions in the second section.
The literary part begins with two essays on various forms of intertextuality, imitation and translation. Manuela Álvarez Jurado in her Une approche à l'adaptation littéraire d'un mythe (pp. 11-22) discusses the reception of the myth of Proserpine, especially of the late ancient version by Claudius Claudianus, in French and Spanish translations of the Renaissance, when the myth was adapted to time and culture. María Pilar Castillo Bernal presents Quellen, Intertextualitat und Übersetzung in Die Jüdin von Toledo von Lion Feuchtwanger (pp. 23-39), identifying the problems and/or options which arise for translators when an author has deliberately constructed intertextual relations to previous works or sources, especially when they belong to what for translation becomes the target culture.
The problems that arise when working on scholarly texts are treated by Ketevan Djachy (Les techniques de la traduction d'un ouvrage sur la TIT en géorgien, pp. 40-50) who presents a workshop report about the translation into Georgian of an important work on Translation Studies, Marianne Lederer’s La traduction aujourd’hui – modèle interprétatif. Djachy explains the necessity of adding paratextual comments that help the reader to better understand the thoughts of the author.
Returning to literary translation, the volume offers two detailed and precise case studies. A pragmatic-cognitive approach to thought representation in fiction: Verbal tense and aspect in literary translation by María del Mar Rivas Carmona (pp. 51-65) analyses the Spanish translation of Doris Lessing’s The Summer before the dark (1973), discussing the use of tense and aspect for specific literary purposes and the translation problems resulting from differences in verbal systems. Linguistic and cultural analysis of the techniques for translating phraseological elements in the English version of Pantaleón y las visitadoras by María Luisa Rodríguez Muñoz (pp. 66-84) is a study on the problematic reception in the United States of a work by Mario Vargas Llosa (1973).
Translatability and Untranslatability - a Contest of Approaches by Claudio Salmeri (pp. 85-92) offers a short, manual style overview of the positions translation theorists have taken with regard to translatability.
Again on specific aspects of literary translation is the contribution Die Übersetzung ins Spanische der Phraseologismen im Roman „Drei Männer im Schnee” von Erich Kästner: ein didaktischer Beitrag by Carola Strohschen (pp. 93-112), who underlines the importance of phraseological knowledge for literary translation competence. Stylistic aspects of translation are treated in The Cali of Cthulhu: H. P. Lovecraft and the Translation of Horror Literature by Robert Szymyślik (pp. 113-126), while Juan de Dios Torralbo Caballero presents Jane Barker's alternative gynocentric world: Political activism, personal reflection and religious overtones in her literary discourse (pp. 127-143), a study which is not on translation, but on political aspects of literary activity.
The first two papers of the section on “Translation in other specialised contexts” focus on terminology and phraseology. Míriam Buendía Castro and Pamela Faber (EcoLexicon, une nouvelle version plus proche des besoins des traducteurs, pp. 144-152) present the structure of a multilingual and visual online thesaurus of environmental science that includes a semantic categorisation and phraseological units. Natalia María Campos Martín (Particularités terminologiques du contrat de mandat et sa traduction à l'espagnol, pp. 153-166) discusses a legal text type, i.e. the contract of mandate, its structure and typical terminology.
Censorship of film titles in the Western genre: Data from the TRACEciO catalogue by María del Carmen Camus-Camus (pp. 167-182) offers a detailed study of the transformations of film titles during the Franco regime in Spain, pointing out that titles were rarely changed, and if they were, it was mostly due to political circumstances.
The following two papers deal with didactic concerns in the light of the use of new technologies. Didaktische Implikationen unter Einbezug der Computerlinguistik und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Übersetzung Deutsch-Spanisch by Carmen-Cayetana Castro Moreno (pp. 183-194) provides reflections on the theoretical foundations and practice of foreign language and literature e-learning. New Technologies and Interpretation Training by Aurora Ruiz Mezcua (pp. 195-203) presents interesting considerations on history, the current situation and further development of the didactics of interpreting.
The last contribution is Translation in the European Parliament: The mood system in EP opinions and final reports (EN/FR/ES) by María Azahara Veroz González (pp. 204-217), who analyses a characteristic text type from a functional point of view.
The value of most available collective volumes on translations lies in the variety of themes and approaches that may represent the often-cited multifacetedness of translation and Translation Studies. As for this book, even if I noticed a certain prevalence of literary contributions and of articles on translating into Spanish, there is a great methodological and cultural variety and most appreciable is the presence of several contributions in French and German. Most of the essays offer valuable new insights even to advanced translation researchers.
Taken as a whole, the volume, in my opinion, risks failing in the editors’ ambitious objective which they declare at the beginning, that is “to cover all areas which are of interest to researchers, students and professional translators and interpreters” (p. 7, my emphasis). Among other areas, there is nothing about some of the vibrant and professionally relevant fields such as technical, medical or economic translation. Nevertheless, I invite JoSTrans readers to take advantage of the rest.
Karl Gerhard Hempel
Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy
E-mail: gerhard.hempel@unisalento.it