Papers by Elena Ruiz-Cortés
The interpreter and translator trainer, May 15, 2024
Legal translators are routinely faced with defective source texts in their professional practice ... more Legal translators are routinely faced with defective source texts in their professional practice while being expected to produce effective translations despite such quality issues. Given the high-quality expectations required in legal translation, we have brought this professional reality into the classroom by outlining a quality control activity to allow legal translation trainees to systematise how they deal with defective Spanish administrative source texts. The proposal includes two steps: a translatability assessment and a pre-editing stage of defective administrative source texts. After empirically testing our proposal in the classroom, our initial findings suggest that this approach not only assists trainees to factor in poor source text quality when translating, but also to produce better translations.
The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 2024
Legal translators are routinely faced with defective source texts in their professional practic... more Legal translators are routinely faced with defective source texts in their professional practice while being expected to produce effective translations despite such quality issues. Given the high-quality expectations required in legal translation, we have brought this professional reality into the classroom by outlining a quality control activity to allow legal translation trainees to systematise how they deal with defective Spanish administrative source texts. The proposal includes two steps: a translatability assessment and a pre-editing stage of defective administrative source texts. After empirically testing our proposal in the classroom, our initial findings suggest that this approach not only assists trainees to factor in poor source text quality when translating, but also to produce better translations.
Onomázein Revista de lingüística filología y traducción
Pedagogical approaches should allow translation trainees to recognize the factors that impact on ... more Pedagogical approaches should allow translation trainees to recognize the factors that impact on their decision-making. Nonetheless, the role of ideology has received scant attention when exploring translators’ decision-making in translator training. In this paper, framed within counterhegemonic legal translation (Favila-Alcalá, 2020), we advocate bringing ideology into the legal translation classroom by outlining a case study method to be used in the classroom. This method aims to assist trainees in unravelling the underlying ideology of the source texts and the parallel texts involved in the translation process and in evaluating the implications for their subsequent translation. It foregrounds that, if the texts involved in the translation process are not critically and systematically scrutinized in training contexts, trainees’ decision-making may be unconsciously influenced by the underlying ideology behind these texts.
Pedagogical approaches should allow translation trainees to recognize the factors that impact on ... more Pedagogical approaches should allow translation trainees to recognize the factors that impact on their decision-making. Nonetheless, the role of ideology has received scant attention when exploring translators' decision-making in translator training. In this paper, framed within counterhegemonic legal translation (Favila-Alcalá, 2020), we advocate bringing ideology into the legal translation classroom by outlining a case study method to be used in the classroom. This method aims to assist trainees in unravelling the underlying ideology of the source texts and the parallel texts involved in the translation process and in evaluating the implications for their subsequent translation. It foregrounds that, if the texts involved in the translation process are not critically and systematically scrutinized in training contexts, trainees' decision-making may be unconsciously influenced by the underlying ideology behind these texts.
Routledge eBooks, Oct 28, 2022
The language industry requires adaptive experts who are able to perform new roles and to provide ... more The language industry requires adaptive experts who are able to perform new roles and to provide new services. Here we discuss the introduction of one of these new services, the plain text design of source texts for the Public Administration; and we contend that translator skill sets equip them to implement this service. Then, after introducing the notion of plain text design, we outline a methodology that translators may use to implement this service to enhance administrative forms effectiveness before translating them. We then showcase the usefulness of this methodology. Our initial findings highlight the added value of human translator skills to provide this new service in the language industry.
The EU policy of language equality situates language at the core of the EU law-making process; ho... more The EU policy of language equality situates language at the core of the EU law-making process; however, the role of language in national law-making is often overlooked. Bearing this in mind, in our paper we seek to foreground the essential role that language plays in law-making both at the supranational and national levels in the EU context. To do so, we will unravel how language contributes to the production of EU directives and to their subsequent transposition into national law, and subsequently, we will use an EU directive and its transposition into British law to showcase how language impacts on the implementation of these instruments. Our findings show that language is not a mere tool in supranational and national law-making, but a vital part of it that needs to be considered to understand not only how law-making works, but more importantly, which factors may or may not contribute to a subsequent correct transposition. Cite as: Ruiz-Cortes , JLL 8 (2019): 34–49, DOI: 10.14762/...
Estudios de Traducción, 2020
Revista de Llengua i Dret - Journal of Language and Law, 2020
El fet que l'aplicació del dret de la UE condueixi a pràctiques desiguals a tots els estats m... more El fet que l'aplicació del dret de la UE condueixi a pràctiques desiguals a tots els estats membres dóna lloc a debats acalorats en la literatura. La investigació tendeix a centrar-se en com les limitacions del procés legislatiu de la UE que contribueixen a una amenaçadora harmonització a la pràctica; tanmateix, sovint es passen per alt les restriccions del procés de transposició. Per salvar aquesta bretxa, aquí explorem els factors nacionals i supranacionals que poden amenaçar l'harmonització, mitjançant un enfocament jurídic i lingüístic que revela la superposició entre els significats jurídics i lingüístics del dret de la UE. En particular, basant-nos en les nocions de Robertson de "punts de vista horitzontals i verticals" (Robertson, 2012a), fem una anàlisi jurídica i lingüística horitzontal de l'article 3 (2) de les versions espanyola i anglesa de la Directiva 2004/38 / CE sobre llibertat de moviment i residència, i una anàlisi jurídica i lingüística verti...
Revista de Llengua i Dret - Journal of Language and Law, 2019
Uno de los primeros contactos que un migrante tiene con la sociedad de acogida es a través de su ... more Uno de los primeros contactos que un migrante tiene con la sociedad de acogida es a través de su Administración, dada la necesidad de que adquiera la documentación administrativa necesaria para acreditar su residencia. En estos procedimientos administrativos los ciudadanos se encuentran ante una doble dificultad: las barreras lingüísticas existentes y la complejidad del proceso jurídico-administrativo al que se enfrentan. En este contexto, la tecnología puede jugar un papel fundamental para facilitar la comprensión del procedimiento a través de distintos recursos digitales, no obstante, su traducción será primordial si se pretende responder a las necesidades de una población inmigrante lingüística y culturalmente heterogénea. En esa línea, en esta investigación pretendemos explorar cómo se proporcionan los servicios de traducción en España y en el Reino Unido en un procedimiento de extranjería en concreto, el proceso de obtención de la tarjeta de residencia de familiar de ciudadano ...
Hikma, 2021
Digitally mediated communication in the public sector has changed how citizens and authorities co... more Digitally mediated communication in the public sector has changed how citizens and authorities communicate. Within this digital context, it has been identified that language problems may be an underlying cause of social exclusion for migrant groups (see Khorshed and Imran, 2015, p. 347), which seems to indicate that the lack of language proficiency in the host country’s language may give rise to new forms of digital divides in migratory contexts. Bearing this in mind, here we contend that, for migrants with language barriers, access to key digital services within the public sector can happen through translation provision, which may be used as a tool to digitally empower them. Thus, based on this logic, in this paper the digital empowerment (Mäkinen, 2006) of migrant communities is explored assessing to what extent the implementation of translation policy empowers migrants’ digital communication with the host country’ authorities within the public services. To this end, we will focus...
The International Journal of Translation and Interpreting Research, 2021
In this paper a pre-translation framework developed for public service translation is presented. ... more In this paper a pre-translation framework developed for public service translation is presented. The framework was developed from a sociological standpoint “whereby translation practice can be viewed in relation to people and institutions involved in it or affected by it” (Taibi & Ozolins, 2016, pp. 63-64) with the aim to provide contextualization and understanding that precedes the actual translation stage. After outlining the framework, its usefulness in obtaining key pre-translation information is showcased through an application form in the Spanish immigration context, i.e. an authentic public service text. Lastly, the paper shows how the information gathered based on the framework will assist in proposing an effective English translation of this application form in the future.
Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción, 2021
La necesidad de investigar los factores que influyen en el proceso de toma de decisiones en una t... more La necesidad de investigar los factores que influyen en el proceso de toma de decisiones en una traducción es recurrente en la literatura. En esta investigación abordamos uno de esos factores, la ideología presente en los textos, centrándonos en un estudio enmarcado en la traducción jurídica contrahegemónica. En este artículo demostramos que el análisis contrastivo crítico planteado puede ser una herramienta de reflexión útil para revelar la ideología que subyace al uso del léxico en los textos de esta especialidad, tanto del texto origen como de los textos paralelos consultados en búsqueda de equivalentes para la traducción. Centrándonos en el caso de los textos administrativos, abordamos un estudio de caso en el marco de un encargo de traducción real, y realizamos un análisis contrastivo crítico de dos solicitudes de extranjería análogas en España (texto origen) y en el Reino Unido (texto paralelo), empleando el modelo tridimensional de análisis crítico del discurso de Fairclough...
Hermēneus. Revista de traducción e interpretación
Hikma. Revista de Traducción., 2021
Digitally mediated communication in the public sector has changed how citizens and authorities co... more Digitally mediated communication in the public sector has changed how citizens and authorities communicate. Within this digital context, it has been identified that language problems may be an underlying cause of social exclusion for migrant groups (see Khorshed and Imran, 2015, p. 347), which seems to indicate that the lack of language proficiency in the host country’s language may give rise to new forms of digital divides in migratory contexts. Bearing this in mind, here we claim that, for migrants with language barriers, access to key digital services within the public sector can happen through translation provision, which may be used as a tool to digitally empower them. Thus, based on this logic, in this paper the digital empowerment (Mäkinen, 2006) of migrant communities is explored assessing to what extent the implementation of translation policy empowers migrants’ digital communication with the host country’ authorities within the public services. To this end, we will focus on a case study in which the methodological concept of domain will be used to investigate the translation policy implemented in the case of the digital communication between the Spanish Ministry for Inclusion, Social Security and Migration and migrants in two immigration procedures. Our initial findings suggest that the translation policy implemented by this Spanish Ministry results in diametrically opposed levels of migrants’ digital empowerment in our case study. Thus, arguably, even if translation policy could be used as a tool to digitally empower all migrants in our case study, it seems to be used as a tool to empower only some of them; the most powerful migrant communities.
In this paper a pre-translation framework developed for public service translation is presented. ... more In this paper a pre-translation framework developed for public service translation is presented. The framework was developed from a sociological standpoint "whereby translation practice can be viewed in relation to people and institutions involved in it or affected by it" (Taibi & Ozolins, 2016, pp. 63-64) with the aim to provide contextualization and understanding that precedes the actual translation stage. After outlining the framework, its usefulness in obtaining key pre-translation information is showcased through an application form in the Spanish immigration context, i.e. an authentic public service text. Lastly, the paper shows how the information gathered based on the framework will assist in proposing an effective English translation of this application form in the future.
La necesidad de investigar los factores que influyen en el proceso de toma de decisiones en una t... more La necesidad de investigar los factores que influyen en el proceso de toma de decisiones en una traducción es recurrente en la literatura. En esta investigación abordamos uno de esos factores, la ideología presente en los textos, centrándonos en un estudio enmarcado en la traducción jurídica contrahegemónica. En este artículo demostramos que el análisis contrastivo crítico planteado puede ser una herramienta de reflexión útil para revelar la ideología que subyace al uso del léxico en los textos de esta especialidad, tanto del texto origen como de los textos paralelos consultados en búsqueda de equivalentes para la traducción. Centrándonos en el caso de los textos administrativos, abordamos un estudio de caso en el marco de un encargo de traducción real, y realizamos un análisis contrastivo crítico de dos solicitudes de extranjería análogas en España (texto origen) y en el Reino Unido (texto paralelo), empleando el modelo tridimensional de análisis crítico del discurso de Fairclough. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que, en nuestro estudio de caso, los datos provistos por el análisis no solo favorecen la reflexión sobre cómo el poder y la dominación se reproducen en los textos analizados, sino también sobre cómo la elección de ciertas unidades léxicas en la traducción puede contribuir a la legitimación de la ideología dominante que subyace a ellas. Palabras clave: análisis contrastivo crítico; ideología; léxico; solicitudes de extranjería; textos administrativos; traducción jurídica contrahegemónica.
CULTUS the Journal of Intercultural Mediation and Communication, 2020
Translation services in migratory contexts have not been traditionally depicted as an advantage f... more Translation services in migratory contexts have not been traditionally depicted as an advantage for British society. In fact, the provision of such services in these contexts has been seen as a social and economic burden. In this paper, we aim to connect how the translation and migration narratives that have emerged in the UK over the years have impacted on the provision of translation by the ministerial department responsible for immigration in this country, i.e., the Home Office (HO). As a first stage of an on-going project, the methodological concept of domain is used to investigate the provision of translation services during EU immigration procedures at the HO from a descriptive standpoint. Here, we will examine to what extent translations are available at this key administrative stage at the outset of the migratory experience when migrants, with and without language barriers, need to communicate their narratives correctly in order to be granted EU residence documentation. Our initial findings suggest that both EU migration and translation narratives seem to have influenced an HO translation policy of non-translation, a policy that needs to be further addressed in the near future.
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, 2020
The fact that the application of EU law leads to uneven practices across the Member States gives ... more The fact that the application of EU law leads to uneven practices across the Member States gives rise to heated debates in the literature. Research tends to focus on how the constraints of the EU law-making process contribute to threatening harmonisation in practice; however, the constraints of the transposition process are often overlooked. To bridge this gap, here we will explore both the supranational and national factors that may threaten harmonisation, using a legal-linguistic approach that will reveal the overlap between the legal and linguistic meanings in EU law. In particular, drawing on Robertson's notions of "horizontal and vertical viewpoints" (Robertson, 2012a), we will perform a horizontal legal-linguistic analysis of Article 3(2) of the Spanish and English versions of Directive 2004/38/EC on freedom of movement and residence, and a vertical legal-linguistic analysis of said Article in both language versions and its transposition in Spain and in the UK. Our results suggest that, in our case-study, both EU law-making and transposition-related factors may influence EU harmonisation problems in practice; factors such as EU strategic ambiguity or indeterminacy, political negotiations and supranational and national drafting decisions.
International Journal of Language and Law (JLL), 2019
The EU policy of language equality situates language at the core of the EU law-making process ; h... more The EU policy of language equality situates language at the core of the EU law-making process ; however, the role of language in national law-making is often overlooked. Bearing this in mind, in our paper we seek to foreground the essential role that language plays in law-making both at the supranational and national levels in the EU context. To do so, we will unravel how language contributes to the production of EU directives and to their subsequent transposition into national law, and subsequently, we will use an EU directive and its transposition into British law to showcase how language impacts on the implementation of these instruments. Our findings show that language is not a mere tool in supranational and national law-making, but a vital part of it that needs to be considered to understand not only how law-making works, but more importantly, which factors may or may not contribute to a subsequent correct transposition.
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Papers by Elena Ruiz-Cortés