Translators and glossaries for bilingual literary books: a methodological proposal

ABSTRACT

Methodological approaches to glossary building have been proposed due to the increasing importance of glossaries in the specialized areas of technical and medical translation. However, there is little research with respect to glossaries made from the position of the translator in the field of literary translation. This article aims at filling this gap by focusing on glossary design for bilingual literary books, which are in high demand as part of foreign language learning, since no methodological framework has, to my knowledge, been designed in order to guide translators producing them. This research presents a proposal for how translators can tackle the task of glossary building which is based on a comparative corpus-driven study. I put forward for consideration the notion that glossaries may be practical tools for translators to improve their works, but findings also point to the need for caution to ensure glossaries respect the expressive force, connotation and register of source items given that bilingual literary books, and their glossaries, are aimed at readers wishing to improve their command of a foreign language while enjoying reading a literary classic. The final section of the work examines the limitations of the study and sets out future lines of investigation.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation
• glossaries
• bilingual literary books
• foreign language learning
• Mario Domínguez Parra
• Laura Salas Rodríguez

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For the purpose of this study we apply Mur’s (2003) translation strategy taxonomy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mónica Olivares Leyva

Mónica Olivares Leyva is a lecturer in English at the Department of Modern Philology of Alcalá University in Madrid, Spain and holds a PhD in Modern Languages, Literature and Translation. She is author of the book Graham Greene’s Narrative in Spain: Criticism, Translations and Censorship (1939–1975) (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015) and the journal article ‘Graham Greene’s The Living Room: An Uncomfortable Catholic Play in Franco’s Spain’ (Atlantis, 2018) which study Franco’s censorship on Graham Greene’s translations in twentieth-century Spain. Her research interests include censorship in translation and public-service translation and interpreting.