Book Review of Éric Poirier and Daniel Gallego-Hernández’s Business and Institutional Translation: New Insights and Reflections | October 2018 | Translation Journal

October 2018 Issue

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Book Review of Éric Poirier and Daniel Gallego-Hernández’s Business and Institutional Translation: New Insights and Reflections

Amir Al-Azab

Lecturer of Translation Studies and Linguistics

 

Business and Institutional Translation: New Insights and Reflections is a unique publication that spotlights how businesses are dealing with the challenges of translating information and data across multiple languages. It tackles some sensitive issues in the translational arena: quality assurance, professionalism, competence criteria for market requirements, the standardization of translation and interpreting, and numerous other aspects of translation-mediated business communication. Furthermore, it sheds light on the methodologies and techniques behind business translation, and how these methodologies and their outcomes are assessed. In recent years scholars have been preoccupied with what could be termed other taxonomies of translation, such as the literary, legal, technical, and medical implications of moving between languages. Applying linguistics approaches to the domain of business communication is therefore something that has been previously ignored by both academics and linguists, and the book will therefore be of great interest to the student as much as to the experienced translator. It is, in other words, a cry and a call for increased scrutiny on the processes and practices of business and institutional translation.

It is well known that there is a global gap between academic scholarship and the professional translation industry. The challenge this book takes up is therefore one of the cross-fertilization of theory and practice; of showing how academic analyses can benefit ongoing discussions in industry about the challenges and pitfalls of institutional translation. Contrastive analysis in linguistics highlights the translational loss and its problematics – as information is translated across languages, meaning, tone, and context can be quickly lost. This book will certainly serve regional and international translation services by showing how to hatch newly born terminological norms that, in turn, foster and enable communication, collaboration, and mutual understanding.

As is known, translation lucrative market is growing fast in the age of globalization. Translation is the bridge between cultures and civilizations. The study of economic, business, financial and institutional translation expands day after day. Governments strive hard to provide accurate and accessible data. Institutions and corporations render in more than one language. Multinationals produce documents in multiple languages to expand the scope of their services worldwide, and large businesses also have to adopt a multilingual approach for accessing novel markets in new countries. Translation and interpreting training institutions are cognizant of the need for training in this area. This awareness is apparent in their curricula, which include subjects related to these areas of activity. Trainers and researchers are in other words increasingly concerned of knowing and researching the particulars and nuances of this type of translation.

All of these challenges are met in this book, the outcome of the 2016 International Conference on Economic, Business,Financial and Institutional Translation (ICEBFIT), which was inaugurated in 2014 byDaniel Gallego-Hernandez from the Universidad de Alicante. One of the most important attributes of this valuable book is that – in keeping with its topic – combines many languages together, featuring contributions in English, Spanish, French, and Arabic. In conclusion, the book touches upon the translational domain as for business and institutions that can be of interest to various readers. Via their expertise, Éric Poirier and Daniel Gallego-Hernández have managed to offer a coherent and well-structured landmark text on business and translation. This book will likely open a window of future research in the area, and it will also provide a guide to translation institutions and individual translators in an increasingly interconnected and fluid linguistic world.

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