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Silvia Gamero’s second edition of Traducción alemán-español: Aprendizaje activo de las destrezas básicas, constitutes a valuable volume for both teachers and apprentices interested in an active approach toward learning/teaching basic translation skills and strategies. Those who are already acquainted with the first edition of this book will discover some subtle changes – which we will comment in more detail below –, and they will also find that these do not substantially modify the structure or contents in comparison to the previous edition. Overall, this new edition of the book proves to be equally useful and original in its methodology, as can be seen in the following review.

Traducción alemán-español: Aprendizaje activo de las destrezas básicas[1] is included in the collection Universitas / Aprender a traducir, which is edited by both the Universitat Jaume I, and the Spanish publishing house, Edelsa. This collection is formed by a set of eminently practical handbooks (some of them still under preparation, and thus unpublished), whose main goal is to integrate a student-centered methodology and the task-based approach into the teaching/learning of translation, either for Spanish native speakers or for speakers of other languages who are interested in translating into Spanish. Each of these manuals is accompanied by a professor’s guide, which gives the professor (or the self-learner) some extra information, which is useful for fully exploiting the book’s resources.

The author, Silvia Gamero Pérez, has ample experience in researching and teaching translation at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and the Universitat Jaume I, and also has numerous publications on general and technical translation between Spanish/German. The design of the activities and the handbook as a whole reflects the experience of the author because it is clearly directed toward responding to specific didactic goals and classroom-workshop needs, and doesn’t get lost in abstract and theoretical problems.

The main objectives of the book are: to learn and improve basic translation skills and strategies, to promote the autonomy of learners and beginner translators, and to help them develop an automated routine of techniques for critically and effectively solving translation problems. All of these objectives are well met throughout the manual and the professor’s guide. It is important to emphasize that the readers will not find in the book any specific activities or training focused on specialized translation (e.g. technical, scientific, etc.). Instead – as we said before – the aim of the manual is to gradually build up a set of good basic translation habits. That point brings us to a fundamental question: Who will find this manual useful? The author claims that the public to which the book is addressed is composed of professors and instructors, translation students in universities (or modern language students who want to learn to translate), and Spanish-proficient self-learners with at least 300 hours of German language classes. With the exception of this last group – which could find some difficulties in completing some of the activities of the book without the appropriate guidance (or the opportunity to contrast and discuss their answers) – the professors and instructors will definitely find a valuable material for their classes and curriculum design. In addition, the university students will appreciate the step-by-step comprehensive approach found in TA-E. Finally, although TA-E is not intended for teaching German as a foreign language to Spanish speakers, it could be used for this purpose as a valuable complement due to its structure and content, which are grounded on the task-based approach.

In regards to the organization and structure of the manual, two main sections can be found: the first one (Part 1) is the core section of the book, and contains a set of didactic units which deal with methodological aspects of translation; the second one (Part 2 and Part 3) includes a set of exercises and reference information about contrastive aspects between Spanish and German languages. There is also a brief third section (Part 4 and Part 5), which proposes both printed and electronic reference works which complement the book’s content.

The first section of TA-E consists of twelve chapters, of which the first five are devoted to methodological aspects of translation (understanding the source text, developing a critical attitude toward the process of translation, use of dictionaries and other reference materials, the dynamic character of translation equivalences, and translation of cultural references), while the next seven chapters are focused on textual characteristics (from text typologies to considerations on the textual register and mode, the thematic field, and the textual tone). This section (Part 1) has a detailed Table of Contents at the beginning, which shows at a glimpse the functional contents of each unit, the materials that are going to be used, and the extra references that could prove to be useful to complement the study on the topic. Each chapter in Part 1 is basically structured in the same way: there is at least one source text in German, on which the activities in the chapter will be focused; these activities are well designed and – equally important – very well sequenced to lead to a final global translation task. The typology of exercises is varied and well-grounded in common difficulties for Spanish speakers when confronted with German texts. There are abundant error-detection, and error-correction exercises that do not stop with the simple detection of mistakes, but further reflect on the causes and the repetitive patterns of those errors. This strategy develops and raises the awareness of the apprentices to help them to avoid inaccuracies. The rest of the activities and exercises also follow this analytical approach, so the user (i.e. the apprentice) is conducted through a reflective sequence that concentrates on the processes of translation and not only on the final result. This is a valuable characteristic of TA-E, for it should aid to the training of critical translators who will be autonomous learners and to the developing of a set of good translation problem-solving habits. It is also worth noticing that the selected readings for each chapter are recent, interesting, and adequate for the university level. Compared to the first edition of the manual, two readings have changed (Chapter 8: Brandenburger Tor, Chapter 10: Gentechnik), and chapter five has been eliminated (but its contents have been redistributed in other chapters in this new edition). Each chapter ends with a succinct bibliography, useful for the students to increase their knowledge on the topic dealt with in that didactic unit.

Moving on to the second section (Part 2 and 3), TA-E deals with contrastive aspects between Spanish and German. It doesn’t limit itself to linguistic traits, but goes one step further to include differences in typographic conventions, cultural references, textual typologies, etc. Part 2 of the manual consists of a series of exercises to practice and reflect on these differences between the two languages. In addition to the advantage of the exercises’ ample scope (i.e. beyond linguistic features), many characteristics of the activities are worth praising: a) the exercises are usually well contextualized, thus avoiding mechanic repetition, and allowing a more meaningful learning; b) many needed strategies are activated by the apprentices in order to solve the exercises (e.g. adequate use of dictionaries and other reference resources); c) there are valuable exercises for translating cultural references, such as the ones with given phrases, sayings, and proverbs; and d) as in the first section of the manual, there are abundant error-detection and analysis exercises. If there is anything that should be criticized from this part, it would be the lack of contextualization of two specific activities: the one dealing with abbreviations, and the one dealing with place names and geographical features. Perhaps, these two exercises are the only ones that give the feeling of being mechanical and decontextualized; but again, maybe the intent of contextualization could restrict the comprehensiveness of the activity. Part 3 is the guide and complement to Part 2. It has the “theory” underlying the activities proposed in the previous part. Its subsections do not match exactly – but are perfectly compatible and understandable – with the ones in which the activities were organized. Part 3 of TA-E is divided into six chapters, each of which deals with a specific contrastive aspect: a) Typographic conventions; b) Vocabulary; c) Grammar; d) Coherence and cohesion; e) Cultural references; and f) Textual typologies. None of these subsections is exhaustive – of course –, given the goals and the extension of the reviewed manual. Nonetheless, the covered aspects are more than enough for a general translation introductory course, and there are no major topics that the reader could not find in the manual. In fact, one can find some extra useful material, such as contrastive lexical aspects between German and English, which is a very helpful resource given that most Spanish speakers (and translators) have German as their L3 after English, and there could be interferences between this pair of languages too.

Finally, the third broad section of the manual (Parts 4 and 5) proposes a collection of reference works concerning the topics covered in the book, and also a set of web sites where the reader can expand his/her knowledge of the German language and culture. These two sections are practically the same as the previous edition, but this fact does not demerit its usefulness.

The professor’s guide is a corrigé for all of the activities proposed in TA-E. The solutions proposed will certainly be helpful for self-learners, students in general, and professors and instructors, but this last group will find more value in the guide’s didactic instructions and suggestions. These are proposed as an aid for the tutors – during the learning process – to implement the handbook’s activities more effectively in the classroom or workshop. The guide’s suggestions are a good source for ideas to vary the class dynamics. Last of all, the professor’s guide also gives the user an extra bibliography (different from the one proposed in the manual) to complement each of the book’s topics and chapters.

On the whole, TA-E is a rigorously conceived and edited didactic handbook which belongs to the Spanish education tradition to move away from traditional teaching techniques to student and process-centered activities. This intends to foster the development of critical and autonomous apprentices, capable of adapting to real life tasks.

The author, Silvia Gamero Pérez, has devised a helpful and original tool – based on her scientific and classroom research, along with her teaching experience – which will prove to be handy for teachers because of the variety of well-designed materials that can be easily adapted, and brought to specific class situations. Also, students will find the coherent structure of the manual useful, and the convenient translation resources, skills, and strategies that they can obtain by working with it.