The Technical Catalogue and its Intervention Areas: a Bottom-up Approach for the Analysis of a Translation Brief

Abstract

The present piece of research aims at analyzing the intervention areas (IA, ZDI in Spanish) (Morón, 2010: 125) for translators of international trade texts, in our case: the product catalogue of a SME (small and medium enterprise). From a wide conception of economic (Gallego, 2012), commercial (Mayoral, 2006), or business (Suau, 1998) translation, and taking the text analysis model proposed by Nord (1991), this paper will present a bottom-up approach to the analysis and decision making process in translation, based on the main features of the text and the communicative situation in order to detail further decisions to be adopted by professional translators. Our view of translator’s “intervention”, far beyond epistemological or ideological approaches, is merely pragmatic, from a professional and didactic point of view. Trainers “intervene” in the process in order to activate trainees’ competences, they encourage students’ “intervention” (putting into practice knowledge, skills and abilities, of a strategic nature,  and responding to the communicative function of the act of translating), and they suggest a professional scenario of “intervention”, where professional translators’ implication and context interaction play a leading role.