La traducción de términos de la ciencia y la técnica en la prensa española

Abstract

Although everything is improvable, it can be said that Spanish translators and conference interpreters have dictionaries, glossaries and data banks available to do their work satisfactorily thanks to publishers of technical dictionaries, terminology teams of International Organizations, the Real Academia Española and the Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. However, the situation is quite different in the press, the field of written language where all subjects of social interest are dealt with. The press is the main importer of loanwords, mostly unnecessary Anglicisms (of non-specialized fields but also of science and technology), and journalists make translation mistakes daily. Because of the considerable influence that journalists have on readers, the loanwords they use as well as their translation mistakes infiltrate the Spanish language. In this article, we analyse the situation in the translation of scientific and technological texts in the Spanish press and show examples of unnecessary loanwords as well as translation mistakes. We also include a brief glossary of 45 loanwords and translation mistakes in the military field.