Suau Jimenez, Francisca (2010). La traduccion especializada (en ingles y espanol en generos de economia y empresa). Madrid: Arco libros. Pages: 150. ISBN: 978-84-7635- 791-0 Translation books are a rare bird in the Spanish field of translation studies. It is surprising to notice that books devoted to translating specialized languages are not frequent and even less those dealing with the translation of business and economics texts, particularly when translation studies have been taught for decades in Spain and professional economics translations are commonplace. Economics translations, especially in the financial and commercial field, is one of the professional activities with the greatest amount of documents translated annually and one of the fundamental subjects in the several degrees and postgraduate courses on translation in Spain. Therefore, it is difficult to understand why there is such a scant number of handbooks about the theory and practice of this type of translation published in this country. A quick glance at the database BITRA (Bibliography on Interpretation and Translation), one of the more comprehensive and up to date sources referring to existing publications in these two areas in Spain, with more than 45.000 entries (https://aplicacionesua.cpd.ua.es/tra_int/usu/busc ar.asp), throws up only a dozen handbooks on economics translation, six of them in French, four in English, one in Italian and one in Spanish. The need for a larger number of publications (research works and teaching handbooks) therefore becomes clear, not only in Spanish but also in other languages, this is a need that the present book will to some extent satisfy. Essentially, La Traduccion Especializada is not a teaching handbook or a theoretical treatise in the strict sense of the word, since it combines and integrates both aspects in a splendid way. As a result, it caters for readers interested in specialized languages in general to researchers who deal with professional genres in economics and with teachers, translators or students working within this field of translation. Through a carefully laid out set of epistemological foundation, Francisca Suau Jimenez presents in her study about specialized translation in business and economics the principal disciplines related to an outstanding cross-disciplinary field: the theory of communicative genres initiated by Swales and Bhatia in the decades of 1980's and 1990's, Halliday's functional linguistics, Cabre's and Sager's work on lexicology and terminology, translational works by Nord, Hatim & Mason and Newmark, professional and academic languages by Alcaraz, Hyland and others, not forgetting studies about discourse and metadiscourse, business communication and teaching strategies, etc. In my view, nothing has been left aside, and every opinion from the author is duly contrasted and justified by all the different sources in the book. Besides, it is admirable that this theoretical background providing an overview of the most notable language studies in the second half of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st can be concentrated in a 150 page book. The reader never gets the impression of being overwhelmed by this conceptual display or missing the book's focus, which is that of the praxis or application of translation. This is achieved thanks to a precise explanatory style aided at all times by continuous clarifications and examples that are provided to lead the reader through the several ideas and concepts that sustain the author's narrative thread, which derive from a solid theoretical body. La Traduccion Especializada consists of an introduction and six chapters which can be grouped into two differentiated parts. The first one is made up of the three first chapters and deals with specialized translation from three distinct angles: business-economics translation, genre and register applied to specialized translation and finally, metadiscourse in translation. …
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Dec 22, 2020
Jorge Egea Hervás 
Open Access
