German Title: Übersetzung, Sprache und Internationalisierung Die Rolle der Übersetzung im kulturellen und wirtschaftlichen Austausch zwischen Deutschland und Spanien

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PDF, Spanish - main document Download (5MB) | Lizenz: Traducción, lengua e internacionalización cultural y económica - La función de los servicios lingüísticos en los intercambios culturales y comerciales entre Alemania y España by Álvarez Mella, Héctor underlies the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0

Abstract

German-Spanish relations are currently creating new spaces for cultural and economic cooperation that open opportunities for exchange. The aim of this thesis is to describe the role of translation in the cultural and economic exchange between Germany and Spain and to examine which social factors influence the language strategies of the international actors. The methodological novelty of the study consists on exploring the function of translation from the perspective of internationalized companies: publishers and exporters. To this end, the research follows demolinguistics, economics and sociology methods, and develops an interdisciplinary framework that can be applied to the empirical study of translation in internationalization processes. From the perspective of cultural relations, the thesis analyzes translation flows in the book industry between Germany and Spain from 1979 to 2015. The empirical analysis shows that the translation flows during this period heavily depended on how publishers adapting their publishing strategies to the dynamics of both markets. In particular, translation served as a resource for publishers to a) accumulate cultural capital (publication of classics), b) to specialize their catalog in particular subject areas whose domestic book market does not meet demand, and c) to specialize their activities in foreign literature. From the perspective of international trade relations, the language patterns of Spanish firms exporting to Germany were analyzed on the basis of a remote questionnaire (N = 241). The results of the data analysis show that translation is a specialized activity mainly outsourced by companies that are either: large or multinational companies, at the initial phase of their activity abroad, and those whose activities are of a high communicative intensity. The case of study also shows that the main field of translation involves marketing material like descriptions of products to get better positioning in the new market, especially among small companies with low communication intensity. In cases of more complex products, marketing campaigns adapted to the needs of the new market were required and these are not usually outsourced to external translation agencies.