Use of Languages by Valencian Business-to-Consumer Service Companies in their Telematic Communications

This study analyses the languages used by companies in their telematic means (website, social media, etc.) in a specific geographical area, the Valencian Community (Spain), where two official languages (Catalan and Spanish) coexist and where there is a large influx of foreign tourists (mainly British). More specifically, the aim of the study is to understand the weight each language has in companies’ telematic communication. The theoretical approach used for the analysis is the centre-periphery model, which is used to analyse national identity and language. Different techniques (use of secondary sources, mystery shopping, content analysis and direct observation) have been used in the quantitative empirical study to obtain a statistically disaggregated data matrix. The results strongly emphasize the peripheral and marginal position of Catalan in this region, and, on an international scale, the resistance of Spanish, which clearly maintains its hegemonic position over English in the telematic communications of these companies.

Openings and Closings in Workplace Emails

Languages vary when it comes to linguistic manifestations of formal politeness, but what particularly marks professional email communication is the flexibility of the genre compared to traditional, formal business letters. This poses the question of how individual email writers navigate without clear standards and clearly prescribed formulae. This study focuses on the individual email writer and, specifically, opening salutations and closing valedictions in 927Norwegian workplace emails, followed by metapragmatic interviews with their senders. In an egalitarian society with few explicit linguistic manifestations of formal politeness, individual choices of formulations provide a rich source of data. Linguistic content analysis reveals a significant degree of consistency in each person’s individual use, which indicates that when there are no commonly held norms, people make their own rules. The interviewees are aware ofwhich openings and closings they prefer, but often not why. Further analysis of the data reveals that hierarchical social distance is not a motivational factor, but the intentions to be either personally close or professionally distant are. Both are regarded as viable options in formal workplace emails by their users. However, the informants’ perception of which linguistic items represent these motivations depends on individual preferences rather than on any establishedor institutionalised practises. The latter is not a uniquely Norwegian problem, but concerns email correspondents in general because of the flexibility innate to the email genre.

Content Analysis of Language-Sensitive Recruitment Influenced by Corporate Language Policy Using Topic Modeling

Language-sensitive recruitment is a language management tool frequently used by corporate organizations. However, its relationship with corporate policy is lacking; hence, this study aims to consider language-sensitive job advertisements from a computational text analysis perspective and explore the match (or mismatch) between language-sensitive recruitment (English, Japanese, or bilingual) and corporate language policy. This study uses corpus methods combined with topic modeling and text analysis to investigate the influence of corporate language policy on the textual practice of language-sensitive recruitment in a Japanese multinational corporation (MNC). This study finds a considerable discrepancy between recruitment needs and corporate language policy. It also finds that bilinguals still play a key role in crossing language boundaries 10 years post-mandate of the English language policy in this Japanese MNC. The study contributes to business language by exploring an additional scenario for linking language competency with actual recruitment needs. Thus, this study sheds light on the implementation of language-sensitive recruitment in a multilingual corporate context, affecting the communication patterns and recruitment tactics.

Distribución de las Funciones Retóricas de las Citas en los Apartados del Trabajo Fin de Máster Escrito en Español y en Inglés

This study correlates with a research study published in the journal Pragmalingüística, in which the contrastive use of the rhetorical functions of citations in master’s theses in Spanish and English was studied. The main objective pursued by this new research is to determine which rhetorical functions are used most frequently in the different parts of a master’s thesis and what these can accomplish in each part of the text. Following Petrić (2007), a computerized textual analysis of the rhetorical function of citation was used to study this phenomenon in a corpus of sixteen (16) theses of which eight (8) were written by American and eight (8) by Spanish postgraduates in their native language. With regards to cultural conventions, the results showed that when compared to native Spanish writers, the Americans students use the highest number of citations and write a relatively longer Introduction and Conclusion parts. The sets of functions are consonant with the rhetorical purpose of each part, which thus shows a close link between the citation and the structural organization of the academic text, despite the frequent use of Attribution (AT) in most parts of the thesis.

Language and Brand

The language used in a product or service has an extraordinary impact on the creation of its brand and on its online success. As localization is a key aspect of a globalized business, attention should be given to the localization of brand language to ensure global consistency. This study explores brand language localization problems in an online help corpus. Specifically, it analyzes the problems posed by the localization of brand names and terms in the pre-translation phase, following Nord’s pre-translation text analysis theory (2012). The main objective of the study is to understand the nature of identified brand language problems (professional purposes) and examine them (research purposes). The method implemented is a qualitative, interpretative analysis of a monolingual corpus in English comprising representative extracts from the Dropbox and Google Drive Online Help systems. The study is part of a wider research project exploring the concept of localization problems in online help localization.

Fostering Employability through Versatility within Specialisation in Medical Translation Education

The current increase of automation (Rodríguez 2017; Massey/Wieder 2018) and the emergence of new needs and forms of communication are triggering substantial changes in the translation profession, in the role of the translator and in translator education. Previous studies (Muñoz-Miquel 2014, 2016a, 2018) have shown the rich variety of tasks — beyond those traditionally considered — that medical translators perform in the workplace, including heterofunctional translation, editing, or community management. The ability to develop new skills and to adapt continuously to the changing needs of the market is one of the essential characteristics of the translator in the 21st century. That is why we consider it of critical importance that, together with specialisation, versatility is promoted in translator education. In this article, we explore the notion of versatility and propose a teaching strategy that incorporates it and can contribute to improving the employability of future translators. Specifically, we put forward some pedagogical proposals for the English-Spanish language combination that promote diversification of competences and tasks within a narrow specialisation — the medical and healthcare field — in order to provide (future) translators with the versatility necessary to respond to new demands and thus be more employable. Our approach is based on the results of surveys of professional medical translators on the tasks and roles they perform, as well as on our own teaching experience in a master’s degree programme in medical translation.

Translation and Interpreting as a Profession: Some Proposals to Boost Entrepreneurial Competence

Increasing automation and the emergence of new needs and forms of communication are triggering a redefinition of the role and work settings of translators and interpreters. For this reason, and with a view to enhancing employability, students need to be aware of the range of professional profiles they can pursue and the value they can bring to society. The aim of this paper is to put forward a series of teaching proposals aimed at promoting entrepreneurial competence. After presenting the results of an exploratory study of students’ views of the profession, it proposes some activities that are considered particularly useful for fostering entrepreneurial competences.

Galileo and the Enigma of -ic/-ical Adjectives: New Techniques to Meet Old Challenges

One of the challenges that non-native speakers are facing when writing in English is the use of the suffixes -ic and -ical in connection with a big number of adjectives. L2 learners, even at a high proficiency level, sometimes have doubts about the form they should use in a concrete context. Other times they are simply not aware that they have a problem. The article will look at the assistance they can get in traditional dictionaries as well as some of the new digital writing assistants. It will analyze and classify adjectives ending in -ic and -ical and try to detect some trends that may be relevant for learners at different levels. It will then propose a multidimensional solution that can be incorporated into a digital writing assistant. The proposal includes various types of assistance, even to writers who are not aware of any problem. It also has a pedagogical dimension that makes it particularly relevant to non-native learners of English.