The main objective of the research period spent in the Humanities and Information Technology (HIT) Center in Bergen, Norway, was to find computer tools which helped me to develop my investigation in Spain. This investigation is focused on translation and censorship, or the way censorship affected the translation of novels in English to Spanish under Franco's dictatorship.
This investigation itself is marked by a scientific way of research, as one of its essential characteristics is the creation of an empirical corpus from which hypothesis and theories are extracted. This corpus is formed by texts, original novels in English and their translations to Spanish. The corpus is the way not only to find regularities of translational behaviour, but also to contrast the possible hypothesis and ideas which have been found out. The corpus is a constant point of reference which allows us to research both in an inductive and deductive process, always under the scientific framework proposed by the Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) developed by scholars such as Gideon Toury or Theo Hermans.
As it has been said, the corpus is formed by original novels in English and their translations to Spanish. My PhD dissertation would never be possible without a certain number of these English-Spanish aligned texts and the comparative process from which translational behaviour regularities and tendencies will be discovered. In the HIT centre of Bergen, Norway, and under the supervision of Professor Koenraad de Smedt and Kristin Bech, and the collaboration of specialists such as Stig Johansson and Knut Hofland, I have found out a way to align texts which will be the engine of the last step of my research, the development of my PhD dissertation.
The “laboratory work” done in Bergen has represented for me a basic starting point for my personal process of learning and use of this alignment tool. In fact, I acquired a copy of the original novel in English The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, and one of its translations to Spanish whose title is El Viejo y el Mar. After a constant use of electronic devises such as photocopy machines, scanners, etc. I finally was ready to apply the alignment computer program created by the above mentioned Knut Hofland. The result was a complete success. The original version of The Old Man and the Sea was aligned sentence by sentence with El Viejo y el Mar.
As it has been said, the creation of my bilingual corpus has always been a decisive step in my investigation. For the presentation and development of my PhD dissertation it is essential to have aligned texts or portions of texts which have been analysed and which show how evident was the influence of censorship in translation of novels in the studied period.
Before travelling to Norway, one general question not only in my personal investigation, but in the whole Spanish project of research TRACE (Translation and Censorship) was this: if we analyse the influence of censorship in translation in translated novels English-Spanish, how many sentences, paragraphs, pages of the novel should be analysed? The ideal way to proceed would be to analyse the whole novel but… is there a way to align a whole novel with its translated versions in a fast and efficient way? These were the questions I brought to Bergen, Norway, and they both were answered in a quite positive way.
The main new finding has been this alignment program and the possibility of applying it to my personal research in Spain. The use of electronic and computer devises will help me to work in a more efficient and faster way. The manual alignment of a whole novel and its translations is a process which would have made me spend weeks of hard work. This would have involved the selection of parts or chapters of the novel to analyse in search of censorship in translation, maybe missing other parts of the novel which are especially relevant. Thanks to the alignment program of Knut Hofland I can align the whole novel and its translations, without missing one single word, and in no more than one week. This way, the heavier work is shortened and made by machines, letting me have a longer time to increase both the intensity and range of my research, and giving me the possibility to also increase its quality.
Output produced (new materials, databases, etc.)Another of the objectives of this travel was the interaction between the research projects of the university of Bergen and the university of León. This objective has also been fulfilled as it will be showed in points 3 and 4.
The use of the alignment program has been fruitful for me and for itself. In my case, I have acquired new knowledge about the technical work which will be done for my PhD dissertation. The alignment of The Old Man and the Sea with El Viejo y el Mar is not only the pilot text alignment of my thesis. It is real, and available for any kind of investigation concerning contrastive analysis, translational regularities or the alignment of texts. As a matter of fact, one presentation has been made about it (point 4). It is ready to be added to any database of contrastive studies English-Spanish.
Finally in this point, it must be said the way this experience has been fruitful for the alignment program and its development. Although it has already been used to create corpus of multilingual comparative and contrastive studies, it is not familiar with the pairs of languages English-Spanish. The alignment of this novel of Hemingway and its translation to Spanish has showed that a good alignment program is more and more perfect the more it is applied to new languages. Spanish has characteristics that this program still must learn to work with. For example, the use of question and exclamation marks at the beginning of the Spanish sentences: “¿” and “¡”.
The interaction between the university of Bergen and the university of León is evident again in the three seminars which took place in the period of research spent in Norway. In the first two seminars (Bergen, 13th September 2002 and Oslo, 14th November 2002) I was given the opportunity to talk about my investigation in Spain. They both were related to “Translation and censorship in Spain” and in them I talked about the influence of censorship in the translation of novels from English to Spanish in Franco's period.
The third and last seminar is celebrated in the University of Bergen and related to text alignment. In the 3rd of December 2002 I present the results of my first work in text alignment with The Old Man and the Sea – El Viejo y el Mar. I speak about difficulties, advantages and results found. This seminar, organised by Koenraad de Smedt includes presentations of several specialists, among them Professor Stig Johansson from the University of Oslo.
Among the objectives met in the initial application I remark the following ones: