Research groups

The research group focuses on studying translations from and to Spanish of technical and scientific texts relating to the natural sciences, medicine, physics, geography, explorations and ethnography. Special attention will be paid not only to terminological, traductological, micro and macrotextual aspect, but also to the sociocultural contexts in which the original texts were written and their translations made. The status of the translator will be closely scrutinised, since in the past this figure was not a professional but rather a specialist of the book subject, often engaged in a dialogic relationship with the author and a member of the European “Republic of Letters”. From the second half of the 17th century, the so-called “Republic of Letters” fostered bonds among scholars and researchers in diverse fields, who collaborated in the transfer of knowledge thanks to epistolary correspondence and the exchange of books and items to be studied. These connections, sometimes referred to as “weak bonds”, played a pivotal role in the circulation of knowledge within the European area: they formed a network independent of national boundaries and religious denomination, which contributed to build the European ideal of scientific collaboration. The research will be conducted both consulting archival collections and using digital resources such as lexicographical and terminological catalogues, databases, corpora, digitalised texts available on European and international platforms (e.g. Europeana and Google Books), digital libraries belonging to institutions, foundations etc. The research group aims at contributing to the preservation of texts by digitalising books that are not available on databases and electronic platforms yet; furthermore, the group plans to build conceptual maps with potential interactive developments in order to describe European networks created by the translations of Hispanic texts outside Spain and of texts from other languages to Spanish within Spanish speaking countries from the Modern Age to the beginning of the 20th century.