Contrastive study of translation techniques used in agri-food translation of food labelling: The product’s name (Spanish-French)

Abstract

Translation of labelling is an important step in the marketing of a productand, thus, the translator’s contribution to this process is extremely valuable. Despiteits appearance as a microtext, in the sense that it may appear to be a simple text,the reality is far more complex. There are a variety of characteristics of specialistdiscourse, both verbal and non-verbal, that make labelling a distinct textual genrein its own right, with a series of particularities not found in other specialized texts.Based on the idea underlying this reflection, we are led to question the challengesthat the specialized translator faces when translating food labels; in particular, wewill focus our attention on the product’s name. The purpose of this empirical studyis to identify the difficulties involved in translating the product’s name on food la-bels using real examples found on the market today. As part of this analysis, wefocus on the individualization of translation techniques, in order to provide thetranslator with a methodological framework. In this research paper, a corpus ofSpanish and French labels will be compiled, which will be used to obtain informa-tion about the translation techniques that have been used as well as to determine,based on observation, which are the most commonly applied, and which are mostappropriate. Due to all of the factors above, together with the lack of research inthis field to date, this study represents an innovative contribution to the scientificliterature on this area of specialization.