Managing formulaic expressions in Spanish-Italian interlinguistic mediation: an experiment with italian university students

Abstract

This paper deals with the treatment of conventional and ritualized expression in interlinguistic communication carried out throughout the mediation process from a contrastive perspective (Spanish-Italian). According to the theoretical postulates of Collados Aís and Fernández Sánchez (2001), we will carry out an analysis of this linguistic phenomenon. From a corpus of premade scripts focused on the didactics of Spanish-Italian liaison interpreting, we will address the contrastive problems related to the process of interlinguistic mediation and undertake a series of reflections on the performances of a group of third-year students of a degree course in Linguistic Mediation from the University of Messina (Italy). To perform a more systematic analysis, the performances were recorded and subsequently transcribed. From there, the comparison between Spanish and Italian was undertaken. Next, we will focus on the translation operations carried out by the students, and on the degree of correctness and communicative effectiveness. For the purposes of the study , a qualitative methodology as well as the action research have been adopted.