Functional-Communicative Grammar (Spanish-German) for Translators and/or Interpreters

In the present research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture we are working on the elaboration of a contrastive functional-communicative grammar (Spanish-German) for translators and/or interpreters on CD Rom which is considered a valuable working tool for this group.

It is well-known that one does not translate words and structures but tekst or discourse. In order to do so, the translator/interpreter must understand the communicative intention of the original tekst or discourse and reproduce it in the target tekst. That means, not only does he/she need a solid idiomatic knowledge (knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, phonology, suprasegmental and extralinguistic elements)in both languages but also a good knowledge of the expressive aspect of all these linguistic resources (i.e. which resources are used to express which function in what kind of situation or tekst and with what effect).

However, the existing grammar books do not help him/her in an effective way because none of them offer him/her easily accessible information about the resources (lexical, grammatical, phonological, orthographic, suprasegmental, extralinguistic) that exist in each language for the expression of specific functions (e.g. “make a request”), determined by the type of tekst or discourse and adding information about the frequency of use and the pragmatic connotations of each linguistic form.