Ecotranslation applied: Two Spanish translations of H. G. Wells "The Country of the Blind"

The birth of the ecological movement in the 1960s motivated the conception of a new branch of Translation Studies known as Ecotranslation. This scarcely known theoretical research framework sets off from two main notions: firstly, the representation of nature in literature and secondly, the importance of the different roles and interpretations that nature can be provided with in literary works. From these bases, the goal of our pilot study was to apply this new nature-centered approach to the translations of H. G. Wells’ short story The Country of the Blind, as rendered into Spanish by Íñigo Jáuregui (2014) and Alfonso Hernández Catá (1919). The acknowledgement that Ecotranslation derives from a general awareness towards nature, considering it as an intrinsic feature of humankind which simultaneously influences and is affected by human behavior, motivated the following analysis of the role that Wells attributed to it in his short story The Country Of The Blind, which evinced a strong correspondence between environment and society in the original text, where nature was shown to be an essential instrument to figuratively reflect social concerns. Setting off from that critical analysis we compared how two chronologically separate translators rendered the natural elements of the original story into a different language, in this case Spanish. In general terms, data confirmed that Jauregi´s translation, published in 2014, encompasses a much more literal approach to the source text, rendering Well´s original terminology into the closest equivalent expressions in Spanish. While Hernández Catá, seems to have focused his work on the idea of human control over nature, even if this decision meant altering the precise way in which Wells articulated his ideas.

La organización de los juegos olímpicos como elemento de configuración de regímenes urbanos: Barcelona 1992 como estudio de caso

The games were an opportunity for Spain to show to the world as a modern, wealthy and democratic country of Western Europe, that successfully accomplished 15 years of political transition and dealt with identity issues. But the games also were a window of opportunity for the complete “reinvention” of Barcelona at all levels (political, economical, social and urbanistic) and laid the foundations for the development of the city in the next decades. This research argues that this process of “reinvention of the city” can be explained for three factors: 1) A policy coalition involving key economic and social actors under the leadership of Barcelona‟s Major, which led to a new urban regime. 2) An intergovernmental game that privileged the cooperation between the federal and urban government, as well as the international sports institutions 3) An understanding of the Olympic infrastructures not only as a guarantee for the success of the event, but as the starting point for a new model of urban and identity development regarding to the XXI siècle. The main objective of the research is to analyze the possible application of urban regime approach to different local government systems of the US by analyzing a case study, Barcelona...