Interactive application in spanish sign language for a public transport environment

[ES] En este trabajo se presenta el diseño de una herramienta multimedia que traduce a la lengua de signos españolas los mensajes de avisos que puede proporcionar un sistema de megafonía. El objetivo del trabajo es proporcionar una herramienta que mejore la inclusión social de las personas con discapacidades auditivas. Con este propósito, se han seleccionado el entorno y los mensajes de audio habituales en un aeropuerto para desarrollar este proyecto piloto. Por último, los audios se han traducido a lengua de signos españolas sintetizando un avatar usando la técnica de animación de rotoscopía a partir de la grabación en vídeo de un traductor. Los resultados finales han sido evaluados por personas sordas.

Methodological proposal for elaboration of learning materials in sing language in university teaching

[EN] Hearing impairment may constitute a barrier for accessing to information and communication in public places. Since the oral communication forms the basis of the learning process, this problem becomes of particular relevance at schools and universities. To cope with this situation is not enough to provide a textual translation for people with hearing disabilities, society via educational authorities must facilitate alternatives that improve access to information and education to this collective. According to this reality, the possibility of having an alternative tool of communication based in the Spanish Sign Language (SSL) emerges as a contribution to help overcoming the communication obstacles that the students with this difficulty usually find.

The third language in English guidebooks and its translation into Spanish

[EN] This article focuses on a specific feature found in tourist guidebooks –the recurrent use of foreign expressions or “third language”. It presents the findings of a comparative analysis of a parallel corpus made up of twenty guidebooks: ten guidebooks originally written in English and their corresponding translated versions in Spanish, describing different countries and cities (all of them published by Lonely Planet), focusing on those chapters in which the writer includes practical information. The purpose of the study is to analyze the use of the third language in the English and Spanish versions and to determine and identify the translation strategies used by the translators to transfer these linguistic elements from one language to the other.

The implementation of effective dual-language programs

[EN]This research investigates the ways of implementing dual-language programs and the schools’ internal procedures of evaluating them. Previous studies have examined the effectiveness of bilingual programs (Genovesee et al. 2005; Howard et al. 2005; Krashen 2004). However, there is little still known about schools’ procedures that systematize the organizational aspect of such programs. The Mixed Methods Research (MMR) approach was applied in this study to analyze data collected through questionnaires, interviews, and case studies.