A Translation Manual for the Caribbean (English/Spanish)

An innovative, pedagogic, and completely bilingual translation manual has recently emerged from the West Indies. Based on material from the Caribbean only, it will especially appeal to translation teachers within the region. However, the many qualities of Craig and Sánchez's book makes it valuable for instructors from other areas as well.

Translation manuals generally focus on translation procedures or the contrastive analysis of grammatical structures (cf. Vinay & Darbelnet, 1958; Newmark, 1988; Hervey and Higgins, 1995; and Beeby Lonsdale, 1996) and place text examples at the end of the book, for example Vinay and Darbelnet (1958) and Newmark (1988). Craig and Sánchez, however, have chosen to organise their book so that students are introduced to translation terminology and strategies via something that they are already familiar with, in this case, different kinds of text types. The regional character of the manual, which may restrict its usage outside the Caribbean, is also explained by didactic reasons: the two translation teachers experienced that students' motivation rose when working with local material, which is unavailable in pre-existing manuals oriented for the North-American or European market. The structure also reflects the authors' intention of contributing “towards a greater mutual knowledge and understanding between the Anglophone and Hispanic territories” (p.3) in a region which is still strongly divided according to language, and where people do not know much of the customs and culture of their allophone neighbours.