Elaboration of specialised glossaries as a work placement for interpreting students: opportunities and pitfalls

Abstract

This paper describes a supervised work placement for final-year and recent graduates in interpret­ing comprising the drawing up of glossaries for use in a multi-cultural and multi-lingual project that used professional interpreting services on a regular basis. Thus, the students were given access to a considerable amount of documentation used in the meetings of a UN-led project for gender equality and the empowerment of women in Spain and Africa (the African-Spanish Women's Network for a Better World), from which to compile glossaries on a number of specific topics, including health, education and sexual and reproductiv rights. A brief description of the project will be followed by details of the work placement and examples of the glossary itself. Special atten­tion will be paid to the delimitation of what should be included and excluded, the students' and supervisors' perspectives in this regard, and examples of some cases in which cultural differences affected language use in speakers/users of the same language.