The Translator

ISSN: 1355-6509 (Print) 1757-0409 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtrn20

Translators and glossaries for bilingual literary

books: a methodological proposal

Mónica Olivares Leyva

To cite this article: Mónica Olivares Leyva (2019): Translators and glossaries for bilingual literary
books: a methodological proposal, The Translator, DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2019.1650628

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2019.1650628

Published online: 18 Sep 2019.

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THE TRANSLATOR
https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2019.1650628

ARTICLE

Translators and glossaries for bilingual literary books: a

methodological proposal
Mónica Olivares Leyva
Department of Modern Philology, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Methodological approaches to glossary building have been pro- Translation; glossaries;
posed due to the increasing importance of glossaries in the spe- bilingual literary books;
cialized areas of technical and medical translation. However, there foreign language learning;
Mario Domínguez Parra;
is little research with respect to glossaries made from the position
Laura Salas Rodríguez
of the translator in the field of literary translation. This article aims
at filling this gap by focusing on glossary design for bilingual
literary books, which are in high demand as part of foreign lan-
guage learning, since no methodological framework has, to my
knowledge, been designed in order to guide translators producing
them. This research presents a proposal for how translators can
tackle the task of glossary building which is based on
a comparative corpus-driven study. I put forward for consideration
the notion that glossaries may be practical tools for translators to
improve their works, but findings also point to the need for
caution to ensure glossaries respect the expressive force, connota-
tion and register of source items given that bilingual literary
books, and their glossaries, are aimed at readers wishing to
improve their command of a foreign language while enjoying
reading a literary classic. The final section of the work examines
the limitations of the study and sets out future lines of
investigation.

Translating literary texts may be regarded as a complex task fraught with difficulty when
cultural differences between source texts (ST) and target texts (TT) are so great that it is
a challenge to find correspondence in translation. When the meaning of culture-specific
referents is likely to be clear for potential readers, translators often opt for using in-text
strategies such as target language cultural cognates and source language cultural and
linguistic borrowings.1 In contrast, when translators deem that their readers’ knowledge
and the information provided by the co-text is insufficient for them to infer meaning,
they can intervene by using the in-text strategies source language cultural borrowing plus
explanation and replacement of source language cultural reference by explanation. Even
after compensating cultural gaps within texts, translators may still be left with the doubt:
Could I have further enhanced the reception of the ST? In Sainero’s (2008) study of the
strategies translators can use when translating and interpreting English literature texts,
he recommends out-text strategies to recreate the essence of the background against

CONTACT Mónica Olivares Leyva monica.olivares@uah.es Department of Modern Philology, University of

Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid 28801, Spain
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 M. OLIVARES LEYVA

which the literary piece of work was configured. In particular, Sainero argues that
introductions, footnotes and glossaries can improve translations without altering the
text. Despite the advantages of out-text strategies for translators, as suggested by
Sainero and others, little is known about how translators tackle the task of designing
introductions, footnotes or glossaries. In particular, when focusing on glossary design as
a support tool for literary translators, a number of questions arise: What criteria do
translators apply for including words in a glossary? What factors influence glossary
design, either positively or negatively? Do translators use professional translation pro-
grammes to build effective glossaries for literary texts? Do all translators apply the same
methodological principles to glossary building? These questions illustrate the manifold
aspects which need to be explored to determine the extent to which a study on
glossaries can contribute to translation studies. This paper aims to answer the latter
question focusing on the methodology translators follow to create glossaries for bilin-
gual literary texts aimed at foreign language learners. The study is timely given the
current high demand for glossaries as supportive resources for readers learning foreign
languages through literature, bilingual literary books having become increasingly pop-
ular among learners who want to use their mother tongue as a back-up while acquiring
a better command of another language. Due to limitations of space, this research only
focuses on the methodological aspects of glossary design, since no methodological
framework has, as far as I am aware, been proposed to date to guide translators in
producing glossaries for bilingual books in the specialized area of literary translation.
Here I present a proposal based on the findings extracted from a corpus-driven study on
how translators tackle the task of glossary building and I identify the most common
strategies applied to glossary design in side-by-side bilingual literary books. The article
examines glossaries and their function as aids not only to acquiring foreign languages
but also to perceiving the subtleties of words in the service of a story, since both are
clearly interwoven with one another.

1. Literature background
Glossaries are now commonly found in a wide range of both professional and non-
professional contexts where they are used to clarify meaning among community mem-
bers–from universities creating glossaries of the terminology used in higher educational
settings for their students to those developed by companies in order to make com-
monly-agreed technical vocabulary available to all project participants and thus ensure
the quality of communication. Due to the important role glossaries are increasingly
playing in enhancing communication processes in our society, recent research into this
issue has been conducted to explore their benefits in various settings. For example, the
usefulness of glossaries was investigated by Westerhout and Monachesi (2008) in the
tertiary education context. Their study sought to ascertain whether glossaries generated
by a definition extractor–a computer technique to extract definitions and headwords in
learning materials–helped students to comprehend the central concepts being con-
veyed. They found that most participants did consider the glossary of terms produced
by this method to be a helpful resource to support their learning. The utility of glossaries
in promoting foreign language learning has also been explored. In this respect, Serrano
van der Laan (2009) presented a case study where teachers provided a group of
 THE TRANSLATOR 3

learners–predominantly native Italian speakers in their freshman year of a range of

engineering courses (86)–with thematic bilingual glossaries to learn the vocabulary
they needed to pass IELTS Academic at Band 5. However, the study revealed that the
participants did not use them as the lexicon-building tools they were intended to be:
‘they hardly studied the glossaries, and [. . .] if they did, it was in a very superficial and
unsystematic way’ (98). That said, in university settings that are integrating content and
language in higher education (ICLHE), research suggests that glossaries to help students
grasp the meaning of highly technical terms can be of value (Aguilar and Rodríguez
2012; Corrales, Paba Rey, and Santiago Escamilla 2016; Barrios, López-Gutiérrez, and
Lechuga 2016). For example, Barrios, López-Gutiérrez, and Lechuga (2016) designed an
innovative project where an online glossary gives language support to students on the
partially-taught programme in English which is part of the Bachelor’s Degree in Primary
Education at the University of Málaga. In the same vein, InLéctor (Oliver, Coll-Florit, and
Climent 2012) is another interesting project where readers of bilingual literary books
indicate their foreign language proficiency before reading the digitized literary work in
order to obtain a targeted glossary comprising the most difficult words of the text for
that level of language ability. On the whole, the studies and projects mentioned here
suggest that a glossary can be a useful instrument to help users with the meaning of
new words, particularly in contexts where people are learning a foreign language, or
where they are being taught a subject in a language that is not their mother tongue. As
such, the use of glossaries for bilingual literary texts should be further explored in order
to maximize their possibilities.
Glossaries are also gaining importance in the software engineering sector since the
lack of consistent use of technical terminology in this field presents challenges for
project stakeholders. A method has been developed by Kamthan (n.d.) which aims to
overcome the difficulties of creating glossaries in the field of software development. The
method consists of six stages–planning, eliciting terms, formulating definitions, repre-
senting and presenting, reviewing, and publishing–making the complexity of glossary
building evident. Kamthan’s approach demonstrates three principal ideas which need to
be taken into account for the construction of glossaries in software projects: i) the need
for consensus across all members as to what terms to include and what definitions to
use; ii) the importance of finding the most suitable glossary representations to help
users visualize terms and their definitions; and iii) the fact that the reviewing process
should be done externally, i.e. by individuals not involved in constructing the glossary.
Kamthan argues that this method of designing glossaries for software projects could be
applied to any other field.
Research in the field of translation studies suggests that glossaries are one of the
most practical solutions to the difficulties specialized translators face in finding the
appropriate terminology among the large virtual corpora offered on the Internet. For
this reason, new methodological approaches have been proposed to build efficient
glossaries by means of online software. In particular, electronic corpora-based studies
have been conducted to find out whether parallel concordance programmes are effec-
tive tools for building quality bilingual glossaries in the specialized fields of medicine
and technical translation. In this line, Tavares and Camargo (2007) demonstrated that
WordSmith Tools could be a useful virtual instrument for translators to develop
a specialized glossary of orthopaedic terms. In a similar vein, Seghiri (2017) argued
4 M. OLIVARES LEYVA

that glossaries are useful resources when translators’ virtual corpora do not meet their
needs in terms of translating specialized texts and they are thus compelled to build
‘their own’ qualitatively and quantitively representative corpus. Seghiri used the parallel
concordance programme ParaConc to extract a two-way bilingual glossary from TV user
manuals. In contrast, research into glossaries in the field of literary translation has not
focused so much on their usability to enable translators to do their work more effec-
tively, as in the specialized fields of medicine and technical translation mentioned
earlier, but rather as tools that translators can use to include information to further
assist readers in contextually understanding a translation. In this regard, Barnwell and
Blight (1996) and Blight (2005) claimed that the layout of the glossary should be care-
fully planned, as well as the amount of background information and linguistically
implicit information supplied. In the years following Barnwell and Blight’s focus on
how translators can design a glossary, attention moved to glossaries built by editors.
Medeiros (2016), for instance, focused on the current trend of Portuguese and Brazilian
publishing houses for adding a glossary in twenty-first century literary books by African
Portuguese-speaking writers, a convention which is not implemented in books pub-
lished in Brazil by Portuguese writers or those published in Portugal written in Brazilian
Portuguese. She suggests that this editorial policy is a ray of light in terms of the current
situation of the Portuguese language in the Lusophone world: such glossaries assisting
in ‘stabilizing the language both in Brazil and in Portugal, with the illusion that both
countries have the same language, as well as the illusion of language being constructed
in African countries that have Portuguese as an official language’ (86). In this respect, it
can be argued that a glossary is an instrument for making a text less obscure, as well as
a space where it is possible to observe the tensions and disputes in a language.
The evidence above demonstrates that glossaries are versatile tools that can be
adapted to a wide variety of research areas–education, software engineering, literature
and translation–and highlights the need for new studies to further explore their possi-
bilities and enhance their usability. The present study aims at contributing to filling this
gap through a methodological proposal for glossary building in the field of literary
translation to improve the reception of literary texts. In order to build our proposal,
a comparative study was conducted to identify strategies which are shared by different
translators in order to build glossaries for bilingual literary books designed for foreign
language readers.

2. Corpus of translations and glossaries

This study explored the nature of glossaries for bilingual literary books by focusing on
the bilingual book series of classical authors edited by Ara Llibres in 2013. Three Spanish
newspapers–El Periódico de Catalunya, El Mundo and El País – launched editions of the
series between 2013 and 2016 which differed in the number and variety of short stories,
as the series changed and increased over time. The different editions, however, show
three common features. First, the front-matter section comprises an introduction about
the author’s biography, works and historical context. Second, the body matter is made
up of the Spanish and English texts side by side so that readers can work simultaneously
in the two languages, decode unfamiliar meaning and explore the differences between
the languages. Third, certain words, expressions and idioms are highlighted in bold type
 THE TRANSLATOR 5

in the original version and collected, along with their translations, in a glossary on the
cover flap. Given that the series was advertised as a way for Spanish readers to further
improve their skills in the English language in an enjoyable way, it can be assumed that
the target audience was English Foreign Language (EFL) learners.
The present research examined the books edited by Ara Llibres in 2013 which
include unabridged short stories by renowned English and American authors. Three
translators contributed to the series: Álvaro Abella Villar translated two books, while
Laura Salas Rodríguez and Mario Domínguez Parra translated five books each. It is also
important to note that some books comprise more than one short story so that the
corpus of translations and glossaries of Álvaro Abella Villar comprises two stories, that of
Laura Salas Rodríguez includes seven short stories, and that of Mario Domínguez Parra
contains fourteen. Since I sought to conduct a comparative approach in order to obtain
reliable data on how different translators confront the task of glossary design, Abella
Villar’s corpus was excluded from the research due to its limited size in comparison to
the other two corpora. Once the corpus of translations and glossaries was established,
comparisons were drawn. Lastly, given that the research focuses on glossaries created
from the perspective of the translator, and the interrelationship they have with the ST
and TT the introductory part of each book was not taken into consideration as it made
no relevant contribution to the object of study.

3. Difficulties in the research

Four main inconsistencies were identified in the two corpora. Type 1 comprises glossary
items which are unmarked in the ST, while Type 2 consists of terms highlighted in bold
in the English version which are not included in the glossary. Domínguez Parra’s corpus
of Wilde’s ‘The Canterville Ghost’ exemplifies these two cases:

● Type 1: Haunted (7) ST: unmarked Glossary: included

● Type 2: Peal of thunder (53) ST: marked Glossary: excluded

Type 3 relates to items which are marked differently in the glossary and in the ST. This
inconsistency could cause comprehension problems for readers as there is considerable
difference in meaning between the source item and the glossary entry. This inconsistency
is seen in Chesterton’s ‘The Blue Cross’ when the author uses the simile ‘bull’s-eye lantern’
to describe a gas-lit window. As shown below, Domínguez Parra removes the specification
of it being a light source from the glossary by shortening the source term to ‘bull’s-eye’:

Example 1
ST: one bulging gas-lit window broke the blue twilight like a bull’s-eye lantern (29)
TT: una rebosante ventana, iluminada por una lámpara de gas, rompió el crepúsculo
azul como un farol de ojo de buey (28)
GLOSSARY: bull’s-eye: ventana de ojo de buey

The TT shows the equivalent target item farol de ojo de buey–the hand-held lantern used
in Victorian times–while the glossary presents a different meaning–ventana de ojo de
6 M. OLIVARES LEYVA

buey (bull’s-eye window)–which readers might be more familiar with as this circular
window is quite a common architectural feature.
Lastly, Type 4 refers to vocabulary that authors use with different meanings in the
same ST, but the translator only retrieves one meaning in the glossary. Wilde’s ‘The
Canterville Ghost’ also provides us with an example of this inconsistency modality:

Example 2
ST: he who was in the habit of removing the famous Canterville blood-stain (25)
TT: era él el que tenía el hábito de eliminar la famosa mancha de sangre de
Canterville (24)
GLOSSARY: habit: traje de montar

The TT gives the correctly translated term hábito meaning ‘habitual action’, but the
glossary shows traje de montar (riding dress). A closer look at the full English text reveals
why the translator includes this translation in the glossary: Wilde also uses ‘habit’ to
describe a riding dress. As shown below, ‘habit’ is found unmarked on a different page
and the meaning provided in the glossary coincides with the ST in this case:

Example 3
ST: where she tore her habit so badly (41)
TT: donde rompió su traje de montar (40)
GLOSSARY: habit: traje de montar

These four inconsistencies will be looked at again in the fifth section which is devoted to
my suggested methodological proposal in order to scrutinize the effect they may have
on readers’ views on glossary functionality.

4. Results and discussion

The similarities between the corpus of glossaries of Domínguez Parra (1710 entries) and
that of Salas Rodríguez (1440 entries) allow us to classify the two corpora into four main
categories. Glossaries can show entries with:

● the same meaning and signifier as in the TT

● the same meaning as in the TT, but with a different signifier
● a different meaning and signifier from that of the TT
● a source term which is untranslated in the TT

The next section analyses and discusses these points by offering examples extracted
from the corpora of the two translators.

4.1. Same meaning and signifier

The first group comprises 2762 entries–87.68% of the total. It is important to clarify that,
in some cases, a glossary entry may present the same word used in the translation but
 THE TRANSLATOR 7

using a different word class. For example, translators may use adjectival forms in their TT
while noun forms appear in glossaries.

4.2. Same meaning, different signifier

This category embraces glossary entries where both Domínguez Parra and Salas
Rodríguez add synonymous terms to those used in the TT. In doing so, the findings
show that they share five strategies that allow readers to make a reading of the ST which
is different from the TT. These are: historical distance, cultural distance, level of meaning,
level of formality, and level of expressiveness.

4.2.1. Historical distance

When Salas Rodríguez and Domínguez Parra deal with the dilemma of whether to bring
the past to the present (modernization) or to respect historical distance by foreground-
ing distance (archaization), their corpora show instances where they coincide in using
different signifiers in the translation and in the glossary. For example, historical distance
between the reader and the original version is kept in the translation, but shortened in
the glossary, as shown below in Salas Rodríguez’s translation of Doyle’s ‘The Adventure
of the Speckled Band’ (Example 4) and Domínguez Parra’s translation of Chesterton’s
‘The Blue Cross’ (Example 5):

Example 4
ST: In an instant his strange headgear began to move (59)
TT: Al momento, el extraño tocado comenzó a moverse (58)
GLOSSARY: headgear: banda

Example 5
ST: as soon as the shutters were taken down (19)
TT: tan pronto se quitaron los postigos (18)
GLOSSARY: shutters: persianas

While both translators respect the historical atmosphere by using tocado and postigos in
their translations in order that readers experience immediacy, they keep distance to
a minimum in the glossaries since they modernize the texts with banda (headband) and
persianas (blinds), thus separating readers from the past. All in all, these examples from
the two translators suggest that glossaries may be useful tools for translators to provide
EFL readers with alternative translations to the TT so as to familiarize them with more
present-day uses of the source terms.

4.2.2. Cultural distance

As far as cultural distance between ST and readers is concerned, the two corpora also
coincide in presenting examples where they deal with cultural translation problems in
the glossary rather than in the translation. To exemplify this, let’s first consider
Domínguez Parra’s translation of Woolf’s ‘A Haunted House’ when the author writes
about the house and says that the protagonist ‘found it dropped beneath the Downs’
(Example 6, 25). The translator uses the translation procedure SL cultural and linguistic
8 M. OLIVARES LEYVA

borrowing by selecting ‘Downs’ to refer to this culture-specific item: ‘la encontró derruida
bajo las Downs’ (24), despite the fact that EFL readers of Woolf may be unfamiliar with
this geographical name since it is especially used to describe the chalk countryside in
southern England. By contrast, his glossary shows a different approach to the translat-
ability problem by providing readers with the explanatory phrase colinas de Inglaterra
(hills of England). In the same way as Domínguez Parra, Salas Rodríguez also uses
a glossary entry instead of the translated text to enable readers to gain greater insight
into the background of the ST:

Example 7
ST: the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler in the days of the
Regency (13)
TT: durante la Regencia, un jugador vino a completar la ruina de la familia (12)
GLOSSARY: Regency: Regencia (periodo histórico)

In this example extracted from Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’ she makes
use of the translation strategy TL cultural cognate in the TT while the glossary shows the
cognate as well as a brief explanation for Spanish readers who are unlikely to know that
it is a period in the history of Great Britain’s cultural heritage. The finding that both
translators deal with cultural translation problems in the glossary rather than in the TT
suggests that glossaries may also be a practical resource for translators to clarify mean-
ing when they encounter the dilemma of cultural distance in the original text.

4.2.3. Level of meaning

In facilitating the reception of a literary work, both translators show that they can make
use of different levels of meaning in the glossary and in the translation. An extract from
Salas Rodríguez’s translation of ‘The Piazza’ by Melville is offered to illustrate how
metaphorical language is used in the TT and a literal translation in the glossary:

Example 8
ST: I’ll launch my yawl (47)
TT: izaré velas (48)
GLOSSARY: yawl: yola (embarcación a vela)

In the TT the translator considers it appropriate to use velas (sails)–instead of the

equivalent SL term–yola (yawl)–since the procedure of translation by synecdoche may
cause, I would suggest, misunderstanding for EFL readers unfamiliar with nautical terms.
By contrast, the glossary is the right place to clarify meaning by providing the exact
correspondence yola and offering the definition in brackets–embarcación a vela (sailing
ship)–in order to ensure that readers have an accurate meaning of the object described.
Domínguez Parra’s corpus also demonstrates his use of translation by synecdoche but, as
shown in the following instance from Wilde’s ‘The Canterville’s Ghost’, the strategy is
applied in the glossary instead of the TT:

Example 9
ST: and groan through keyholes (41)
 THE TRANSLATOR 9

TT: y gemir a través de los ojos de las cerraduras (40)

GLOSSARY: keyhole: cerradura

The Spanish equivalent term ojos de las cerraduras is provided in the TT while the
glossary entry alludes to the term by referring to the whole object cerradura (lock).
Given these examples, it can be implied that translators are able to use the glossary to
move between different levels of meaning, from metaphorical in their translations to
literal in glossaries, and vice versa.

4.2.4. Level of formality

As a rule, Salas Rodríguez and Domínguez Parra use the same level of formality in the TT
and the glossary, but there are also some exceptions. To illustrate this, both translators
make use of the glossary to change the level of formality selected for their translations:

● From neutral (TT) to formal (Glossary): Salas Rodríguez includes a neutral term
residencias (residences) to translate the cult term ‘dwellings’ (Example 10:
Fitzgerald’s ‘Winter Dreams’, 51), bringing the formality back with morada in the
glossary.
● From neutral (TT) to colloquial (Glossary): Domínguez Parra translates ‘saw through’
(Example 11: Woolf’s ‘The New Dress’, 49) with a neutral term se dio cuenta
(realized), which is changed to a colloquial word calar (suss out) in the glossary.

These examples indicate that glossaries may allow translators to provide alternative
translations at different levels of formality for EFL readers who are used to consulting
these lexicon-building tools to clarify meaning in the ST.

4.2.5. Level of expressiveness

Another interesting result is that glossaries allow both translators to communicate the
authors’ thoughts and feelings in a more or less expressive way than in the TT. For
example, the glossary offers the possibility of giving a translation with a more general or
neutral meaning than the translated term, as in the case of Salas Rodríguez’s glossary for
‘The Mexican’. When translating London’s description of the tricks used by an exhausted
boxer to gather strength in the fourteenth round (that is, head-butting and snarling
insults in the opponent’s ear in the clinches, and blocking the breathing of his opponent
by heeling his glove on the opponent’s mouth) the glossary supplies a meaning of ‘to
butt’ which is slightly different from the main text:

Example 12
ST: he fought as foully as a successful fighter knows how. Every trick and device he
employed, butting in the clinches with the seeming of accident (55)
TT: peleó con todas las trampas que sólo un boxeador de éxito conoce. Empleó todos
los trucos y ardides: propinaba cabezazos en los abrazos aparentemente por
accidente (54)
GLOSSARY: butt: arremeter
10 M. OLIVARES LEYVA

Providing EFL readers with arremeter (attack) seems not to convey the full picture of the
boxing match, while the TT brings them closer to London’s vivid description of boxing
tricks by respecting the violent physical attack made with the head propinaba cabezazos
(butting).
Another example where a less expressive translation is also feasible in the glossary
can be found in the last lines of Domínguez Parra’s translation of ‘Berenice’ by Poe. I am
particularly referring to the scene when a servant finds Egaeus in the library after he has
suffered a period of catalepsy: Eageus remembers nothing, but his blood-stained cloth-
ing alerts readers in advance to the fact that he has been involved in a terrible act. The
example illustrates that the translator furnishes somewhat different translations in the TT
and in the glossary:

Example 13

ST: He pointed to garments; – they were muddy and clotted with gore (63)
TT: Señaló unos ropajes; estaban embarrados y cubiertos de sanguinolentos coágulos
(62)
GLOSSARY: clotted with gore: estar cubierto de sangre

The expression ‘clotted with gore’ gives the scene a vividness characteristic to Poe’s
style, which uses realistic images to make terror palpable. Thus the translation estar
cubierto de sangre (to be covered with blood) in his glossary rather than the equivalent
translation cubiertos de sanguinolentos coágulos he uses in the TT, does not allow EFL
readers to vividly recreate the abominable act Egaeus has committed against Berenice:
removing her teeth while she was probably still alive.
Glossaries may, on the other hand, also be efficient tools for translators to add
connotations that a word or expression does not furnish in the TT. In the following
example where Melville describes an autumn afternoon in ‘The Piazza’, differences in
the meaning of ‘ominous’ can be observed between Salas Rodríguez’s TT and her
glossary:

Example 14

ST: the sky was ominous as Hecate’s cauldron–and two sportsmen, crossing a red
stubble buck-wheat field, seemed guilty Macbeth and foreboding Banquo (43)
TT: el cielo acarreara los mismos presagios que el caldero de Hécate–y que dos
deportistas cruzando un campo de alforfón parecieran el culpable Macbeth
y Banquo lleno de presagios (44)
GLOSSARY: ominous: de mal agüero

Presagios (signs) does not convey the negative meaning of ‘ominous’ but, as it is related
to the characters Hecate, Macbeth and Banquo from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the feeling
that something bad is going to happen can be sensed in the TT. The translator, however,
does not use this general word in her glossary, replacing it with a more exact translation,
de mal agüero (foreboding). In the case of Domínguez Parra, the translation of ‘tangle’ in
 THE TRANSLATOR 11

Chesterton’s ‘The Blue Cross’ also exemplifies the fact that the glossary may be the right
place to add the connotative meaning of a source item:

Example 15
ST: dodging across the tangle of the traffic (23)
TT: esquivando a través de la confusión del tráfico (22)
GLOSSARY: tangle: embrollo

Readers using the glossary to grasp the meaning of ‘tangle’ have access to the
translated term embrollo, which embraces the figurative meaning of the word–an
embarrassing situation from which it is difficult to disengage–which is unexpressed in
the ST. In doing this, the translator helps readers acquire a broader comprehension of
the word ‘tangle’ and its connotations.

4.3. Different signifier and meaning

The two translators also use the glossary to add meaning that the TT does not provide.
To illustrate this, Chesterton describes Mr. Grandison Chace of Boston as a ‘rolling stone’,
and Domínguez Parra opts for the term trotamundos (globe-trotter) in his translation to
transmit that this character is always travelling (Example 16: ‘The Secret of Father
Brown’, 50–51). However, he uses vagabundo (vagabond) in his glossary, adding
a connotation–that the person is homeless–unexpressed in either the ST or the TT. As
a result, the glossary entry could give rise, I would argue, to the misperception of
Mr. Grandison Chace for readers who look this word up to clarify its meaning.
In the same vein, Salas Rodríguez’s corpus also shows examples which provide
different signifiers and meanings from the TT. In contrast to Domínguez Parra’s
example, however, in Salas Rodríguez’s example extracted from Dickens’ ‘To Be
Read at Dusk’, she combines the meaning provided in the TT with another that is
not used by the translator, leading me to reflect on the effect this combination may
have on readers:

Example 17
ST: the drapery painted on the outer walls has peeled off in great flakes of plaster
(47)
TT: los tapices pintados en los muros exteriores se han deshilachado en grandes tiras
de yeso (46)
GLOSSARY: flakes: copos, tiras

The glossary embraces the meaning tiras (thin strips) that Dickens attaches to flakes
together with copos (flakes of, for example, snow), which the translator does not use in
the TT. With her decision to provide both meanings I would suggest that EFL readers
gain insight into the ST at the same time as acquiring an additional meaning of the
word.
12 M. OLIVARES LEYVA

4.4. Untranslated in the TT, translated in the glossary

It is also worth noting that when both translators use the strategy of omission in the TT
they may opt for introducing the untranslated items in the glossary. The opening of
Dickens’ ‘The Signal-Man’ exemplifies this in the choice made by Salas Rodríguez
regarding the term ‘yonder’:

Example 18
ST: it had riveted my attention when I looked down from up yonder (9)
TT: me había llamado la atención cuando miré desde arriba (8)
GLOSSARY: yonder: lejos

Salas Rodríguez regards ‘yonder’ as a key word to be included in her glossary while
omitting the translated term in her TT. Likewise, Domínguez Parra provides a similar case
with ‘dreadful’ in the sentence ‘a dreadful peal of thunder shook the house’ (Example
19, 53) in Wilde’s ‘The Canterville Ghost’. The translator does not translate the term (TT:
un trueno agitó la casa, 52), but the target item ‘dreadful’ does appear in the glossary.

5. A methodological proposal
The main goal of this study is to fill a gap in the field of literary translation by designing
a methodological proposal for glossaries for bilingual literary books used by readers
aiming to improve their command of a foreign language while enjoying the reading of
a piece of literary work. The results suggest that glossary design can be a challenging
task for translators since external factors to the translation process such as the editing
process may negatively affect their professional work. Besides, the findings also indicate
that–contrary to expectation–translators hardly ever use the glossary to expand on and
clarify meaning in their translations. As a matter of fact, for the most part glossaries
repeat the terms in the TT. Based on this, it can be suggested that readers might regard
glossaries as inefficient tools in clarifying meaning. In order to avoid this misconception
and the negative effects glossary design may have on how readers perceive and use
these resources, I would propose bearing in mind the following methodological recom-
mendations in order to produce functional and efficient instruments:

5.1. Applying typographical features consistently

The study identified four types of layout inconsistencies with the use of bold typeface in the
editing process of the corpora. First, either glossary items are not highlighted in bold in the
ST, or items in bold in the ST are excluded from the glossary–Inconsistencies Type 1 and
Type 2. Second, it is also the case that items may have different meanings at different
mentions in the ST and the glossary retrieves the unmarked terms–Inconsistency Type 4,
Example 2 and Example 3. Lastly, an item may be provided with a different meaning in the
ST and in the glossary–Inconsistency Type 3, Example 1. In view of these typographical
disparities between the ST and the glossary, I would suggest that the lack of consistency
could have prejudicial effects on readers’ views on glossaries. They may, indeed, regard
them not only as inefficient tools in clarifying meaning, but also as instruments which hinder
 THE TRANSLATOR 13

their reading comprehension. In other words, due to typographical inconsistencies transla-

tors may be involuntarily interfering in the reception of literary works since their glossary
may not transmit the meaning intended in the ST. For this reason, it is advisable that all
professionals involved in bilingual literary book design–not only translators but also editors–
should be particularly careful with glossary building, especially in setting up the rigorously
consistent correspondence between glossary entries and source items. In particular, it is
strongly recommended that translators should assume the responsibility of reviewing the
entire glossary project–from the design phase to the editing stage–to ensure product
quality. In this way, readers are more likely to deem the glossary as the useful instrument
it is intended to be.

5.2. Avoiding redundancy, enhancing usability

The study also shows that the two translators built their glossaries such that most
entries–2762 items, that is, 87.68% of the total–transfer the exact translation given in
the TT without providing external references. This is not in line with the recommenda-
tions for translators suggested by Sainero (2008) who argued–as previously mentioned–
that glossaries can act as an aid to translation in offering historical, cultural and
idiomatical explications to the audience for the better understanding of literary texts.
On account of the great amount of redundancy by translators that has come to the fore
in this study, the following question can be posed: What factors determined that
glossaries are reduced to the reproduction of the translated items in the TT? I would
suggest that, in this instance, the limited size of the book flaps may not have allowed
translators sufficient room to add even a modest number of cultural and historical
references to enhance translation quality. Time pressure may also have been a factor
as translators commonly work to tight deadlines that may push them to focus their
efforts on translation problems in the ST and consequently reduce their focus on
glossary design. It could also be hypothesized that the translators in the works examined
here might have regarded their glossaries as somewhat redundant since the side-by-side
nature of bilingual books might be deemed to give readers sufficient insight into the ST.
This points to the need to hear the translator’s reasoning for their decision making with
respect to their double task of translating text and glossary building in the design of
bilingual literary books.

5.3. Retranslating the ST

An unexpected result in this study was the finding that translators may take advantage
of the glossary to supply readers with a second reading of the line or passage in the TT.
To illustrate this, when translators do not use the exact equivalent source item as in the
TT (Example 8 ‘yawl’) or omit the translation of an item (Example 18 ‘yonder’ and
Example 19 ‘dreadful’), they may use the glossary to provide readers with the exact
meaning of that item, which was only partially expressed or totally unexpressed in their
translation. It might be suggested that such a decision may have a great benefit for
readers, who are afforded an alternative viable version to recreate the essence of the ST,
and who can then enjoy the experience of two readings. In this respect, my findings
point to the need for caution when the glossary involves items that imply cultural and
14 M. OLIVARES LEYVA

historical distance between the ST and the target reader. On the one hand, it is
recommended that glossaries should supply modernized alternatives for those items
archaized in the TT (Example 4 ‘headgear’ and Example 5 ‘shutters’) so that readers
eager to improve their command of a foreign language can become familiarized with
more present-day uses of the source terms. Furthermore, brief definitions or explana-
tions in the glossary are also advisable when there are cultural differences between
literary works and the target audience and translators decide to build a TT which is
devoid of background information (Example 6 ‘Downs’ and Example 7 ‘Regency’). By
keeping these latter considerations in mind, translators can guarantee that the glossary
also enables their readers to gain better insight into the work being read at the same
time as they are expanding their foreign language vocabulary.

5.4. Establishing translation limits

Glossaries can be practical tools for translators to offer alternative terms, expressions and
idioms to their choices in the TT, but the findings of this study also suggest that four
limitations should be taken into consideration in glossary design for foreign language
readers. First, the expressive force of source items should not, I would argue, be blurred
by introducing neutral choices in the glossary since the target reader using the glossary
as a lexicon-building tool to acquire new vocabulary may well expect the glossary to
offer the whole significance of the expression (Example 13 ‘clotted with gore’). In the
same manner, connotative meanings should also not be lost in the glossary since it is
recommended that foreign language readers come into contact with the ideas and
feelings associated with a word in order to fully understand it, remember it and use it
correctly. For this reason, I would argue that the inclusion of connotative meanings
should be an important task in glossary design such that translators pay special atten-
tion to the translation of terms with positive or negative connotative meanings, making
explicit reference to them in the glossary. This means that translators should be careful
not to restrict readers to accessing the meaning of a term when they look it up in the
glossary. This is particularly important when translators include neutral translations in
the TT (because the co-text provides readers with the connotation) and then the
glossary can rightly furnish the connotative meaning. Example 14 illustrates this recom-
mendation as the word ‘ominous’ is translated into presagios (signs) in the TT because
the co-text denotes the negative connotation, but into the phrase de mal agüero
(foreboding) in the glossary. In addition, after examining Example 10 and Example 11,
it is evident that the register of original terms should not fade away in the glossary. They
show that the level of formality of each term is kept in the glossary–namely ‘dwellings’
and ‘saw through’–independently of the meaning attributed in the TT, ensuring that EFL
readers learn the register those words belong to. Lastly, but not least, I would recom-
mend that translators should be careful that glossary entries do not only introduce
meanings which are at odds with the reading of the items in bold in the ST. In this
regard, Example 1 and Example 2 illustrate that readers looking up the words ‘bull’s-eye’
and ‘habit’ in the glossary are not provided with the meanings that the authors give
them, and therefore this may result in misinterpretation. All in all, if translators overcome
the challenges in glossary design identified in this study and take into account the
suggested methodological proposal, they will greatly facilitate the reception of literary
 THE TRANSLATOR 15

works and help foreign language readers in their acquisition of the intricacies involved
in the appropriate usage of terminology.

6. Conclusion
The present study sought to gain a better understanding of the translating principles of
glossaries for bilingual literary books built from the position of the translator by
examining side-by-side short stories and their corresponding glossaries. A comparative
study between the corpora of Domínguez Parra and Salas Rodríguez was conducted in
order to gather reliable data on how different translators tackle glossary design. The
results indicate that the translators designed redundant glossaries reproducing target
terms and expressions provided in the TT, which is to the detriment of foreign language
readers, who thus cannot benefit from two advantages glossaries have to offer them:
their better understanding of worlds of different ages and cultures as well as expanding
their vocabulary in an additional language. The findings also disclose details about the
publisher’s attitude towards glossaries for bilingual literary books: they mainly reproduce
the translated terms in the TT and some errors have been made in the editing/type-
setting process. This might indicate that the publisher probably deems glossaries to be
merely ornamental extras to gratify readers learning foreign languages through litera-
ture. For this reason, a shift in perspective is suggested for publishers and translators in
that they consider that glossaries are not alien to the translation task, but, rather,
illuminating tools to furnish alternative target terms, as well as being a means to
improve translations by suppling brief historical, cultural or idiomatic references for
the better reception of literary works. The study also demonstrates that bilingual literary
books can add extra value to the job of translating since they enable readers to fluctuate
between the translation and the glossary in terms of different levels of formality and
expressiveness, shades of metaphorical language, or moving among different para-
meters of cultural and historical distance. However, the findings also show that glos-
saries may become a hindrance rather a practical lexicon acquisition tool in those cases
where an entry which departs in meaning from that in the ST results in readers
misreading it. Thus, translators’ decisions in glossary design should be taken cautiously
and in line with the four recommendations that make up the suggested methodological
approach presented earlier. First, the expressive force of terms, phrases and idioms, as
well as their connotative meanings and the exact register where they are used should
not be lost in the glossary. Besides, unrelated meanings to the terms in bold in the
original version should be totally excluded in glossary design unless combined with their
exact translations. Third, glossaries can be useful instruments for translators to provide
brief explanations of cultural terms in order to help foreign language readers gain better
insight into the literary text by means of information about the context. Finally, when
the historical distance is respected in the TT, it is suggested that glossaries may provide
readers with the same meaning, but modernized. All this accompanied with a consistent
correspondence between glossary entries and marked items, expressions and idioms in
the ST can prevent readers from considering the glossary as an inefficient tool in
clarifying meaning as well as a resource which interferes with and hinders reading
comprehension.
16 M. OLIVARES LEYVA

Although the research findings may offer a clear picture of how glossaries can be
built, the fact that foreign language readers are not fully taken into account in this
study–due to space constraints–means that further research is needed to entirely
comprehend how glossaries for bilingual literary books may influence the reception
of a literary work. In order to ascertain how glossaries might provide new perspec-
tives for literary translation studies, we could begin by raising the following points:
Do readers turn to the glossary to gain a better insight into literary works before or
after reading the ST? Do readers consult the glossary and the translation simulta-
neously or avoid their concurrent use? To what extent do glossaries fulfill readers’
expectations and needs? In relation to translators and how they build glossaries, we
might also ask how they take into account the audience’s cultural and linguistic
levels. In order to answer these questions, I would suggest that readers should
collaborate with translators by taking part in the ‘reviewing’ stage of glossary building
proposed by Kamthan (n.d.) since ‘the necessity and sufficiency of terms, and the
definitions of terms, needs to be inspected, preferably by others not involved in the
development of the glossary’ (24). Exploring these issues in further research may
enable translators to ascertain how glossaries for bilingual literary books can be
better built taking into account readers’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds along
with the processes they follow to clarify meaning, and thus might be tailored to
better suit readers’ needs, expectations and reading processes.
In conclusion, I would argue that for translators specialized in the area of literary
translation, glossaries may represent what Medeiros suggests when referring to glos-
saries: ‘it’s like there is still something more to be said, to be highlighted, that does not
end in the text and one has to do it somewhere else’ (2016, 82).

Note
1. For the purpose of this study we apply Mur’s (2003) translation strategy taxonomy.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Mónica Olivares Leyva is a lecturer in English at the Department of Modern Philology of Alcalá
University in Madrid, Spain and holds a PhD in Modern Languages, Literature and Translation. She
is author of the book Graham Greene’s Narrative in Spain: Criticism, Translations and Censorship
(1939–1975) (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015) and the journal article ‘Graham Greene’s The
Living Room: An Uncomfortable Catholic Play in Franco’s Spain’ (Atlantis, 2018) which study
Franco’s censorship on Graham Greene’s translations in twentieth-century Spain. Her research
interests include censorship in translation and public-service translation and interpreting.
 THE TRANSLATOR 17

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