The Spanish language in the Internet: successes and errors in localized websites

Abstract

This article presents successes, errors, and translation techniques in localized websites from English to Chilean Spanish. The investigation is framed in the field of Descriptive Translation Studies (Toury, 2004), and the Skopostheory (Nord, 1997/2005). The study is based on a subsample of 14 original and localized websites of organizations belonging to AMCHAM Chile (2006 Directory). For the contrastive analysis, successes, errors, and the different translation techniques used (loanword, amplification, adaptation, among others) were identified and classified. In the case of the errors, a functional translation was proposed. The aim is to contribute to the critical descriptive analysis of web localization in order to improve the training of localizers.