Traducción de las construcciones gramaticales when + -ing (EN-ES)

Abstract

This paper analyses the English structure when + -ing and its Spanish equivalents through a parallel corpus-based study using Sketch Engine. Given that the gerund does not share the same properties or functions in English and Spanish (Plann, 1984), the study aims to examine how the construction when followed by a gerund is translated into Spanish. The central hypothesis is that the English structure when + -ing cannot be systematically rendered by means of the Spanish gerund, but rather through a range of alternative syntactic resources due to functional and semantic differences between the two. To test this hypothesis, 250 examples, taken from Europarl Spoken Parallel (Koehn, 2005), have been thoroughly analysed in order to identify major tendencies within the translation decision-making process. This paper’s underlying onus is to highlight the need for greater grammatical awareness in translation practice and curricula.