Notes 1

In today's ramifyingly complex information society, it is essential to stress the key importance of documentation in the field of translation studies, as a tool existing in relation to all the other disciplines involved in the educational process. We may usefully point out that in Europe all higher education courses in translation and interpretation include, as compulsory curricular elements, components intended to develop documentation skills related to the information retrieval and the evaluation of its quality, in the context of a multiplicity of formats. Certainly, the translator's documentary activity is a vital instrumental link in the chain of mediation and transfer of knowledge that makes up translation, an indispensable part of translational know-how. Documentary competence is essential for the practice of translation, and, therefore, for the translator's (ongoing) learning process.

In this connection and in the area of translation studies, the group PACTE (based at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain) has been stressing in its work the importance of this instrumental skill in the process of acquiring the general skill of translation (Hurtado Albir, 2001: 394-408). Authors such as Consuelo Gonzalo García (2004) have defined this skill as documentary competence. A succinct definition of what we mean by this concept is provided by María Pinto, who sees it as "grounded in the handling of information, defining needs, programming search, employing strategies to locate and obtain information, sifting and evaluating information with a view to decision-making..." (PINTO, Coord., Portal e-coms. URL: http://mpinto.ugr.es/e-coms, my translation). In any process of transfer between an ST (source text) and a TT (target text), the translator needs to be trained in documentation, as an essential part of translational competence.

Following the position of María Pinto (forthcoming), we argue that it is ever more important that the translator should acquire the skill of information literacy, defining this process as the acquisition of skills, competences, knowledge and values enabling the access to, use of and communication of information in whatever form, with the aim of producing competent professionals and users, trained in the habit of identifying and registering information sources in appropriate ways, able to process and produce their own information, able to sift and evaluate the information process, and able to produce quality communication products (ACRL/ALA, 2000). This is a 'generic habit' which is of major importance in enabling people to successfully tackle decision-making, problem-solving or research. Information literacy comprises the whole range of experience in all its forms, detecting what forms and modes of information are relevant to different situations.

True, the Internet offers the translator an invaluable and inexhaustible source of information, a working medium and a means of communication which modifies the constraints of time and space. But in view of what many critical voices have called 'infoxication' (Cornellà, 2000) on the Internet, we need to stress the importance of maintaining a critical perspective when handling sources and evaluating their credibility.

Documentary search throughout the translation process entails learning how to locate, validate and correctly use the information sources offered by the library and the new technologies. Translators are faced with the challenge and the responsibility of becoming acquainted with and using the diverse means which now exist for the location, recovery, handling and dissemination of information, manipulating the new and extraordinary resources which information and telecommunications technology have made available for their work. In other words, it remains up to the translator to find the data, the information source; and the translator is responsible for knowing how to use it. To translate is to mediate between languages and cultures, to operate a constant decision-making procedure, and, most certainly, to know what documentation means. Otherwise, decision-making cannot be based on proper criteria. If one is to translate, acquiring the right documentation means knowing how to identify the informational requirements of the text to be translated, and knowing how to find the right solutions.

Beyond all doubt, the field of documentation as applied to translation is a notably transversal domain, in which much research still needs to be done, along with much reflection on the necessary interdisciplinary strategies and methods that this training implies.

REFERENCES

ACRL/ALA Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. 27 February 2005 <http://www.ala.org/acrl/ilcomstan.html >

Cornellà, A. (2000) Cómo Sobrevivir a la Infoxicación. Conference transcription. 14 May 2005. <http://www.uoc.es/web/esp/articles/cornella/acornella.htm >

Gonzalo García, C. (2004) Fuentes de Información en Línea Para la Traducción Especializada, in Gonzalo García, C. & García Yebra, V. (eds.) Manual de Documentación y Terminología Para la Traducción Especializada, Arco/Libros, Madrid, pp. 275-307.

Hurtado Albir, A. (2001) Traducción y Traductología. Introducción a la Traductología, Madrid: Cátedra.

Mayoral, R. (1994) La Documentación en la Traducción, in De Agustín, J. et al. (eds.), Traducción, Interpretación, Lenguaje, Madrid: Fundación Actilibre.

Pinto, M. (Coord.) E-coms Portal. Hipertextual Tutorial on Information Literacy. 14 May 2005. <http://mpinto.ugr.es/e-coms >

--- (forthcoming) Alfabetización en Información Para Traductores: Propuesta del Modelo ALFINTRA, in Sales Salvador, D. (ed.), La Biblioteca de Babel: Documentarse Para Traducir, Comares, Granada.

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