Our English Spanish translation service comprises a wide variety of English into Spanish translations. Our Spanish linguists also write de novo Spanish articles based on English or Spanish texts. English Spanish translators in our group also write Spanish medical news for the general public about important new medical findings.
English or Spanish Science Language Articles.
Qualitative research in Spain: from political life to mistreatment of the sense. A current of sociological thought came into being in Spain in the sixties consisting of what is known by the ill-defined term of qualitative methodology in our country. A blatant paradox, as the freedom with which this theoretical and methodological building would be erected was born precisely out of a lack of political freedom and freedom of thought of those dreadful years. Countering the official body of knowledge and also removed from all "protest" orthodoxy, a vivid, problematical reflection of the society's true situation conceived as critical theory took shape. It is in no way owing, as regards its assumptions, its findings or its formulations, to either English-U.S., sociology, which was predominant at the time, or to that which would later progressively makes it way to us. Taking exception to data and the imaginary all-powerful importance thereof, this methodology propounded a radical turnabout of the perspective of this research to focus on language, understood as the social discourse, in the powerful sense of the word, and not as a mere set of statements, also moving away from the more or less subjectivist conceptions of the meaning. Opposing the body of knowledge of this discipline, it construed research as a cross-roads, undertaking an endless task, as it is impossible to complete from a logical point of view. It then propounded listening to the sense, which is never the same as the meaning, and includes the analysis of the wording used for a full understanding thereof.... This is a totally autochthonous current perfectly well-founded at its epistemological, methodological and technical levels, the continuing survival today of which is more than uncertain, as it dissolves into the body of university knowledge, into the ongoing flow of the quotes of authors, currents and disciplines. It is corrupted in its commercial use, where its discontinuance now seems assured in benefit of the marketing discourse, and it is running the risk of becoming completely useless in social areas of study (such as Health), where poorer English-U.S. perspectives are coming into play without apparently meeting with the least critical opposition. resp
Spanish personal name variations in national and international biomedical databases: implications for information retrieval and bibliometric studies. OBJECTIVES: The study sought to investigate how Spanish names are handled by national and international databases and to identify mistakes that can undermine the usefulness of these databases for locating and retrieving works by Spanish authors. METHODS: The authors sampled 172 articles published by authors from the University of Granada Medical School between 1987 and 1996 and analyzed the variations in how each of their names was indexed in Science Citation Index (SCI), MEDLINE, and Indice Medico Español (IME). The number and types of variants that appeared for each author's name were recorded and compared across databases to identify inconsistencies in indexing practices. We analyzed the relationship between variability (number of variants of an author's name) and productivity (number of items the name was associated with as an author), the consequences for retrieval of information, and the most frequent indexing structures used for Spanish names. RESULTS: The proportion of authors who appeared under more then one name was 48.1% in SCI, 50.7% in MEDLINE, and 69.0% in IME. Productivity correlated directly with variability: more than 50% of the authors listed on five to ten items appeared under more than one name in any given database, and close to 100% of the authors listed on more than ten items appeared under two or more variants. Productivity correlated inversely with retrievability: as the number of variants for a name increased, the number of items retrieved under each variant decreased. For the most highly productive authors, the number of items retrieved under each variant tended toward one. The most frequent indexing methods varied between databases. In MEDLINE and IME, names were indexed correctly as "first surname second surname, first name initial middle name initial" (if present) in 41.7% and 49.5% of the records, respectively. However, in SCI, the most frequent method was "first surname, first name initial second name initial" (48.0% of the records) and first surname and second surname run together, first name initial (18.3%). CONCLUSIONS: Retrievability on the basis of author's name was poor in all three databases. Each database uses accurate indexing methods, but these methods fail to result in consistency or coherence for specific entries. The likely causes of inconsistency are: (1) use by authors of variants of their names during their publication careers, (2) lack of authority control in all three databases, (3) the use of an inappropriate indexing method for Spanish names in SCI, (4) authors' inconsistent behaviors, and (5) possible editorial interventions by some journals. We offer some suggestions as to how to avert the proliferation of author name variants in the databases. jmla.
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