Staff

Dr Mel Boland

Lecturer in Spanish and Linguistics
Co-ordinator of MA in Translation Studies, MA in Spanish and MA in Advanced Language Skills (Spanish)
Erasmus Co-ordinator (Universities of Granada, Murcia and Valencia)

BA (Hons) Spanish and Linguistics (UCD, 1997)
MLitt, Spanish (UCD, 2000)
PhD, Latin American Literature (UCD, 2010)
PgDip in Academic Practice (NUI, Galway, 2011)

Room AM316
091-493971
mel.bolandnuigalway.ie

Profile

I am a lecturer in Spanish and Linguistics, and teach not only in the Discipline of Spanish, but also offer introductory classes in English on Linguistics and Sociolinguistics in 2BA French, Italian and German. At MA level I also offer classes on Translation Studies across a range of Master’s programmes offered in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. I have a wide variety of research interests, especially the writing of Chilean author Isabel Allende.

Teaching

SH112 Beginners Spanish Language I
SH113 Beginners Spanish Language II
SH226 Spanish Language II A (Spanish – English Translation)
SH232 Hispanic Literature and Culture I (Introduction to Latin American Literature (Isabel Allende); Introduction to Linguistics)
SH233 Hispanic Literature and Culture II (Introduction to Sociolinguistics)
SH236 Cultural Debates in Latin America
SH505 Translation Studies I
SH560 Translation Methodology and Consecutive Interpreting I
SH561 Translation Methodology and Consecutive Interpreting II
SH563 Advanced Language Skills II (Spanish): Spanish – English Translation

Research Interests

Contemporary Latin American Literature, especially the works of Isabel Allende; Intersection of Language and Education Policy in Language Planning in Latin America; Translation and Culture

Project/Activities

Member of Language Learning and Policy, Translation Theory and Practice and Place, Space and Displacement research clusters in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

Currently working on monograph on ’Displacement in Isabel Allende’s Fiction (1982-2000)’.

Preparing article on recent language planning issues in Bolivia.

Selected Publications

(Forthcoming) ’Meandering Mimicry: Eliza Sommers’s Experiences of Family in Isabel Allende’s Hija de la fortuna’, to be published in Precarious Parenthood, ed. by Tina-Karen Pusse

(Forthcoming) ’Stepping Back, Facing Forward: Tracing Chilean Identity in Isabel Allende’s Mi país inventado’, to be published in Latin American Identities, ed. by Kate Quinn

(Forthcoming) ’A Singular Plurality? Recent Language Planning Issues in Bolivia’, to be published in Power, Place and Representation: Literary Cultural and Socio-political Sites of Independence in Latin America , ed by Bill Richardson & Lorraine Kelly.

’Out of Place, Out of the Question? Cultural Memory and Identity in Isabel Allende’s Retrato en sepia’, Antípodas , Vol. XV, pp. 223-228.

’“Orienting” the text: eastern directions in the fiction of Isabel Allende’, in Jane Conroy (ed.), Cross-Cultural Travel, New York: Peter Lang, pp. 477-484.

Supervision of Research

Any aspect of Spanish-English translation (theory and practice), Language Planning in Latin America and aspects of Contemporary Latin American Literature.

Topics supervised or co-supervised for MA/PhD dissertations have included:

• Literary Form, Indigenous Myth and Gender in James Joyce and Miguel Ángel Asturias
• The translation of John Updike’s Rabbit series into Spanish: representation, misrepresentation or non-representation of American culture of the last decades of the 20th century
• A Linguistic Adventure – Translation of ’Aventura de Saíd’ by Josep Lorman
• Translating non-fiction: La Asturianá – de la magia a la desolación
• Un largo silencio: Applying foreignising and domesticating strategies to the translation process
• ’Harry Potter is Funny’: The Translation of Humour and Characters’ Speech in the Official Spanish Translation and My Translation of Chapter 4 of ’Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’
• A study of the constraints and translation issues that arise in audiovisual translation
• Cultural Rendering in the Spanish and English Translations of Contos da Montanha
• Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, the Holy Grail of Translation
• Translation and Adaptation in Le Petit Nicolas
• Hedging in Spanish Scientific Discourse; an Analysis of Hedging Devices in the Abstracts of a Latin American Scientific Journal

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