English in West Africa: the Role of Translation and Interpreting in International Trade with the Canary Islands

Abstract

Due to the close geographical distance and to a range of historical events, the Canary Islands and West African countries have increasingly close international trade relations. To date, almost 80 companies based in the Canary Islands operate in Africa, according to different sources like the Spanish Chamber of Commerce or the data bases available in AfricaInfoMarket and PROEXCA, dealing with public institutions. To this extent, these companies may have gone through an internationalization process in which several factors, like culture, education, or language play an important role.

As English is considered the global lingua franca, we would like to highlight the incidence of using this language for translation and interpreting purposes and the most required documents should be translated in the trade activity between the Canary Islands and Africa.

To achieve the objective, we prepared a questionnaire of more than 50 questions, which is divided into three sections: information about the activity of the company in Africa, translation needs and interpreting needs. After contacting as many as possible companies in the Canary Islands that export products or provide services to African countries, a total of 61 responses were received.

In this presentation, we will show the results of the questionnaire. Even if French is the predominant language in the above-mentioned African area, there is an important need for translation from English to Spanish or vice versa, particularly regarding the documents used for exportation.