TRANSLATION IN THE CIVIL SERVICE: THE CASE OF THE SPANISH NATIONAL TRAFFIC AUTHORITY. ANALYSIS OF THE INVOICE AS A TEXTUAL GENRE

Abstract

Although Spanish law establishes the obligation to translate the vehicle purchase invoice in order to register an imported vehicle under a Spanish registration number, professional translators claim that there is little translation activity in this field. With a  view to analyzing the real professional situation, a telephone survey was conducted among the local and provincial offices of the Dirección General de Tráfico (the Spanish national traffic authority). The purpose of the survey was to find out whether officials comply with the legal obligation to ask for the translation of the documents and, if this is not the case, to determine the reasons for non-compliance. The results of the survey are presented in this article. In order to try to explain these results, an in-depth analysis of the invoice is carried out based on the notion of genre, as developed by the GENTT Research Group, from the Universitat Jaume I in Spain.