I am Regents Professor of Hispanic Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona. Before coming to the U. of Arizona in 2006, I was an Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics and Director of the Spanish Translation Certificate Program at Arizona State University. Previously I spent two years as an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Indiana University (for my degrees click here).
I am a linguist who works primarily in two areas: Spanish Phonology and Translation Studies/Applied linguistics (list of select publications).
My phonological research is in generative phonology, within the optimality-theoretic framework, and with a focus on syllabification (glides, diphthongs, resyllabification, etc.). I also am also interested in how phonological theory can inform empirical/laboratory work and vice versa. In addition to Spanish, I also work in the phonology of Galician, a Romance language of Spain closely related to Portuguese.
Within Translation Studies and Applied linguistics, my areas of research are translation pedagogy, language and translation competence acquisition, and translation quality assessment. I am interested in the connections between communicative translation and language acquisition and in applied translation studies: i.e., applying research findings and conducting research to solve every day problems in translation (e.g., quality assessment). I am equally interested in building bridges between research and practice, be it translation practice (by developing research-based solutions to every-day problems) or translation teaching (by developing principled methodologies and assisting teachers with their implementation). I enjoy working in research projects that involve work in fields where translation is needed (health care, education, etc.) and doing work with translators and interpreters. This stems from years of work as a free-lance and in-house translator and translation teacher (see Outreach and Teaching )