Search

La professionalització dels intèrprets en l’àmbit jurídic està guanyant importància a Espanya a causa de les directives de la Unió Europea sobre els drets processals de persones sospitoses o acusades d’algun delicte. A això s’hi ha d’afegir la prolongada crisi humanitària, que ha sensibilitzat l’opinió pública sobre la qualitat de la interpretació proporcionada per diverses ONG i altres organismes que s’ocupen dels sol·licitants d’asil. Actualment, els proveïdors de serveis privats contracten els intèrprets en funció de les llengües que necessitin o que estiguin disponibles, sense exigir-los una formació específica. En aquest article, analitzem la qualitat percebuda dels serveis d’interpretació i el paper de l’intèrpret des de diverses perspectives, incloses les dels agents de les ONG (assessors jurídics, treballadors socials i psicòlegs) i els advocats que participen en aquesta mena de processos, seguint mètodes d’investigació descriptiva. A continuació, tractarem les diferents percepcions sobre la figura de l’intèrpret que tenen els diferents professionals que intervenen en el procediment de sol·licitud d’asil, amb l’objectiu d’obtenir una imatge vàlida, basada en dades, de la interpretació en el context de la sol·licitud d’asil a Espanya. S’espera que aquesta informació serveixi per omplir el buit que existeix en el desenvolupament professional dels intèrprets com a part essencial dels processos d’asil i, el que és més important, com a garantia dels drets humans. També contribuirà a sensibilitzar els professionals que desenvolupen la seva feina amb l’ajuda d’intèrprets.

Aquest article destaca el paper dels serveis socials locals en l’aplicació de les polítiques d’habitatge, concretament a Catalunya. És per això, que es presenta una revisió de tres instruments normatius: La Llei 18/2007, del dret a l’habitatge, la Llei 24/2015, de mesures urgents per a afrontar l’emergència en l’àmbit de l’habitatge i la pobresa energètica i la Llei 4/2016, de mesures de protecció del dret a l’habitatge de les persones en risc d’exclusió residencial. S’identifiquen els processos o polítiques públiques que ―per a la seva concreció― requereixen de la participació de les professionals dels serveis socials, destacant els reptes que es presenten i la necessària articulació entre les diferents administracions públiques per a garantir l’exercici efectiu del dret a l’habitatge de les persones que resideixen a Catalunya.

Prenent en consideració el paper actual i futur de la intel·ligència artificial en la licitació pública, el present article es centra, des de l’òptica de les directrius de la Llei 15/2022, integral per a la igualtat de tracte i la no-discriminació, en la potencialitat que pot correspondre a la intel·ligència artificial davant la detecció i l’actuació contra les col·lusions en la contractació pública. Dins d’aquest nou dret computacional de la competència o “antitrust 3.0” es detallarà el paper capdavanter que ha assumit l’Autoritat Catalana de la Competència (ACCO) pel que fa a la posada en marxa, en fase experimental, de l’eina informàtica ERICCA, i, en paral·lel, la seva participació activa dins del projecte Computational Antitrust del Stanford Center for Legal Informatics (CodeX).

En aquest article intentarem determinar els motius que hi ha darrere de la baixa qualitat de la feina dels intèrprets judicials en el context dels processos penals als tribunals de Barcelona. A partir d’un corpus de judicis reals enregistrats, explorem quatre possibles factors que poden afectar l’actuació dels intèrprets: durada del judici, problemes de gestió de les converses, experiència dels intèrprets i tipus de delicte que es jutja. A més, també analitzem faltes de rendiment injustificades, que es consideren un indicador important de la ineficàcia. Les conclusions es comenten en el context de la competència lingüística de l’intèrpret, el seu paper en la interacció amb tots els participants i les normes establertes dels codis de conducta professionals. En aquest article se subratlla la necessitat de millorar la qualificació dels intèrprets, però també de conscienciar els membres del poder judicial espanyol sobre el paper dels intèrprets, amb l’objectiu de protegir els drets processals de les persones que no parlen ni entenen la llengua en què es du a terme el procediment.

This paper analyses lenition of lamino-alveolar and apico-alveolar fricative sibilants in Basque in casual conversations between speakers of the variety of Beasain (Central Basque dialect). To describe the phonetic realisation of sibilants, the following measures were used: the proportion of voiced frames, the centre of gravity and relative intensity. Results show that 13% of sibilants can be classified as ‘voiced’ (i.e. they show uninterrupted voicing during the middle 50% of the duration) and another 25% has at least one voiced frame in the middle interval. Several factors were identified as important predictors of voicing: context, speech rate and the presence of the word boundary. It is also shown that voicing lowers the sibilants’ centre of gravity and relative intensity. Finally, the paper discusses potential lexical effects in lenition phenomena.

The growth of digital technologies in the economy has created new opportunities for entrepreneurs and organisations (Berman, 2012). The digital world environment, supported by technological devices (e.g., mobile computing) and social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram), has opened new ways to create new digital business models and media channels (Vasconcelos & Rua, 2021; Ciasullo & Lim, 2022; Miháldinecz & Rua, 2022; Rodrigues et al., 2022). Multinational organisations, but also small companies, do all or most of their business on the web (e.g., Google, Amazon, Facebook) (Capatina & Rancati, 2017; Jeansson et al., 2017; Pinto & Silva, 2019). The unique characteristics of digital technologies have provided entrepreneurs and organisations with many tools that can be used to innovate and create new ventures (Berawi et al., 2020). For example, open innovation and crowdsourcing facilitate co-creation and customer feedback in the development of new products, services, websites or applications (Gassmann et al., 2010; Musiello-Neto et al., 2022; Rua et al., 2023). Similarly, crowdfunding platforms (e.g. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Go Fund Me) have made it easier and faster to finance a social or business project (Bernardino & Freitas Santos, 2020). Because of the internet, new digital business models (e.g. freemium, subscription, on-demand, affiliate, drop shipping, consulting, advertising, blogging, digital media) exist and could be used to sell products and/or services. In addition, business models (features and value of offerings) would continue to evolve even after launch due to competition and environmental changes. Digital entrepreneurship is the practice of pursuing new venture opportunities offered by new media on internet technologies (Antonizzi & Smuts, 2020). Therefore, entrepreneurs and organisations in a digital economy need to be aware of market opportunities to develop new ideas and business models and communicate their value propositions to potential customers and investors (Nambisan, 2016). This special issue aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the digital economy, while addressing the question of how entrepreneurs and organisations are dealing with an increasingly digital world. The papers in this special issue present research findings from a variety of contexts. In the first article, Silva, Moutinho and Paço examine the relationships between entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship policies and e-commerce. In the article, the authors aim to analyse whether entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship are antecedents of e-commerce, as well as the bidirectional relationship between e-commerce and entrepreneurship. The study focuses on a panel of two European regions, Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland) and Iberia (Portugal and Spain), between 2012 and 2020. The relevance of the groups studied is enhanced by the fact that they are culturally different and have different perspectives on the growth of e-commerce. The authors use an econometric analysis of the data based on Panel Corrected Standard Errors models. The study developed by the authors shows a bi-directional causality between entrepreneurship based on the creation of new firms and entrepreneurship based on surviving firms and e-commerce. The study also shows that R&D-based intrapreneurship is a driver of e-commerce. The second article, by Silva, Lima and Teixeira, examines the use of sales technology by salespeople as a source of information and stimulus for intrapreneurship. They find that salespeople's use of sales technology has positive effects on the firm's information system and, subsequently, on salespeople's intrapreneurial behaviour (strategic renewal and venture behaviour). The authors also suggest that the firm's information system plays a mediating role between salespeople's use of technology and their strategic renewal and venture behaviour. In the third article, based on social support theory and technology acceptance models, Makmor, Alam, Masukujjaman, Makhbul, Ali, and Mamun examine the factors determining purchase intention on social commerce sites. Using a detailed purchase intention model, the authors analyse the responses obtained from 392 questionnaires distributed in Malaysia, using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The research provides new contributions to the understanding of factors that can influence consumer purchase intention, highlighting the important role of consumer trust in the online context, as well as social support (both in the form of emotional and informational support), which are related to the technology acceptance model and purchase intention. The fourth article, developed by Bernardino, Freitas Santos and Silva, explores the personal network linkages of social entrepreneurs and the use of social media platforms to examine whether they bring more resources to the social organisation. A conceptual model is developed based on a review of the literature. Structural equation modelling is used to test the hypotheses on a sample of 313 Portuguese social organisations. They find that social entrepreneurs’ network linkages have a direct (via stakeholders) and an indirect (via social media use) effect on the resource acquisition process. Overall, their work demonstrates the strong role of personal networks as a potential determinant of resource acquisition for Portuguese social organisations. Finally, in the fifth paper, Katrin Kizilkan aims to expand knowledge about the entrepreneurial finance landscape and digital platforms in the context of entrepreneurs' social media communication behaviour. Based on signalling theory, Schulz von Thun's communication theory and social capital theory, the article assesses the main success determinants in the behaviour of crowdfunders. In the article, the author develops several hypotheses that are tested using a multivariate approach based on logistic regression. The data was collected from 169 campaigns available on the largest rewards-based crowdfunding platform in Germany (Startnext). The research conducted by Katrin reveals the success factors of a crowdfunding campaign in terms of the behaviour of the entrepreneur and the characteristics that social entrepreneurs should pay special attention to when designing a crowdfunding campaign. The results highlight the importance of quality signals to reduce information asymmetries. The article offers practical recommendations to entrepreneurs on how to run a successful campaign in the digital context, and in particular how to use social media effectively in the context of a reward-based crowdfunding campaign. Overall, each of the papers provides new insights into the challenges of the digital economy for entrepreneurship and organisations, incorporating a variety of theoretical perspectives and research designs, demonstrating the promise of different approaches to inform research on the digital economy. Indeed, the digital age brings new opportunities for the way businesses are developed, which could be exploited by both entrepreneurs and organisations.

Se estudia la disponibilidad en acceso abierto de la producción científica del personal del Servicio Gallego de Salud (Sergas) de los años 2014 a 2019, su evolución a través de las distintas vías de acceso y qué volumen se podría depositar en el repositorio institucional. METODOLOGÍA: A partir de una exportación de Sophos, la herramienta que mide la producción científica del Sergas, se analiza el conjunto de publicaciones en las que participa al menos un autor con filiación institucional del Sergas. Se utilizaron las APIs de Unpaywall, DOAJ y la función Find Full Text de EndNote para determinar si el artículo tenía una versión de texto completo disponible. RESULTADOS: La producción científica del Sergas de 2014 a 2019, excluidas las comunicaciones a congresos, asciende a 7.792 artículos de los cuales el 44.10% de pueden clasificar como de acceso abierto real (dorado, bronce o híbrido), el 51.16% están publicados en revistas que permiten el auto-archivo y solo un 4.75% no admiten acceso abierto o no ofrecen información sobre su política de acceso. Estos artículos se publicaron en 1.695 revistas diferentes, de las cuales 409 siguen el modelo de acceso abierto dorado. CONCLUSIONES: El 95% de los artículos revisados pueden estar disponibles para el usuario final por alguna de las vías de acceso abierto y podrían ser depositados en el repositorio institucional./ This paper studies the open access availability to the Galician Health Service (SERGAS) staff´s scientific production between 2014 and 2019, its evolution through the different open access routes and the volumen of publications that could be deposited in the institutional repository. METHODOLOGY: Based on an export from Sophos, (the tool that measures the scientific production of the SERGAS), this paper analizes the set of publications in which at least one author with SERGAS institutional affiliation. The APIs of Unpaywall, DOAJ and the Find Full Text function of EndNote were used to determine whether the article had a full-text version available. RESULTS: The SERGAS scientific production between 2014 and 2019, excluding conference contributions, amounts to 7,792 articles. 44.10% of those articles can be classified as real open access (gold, bronze or hybrid), 51.16% are published in journals that allow self-archiving and only 4.75% do not support open access or do not provide information on their access policy. These articles were published in 1,695 different journals, 409 of wich follow the gold open access model. CONCLUSIONS: 95% of the articles reviewed would be available to the end user through one of the open access routes and could be deposited in the institutional repository.

The significance of tourism in the development of regions has become of interest to academics in recent decades and its contribution is evident. The rapid tourism development is creating pressure on the destination’s competitiveness, as well as on its sustainable development. The Tatra Euroregion has been connecting two nationalities for decades via joint activities that develop the region by strengthening tourism. However, little attention is given to developing the Euroregion by way of tourism. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify whether the development of tourism in this Euroregion will be sustainable in the future, which can be fulfilled by answering two research questions, RQ1: What is the current state of tourism development in the Tatra Euroregion? and RQ2: Is the further development of tourism in the Tatra Euroregion subject to the principle of sustainability? We will answer the questions by analysing statistical data and documents that describe the cooperation activities within the Euroregion. The paper contributes to the analysis of cross-border cooperation within the Euroregion, as well as to research in the field of regional development with sustainable tourism, which is determined by the life cycle of the destination.

This short paper maintains a discussion on the nature of rhotic consonants in two different but genetically related languages (Ukrainian and Russian). The main goal of the paper is carrying out a modern acoustic study about rhotic realizations in the two target languages, as well as putting forward some considerations about a possible sound change. Acoustic analysis is carried out using LPC and FFT measurements in order to capture the difference in rhotic realizations. The results allow for a description of the acoustic properties of the Ukrainian language, and suggest the existence of an ongoing simplification process of rhotic consonants in both languages.

The post-COVID-19 panorama presents serious economic and social challenges, prompting the European Union (EU) to allocate extensive funds to its Member States. The central financing instrument created for this purpose, NextGenerationEU (NGEU), requires the Member States to implement ambitious reforms to bring about green and digital transitions within their National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs). Despite innovative elements in NGEU’s decision-making process, legal basis and fiscal integration policy, the role of sub-state authorities in the context of multilevel governance (MLG) demonstrates a centralised tendency. In order to understand this issue, the management of NRRPs in the Spanish system of autonomous communities and Italian regionalism will be taken as emblematic case studies. Specifically, the constitutional significance of the MLG model in the context of the NGEU recovery package will be evaluated in light of the principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, proportionality and partnership. This paper ultimately aims to offer broader insights into NGEU’s role in the ongoing EU federalisation process and its shortcomings with respect to national decentralised systems.

Aquest article té per objecte presentar quina ha estat l’evolució de la normativa en matèria lingüística en el Parlament de les Illes Balears, i fer una breu descripció dels usos lingüístics institucionals, en un context de canvi en el paper i el tractament de la llengua catalana, pròpia de les Illes Balears, a causa de la recent aprovació, el mes de febrer de 2024, de l’anomenat Acord per al bilingüisme. En els usos lingüístics institucionals, hi podem diferenciar tres etapes, que es corresponen, pràcticament, amb les legislatures següents: l’etapa inicial, que comprèn la primera i la segona legislatures (des de la promulgació de l’Estatut d’autonomia de l’any 1983 fins a l’any 1991), l’etapa de consolidació de l’ús institucional de la llengua catalana (legislatures segona a desena, de l’any 1991 a l’any 2023) i l’etapa actual de l’onzena legislatura (a partir de febrer de 2024).

The European Commission has recently launched a proposal for a Directive to promote repair. In this paper we critically analyse the drafting process in order to understand the resulting policy options. We consider that although the ambition of the Directive was low from the beginning given the limited policy options, it became even worse during the consultation period. The selection of barriers to repair was limited, and manufacturers pushed for a narrow and closed form of Right-to-Repair (R2R) that transferred all control over the potentially emerging repair market to them. Some information measures were proposed so as to increase transparency, potentially increasing the administrative burden on independent repairers, along with measures to encourage repair when under legal guarantee. This Directive fails to promote repair or help independent repairers overcome access barriers, nor does it allow member states to go beyond the limits imposed in the Directive itself.

The paper provides an in-depth analysis of profitability in Spain between 1995 and 2014, showing that behind the asset-price inflation of the growth period and its corresponding macroeconomic imbalances, an underlying problem of capital valorization can be found. For this purpose, a study of various measures of profitability is carried out based on the concept of productive labor and highlighting the role of finance (interest rates and indebtedness). The evolution of the profit rate in previous years is also shown , together with a comparison with countries in the Eurozone, both in the most advanced areas and in the periphery. The paper reveals the large extent of the underlying profitability crisis, with a huge fall of profit rates from the late sixties, during the period of the housing boom, and throughout the subsequent recession. In addition, this drop in profitability stands out in relation to other economies of the European periphery. Hence, the study puts the rate of profit at the center of the debate on the Great Recession in Spain, despite its absence in much of the economic literature.

The interest in and understanding of ethics among translation scholars has changed dramatically since the publication of Andrew Chesterman’s proposal for a Hieronymic Oath (Chesterman, 2001). Early definitions of ethics based on equivalence (Newmark, 1991), faithfulness, loyalty (Nord, 1997) and trust have been put aside in favour of more recent notions of translator ethics grounded in accountability (Baker & Maier, 2011) and social responsibility (Drugan & Tipton, 2017). Practising translators who abide by codes of ethics/conduct are bound by principles of honesty, integrity, linguistic competence, confidentiality, and trust. This paper begins by presenting a brief literature review of the main developments in translation ethics from the early linguists to contemporary interpretations. There then follows an analysis and comparison of several professional codes of conduct from the main international associations of translators and interpreters with the benchmark, the Association of Translation and Interpreting Professionals (APTRAD). It is one of the more recent translator associations and has a code of conduct adopted in the last six years. The objective of this paper is to determine which theoretical definitions of ethics are reflected in the codes of conduct and to discuss their usefulness for translators in their daily practice. The paper ends with recommendations for changes to codes of conduct to make them more relevant to practising translators.

This paper deals with the determinants of education-job match for higher-education graduates, using a logistic regression model to identify explanatory variables related to sociodemographic, academic trajectory and institutional characteristics. The empirical analysis is based on an anonymous online questionnaire administered to a sample of graduates, from 2014 to 2019, in Portuguese institutions, of which about five hundred observations were made. Although the boundaries between universities and polytechnics are less obvious today, there are still some differences between the two higher-education subsystems regarding education-job match. The main ones are related to the field of study, gender, and the need to move away from home to study and work. Factors that improve the probability of education-job matching, common to both subsystems, were also found, such as having i) studied ‘social sciences, commerce, and law’ and ‘engineering, manufacturing and construction’, ii) attained good final grades, and iii) participated in extracurricular activities involving complementary training.

This paper focuses on the relationship between the regional firm density and the growth of firms in the Portuguese textile and clothing industry to investigate how their geographic clustering influences said growth. Despite the concentration of this industry in the Northern region of Portugal in only four poles, our results show that the location of firms in the cluster is not relevant for growth when the whole industry is considered. However, disaggregate analysis shows that the clothing industry does exhibit both location externalities and cross-location effect, while textile manufacture exhibits neither. In addition, our empirical evidence reveals that the growth of firms located in the cluster is positively correlated with external finance. This result suggests that location becomes a solvency signal for firms, and, specifically, this might help to explain why textile manufacturers firms are located in the cluster. These findings are relevant for entrepreneurs and Portuguese policymakers, as it jeopardizes the optimal allocation of scarce resources in the Portuguese textile cluster.

Aquest estudi ofereix una anàlisi detallada del llenguatge emprat en la cobertura de la pandèmia per The Guardian i El País, examinant la representació de les postures governamentals i la seva influència en la resposta dels ciutadans. S’investiga el paper d’aquests mitjans com a canals de comunicació governamental i el seu efecte en la percepció pública durant la crisi sanitària. A través d’una anàlisi rigorosa, confirmem la nostra hipòtesi que els governs del Regne Unit i Espanya van exercir una influència ambivalent sobre la població mitjançant l’ús estratègic d’un discurs manipulador. Aquest estudi es basa en la creació d’un corpus bilingüe i en l’ús d’anàlisi textual avançada per desentranyar les tàctiques de control i persuasió aplicades. Les troballes revelen una tendència cap a l’ús d’un lèxic carregat negativament i d’estratègies emocionals, així com l’ús de metàfores i argot tècnic per establir una asimetria informativa entre les autoritats i la ciutadania.

En aquest article analitzem la política lingüística en dos països que compten amb diverses llengües oficials, Suïssa i Sud-àfrica, i en els quals el paper de la llengua anglesa ha evolucionat respecte a les llengües "nacionals" locals des de la dècada de 1990. Ens centrem en la política lingüística com a manifestació de les lluites socials i, fent especial èmfasi en l’anglès, estudiem els documents polítics actuals en aquests dos contextos tan diferents. L’ús de la “neutralitat” com a lent analítica ens permet demostrar que la política lingüística va més enllà dels plans d’estudi i de la inclusió o exclusió de les llengües i, al seu lloc, neutralitza les idees socials que estan en consonància amb la concepció d’un futur “d’èxit” en una conjuntura sociohistòrica determinada. Per acabar, reflexionem sobre la neutralitat com a component de les ideologies lingüístiques, en virtut de les quals s’autoritzen llengües específiques per a objectius polítics contingents i canviants, cosa que té conseqüències com ara la inclusió en la política educativa o l’exclusió de la política educativa de determinades llengües i la distribució desigual del coneixement, els recursos i l’autoritat.

Aquest epíleg proposa un fil conductor dels discursos sobre llengua i neutralitat en els diversos contextos presentats en el recull d’articles. La idea bàsica és que les forces en joc en tots els casos transcendeixen l’àmbit de l’estat nació i responen directament o indirecta a la posició de l’anglès com a llengua hegemònica global. En la mesura en què la globalització afecta tots els àmbits de la vida social, les antigues grans forces colonials opten per polítiques de legitimació de les pròpies llengües i cultures en base a l’acció diplomàtica. Igualment, la implantació de fórmules d’ensenyament multilingüe a nivell intraestatal també es veu tensionada per la pressió de molts sectors perquè s’inverteixi en l’anglès. Proposo que l’ús dels termes neutre i neutralitat marquen, en aquest context, un canvi de paradigma respecte dels nacionalismes lingüístics moderns, ja que apareix la necessitat d’adoptar estratègies d’equidistància i valors universalitzants en contextos caracteritzats per la multilateralitat i fora de la sobirania nacional. També s’observa com les clivelles racials encara marquen significativament les estratègies de diplomàcia cultural, alhora que el discurs de la suposada neutralitat de l’anglès emmascara el seu paper substanciador de les pràctiques i ideologies neoliberals.

Intangible assets (IAs) are fundamental for the creation of firm value. However, the literature is inconclusive regarding the relationship between IAs and profitability. This paper uses financial data from Colombian firms from 2005 to 2015 to determine if this relationship exists. Thirty dynamic panel models have been used to see whether IAs are related to Return on Equity, Return on Assets, Earnings Before Interest and Taxes, Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization, Gross margin, and Net margin. The results, despite a limited sample size and missing variables, are related to the literature in that they signal the negative relationship between IAs and profitability. Thus, the capitalized value of IAs seems to negatively affect Colombian firms' performance in the short and long term.

Interactions between citizens and the public administration are increasingly taking place by electronic means, often referred to as e-government. In Spain, these interactions mostly have to be monolingual, in Spanish, in the case of the central administration, but may be bilingual or even multilingual in autonomous communities that have their own official language. In this paper, we intend to show how state-of-the-art oral and written linguistic technologies for Spain’s coofficial languages could allow speakers of these languages to use them in many of their administrative relations with any Spanish public agency, thereby facilitating the conversion of Spain’s mostly monolingual administration into a multilingual one, enhancing digital language equality and guaranteeing the linguistic rights of speakers of minoritised languages. We will present an overview of the most promising language technologies in terms of their relevance from the point of view of multilingual communication between citizens and the administration. We will also review the existing technologies for Spain’s co-official languages, and present some ideas on how these could be integrated towards the multilingual transformation of Spanish public administrations without neglecting some of the attendant ethical and legal issues. The present work is intended to serve as an introductory and accessible overview for legislators, administrators, or any other person interested in the potential of language technologies to assist in developing a multilingual public administration.

Catalonia has developed a model of schooling in which Catalan is the medium of instruction and both Catalan and Spanish are compulsory subjects. In 2020, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia ruled that at least 25% of teaching must be delivered in Spanish in all schools in Catalonia, raising the issue of whether this obligation conforms to the undertakings chosen by that Spain under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. To clarify, we first need to answer the following question: what does “education in a regional or minority language” mean? This paper provides an answer to this question based on the interpretation of the Committee of Experts of the Charter, and addresses two side issues: whether education in a regional or minority language can be compulsory for all pupils, and under what scenarios would it be legitimate to enforce the use of the State’s official language in schools where a regional or minority language (RML) is the medium of instruction. A conclusion is reached that may offer guidance for future discussion on the role of the State’s official language(s) in RML-medium schools.

El debat sobre l’avortament sol desfermar una forta controvèrsia moral, política i jurídica. Aquest article ofereix un conjunt de reflexions filosòfiques, polítiques i sobretot jurídiques entorn de la flamant i polèmica sentència Dobbs del Tribunal Suprem dels Estats Units d’Amèrica, la qual revoca la famosa sentència Roe v. Wade. Veurem les diferents opinions dels membres del tribunal i la possible rellevància de la religió per a explicar aquest brusc canvi jurisprudencial, tot evocant la importància de la separació església-estat. Com que Dobbs retorna als parlaments estatals el poder de regulació que havien perdut amb Roe, explorarem la relació entre el federalisme i el paper dels tribunals. Tot seguit, ens preguntarem qui està legitimat per a adoptar una teoria sobre la vida. Hom respondria els parlaments i votants en conjunt, mentre que altri contestaria els tribunals i les embarassades de manera individual. Atès que Dobbs s’aparta radicalment d’una de les sentències més cèlebres de la jurisprudència nord-americana, tractarem la vinculació del precedent judicial. Com a reflexió final, s’adverteix que una regulació que desmereixi el valor de la vida pot conduir a normalitzar i banalitzar l’avortament i, progressivament, també l’infanticidi.

Tradicionalment, el sensellarisme ha estat abordat des dels serveis socials bàsics, de competència municipal, mitjançant serveis residencials d’estada limitada que, en molts casos, han estat substituïts per prestacions econòmiques per finançar places en albergs o centres anàlegs. Els serveis socials han estat considerats un mecanisme de tancament de l’estat del benestar que supleix les deficiències d’altres sistemes de protecció social, com és el cas de l’habitatge. Resulta necessària, per tant, una delimitació millor de la funció dels serveis socials, que haurien de centrar-se en l’atenció i la cura a les persones, i construir, al mateix temps, polítiques d’habitatge amb la implicació de totes les administracions competents, per donar respostes de caràcter residencial al sensellarisme. Si bé les entitats locals poden tenir un paper rellevant en aquest àmbit, l’atribució de noves competències ha d’anar acompanyada d’un finançament adequat, i no s’ha de limitar a la remissió dels mecanismes generals, sinó que s’ha d’acompanyar de fons específics i preassignacions pressupostàries que garanteixin la viabilitat del sistema. Cal, a més, una visió general de les diverses situacions d’exclusió residencial per articular mesures preventives i no solament d’atenció. Finalment, es planteja que l’ús de l’espai públic per part de les persones en situació de sensellarisme es consideri des del dret a la ciutat. Històricament, el sensellarisme ha estat objecte de repressió i invisibilització, a través de mesures de control policial dirigides a apartar de l’espai públic les persones en aquesta situació. La reivindicació d’aquest espai comporta que les ordenances locals no puguin prohibir de forma generalitzada la mendicitat; alhora, el dret a la ciutat resulta incompatible amb el disseny o l’arquitectura hostil.

Els articles d’aquest número giren entorn del dret a l’habitatge, un fenomen situat dins del marc internacional gràcies al pronunciament de diversos organismes europeus. El dret a l’habitatge està interconnectat amb nombrosos aspectes i podem abordar el seu estudi des de diverses perspectives. Sota el prisma social es pot analitzar el paper dels serveis socials locals i les seves eines en l’aplicació de les polítiques d’habitatge, així com l’exclusió residencial i el sensellarisme. Parlar d’habitatge també implica plantejar qüestions com la intervenció administrativa en el mercat del lloguer, la qual permet analitzar els efectes de la Llei 11/2020 a Catalunya, i és que el dret a l’habitatge també pot ser tractat amb una perspectiva econòmica, a través de l’estudi dels mecanismes de col·laboració publicoprivada, el dret de superfície i la contractació pública, per exemple. En un moment d’emergència climàtica com el que estem vivint, l’habitatge sostenible es presenta com un fenomen primordial; per això, aquest número té un espai en què tracta els solars i els habitatges buits, i la integració de la circularitat en termes d’activitat constructiva i ús del sòl.

The paper aimed to examine the terms related to the concept of Lusophony in the French political and internet discourse to better understand the role of the Lusophone world in French-speaking society. We conducted a grammatical and contextual analysis of the words Portugal, Brésil, and lusophonie (and their adjectives) as they are used in the Europarl corpus and the FrTenTen corpora. The results show interesting differences between the two discourse genres. In political discourse, the examined words are related mostly to discussions about the economy, environmental issues, and food exports. On the other hand, in online discourse the analysed terms are most frequently applied to the topic of football, but also to discussions about colonization and beauty treatments (like Brazilian hair straightening). Utilizing the analysis presented in this study we could not detect the topic of culture, which is an unexpected result with regard to the global importance that Lusophone culture has in the field of music (e.g. fado and bossa nova), dance (e.g. samba and capoeira), and literature (e.g. Fernando Pessoa and José Saramago).

In this paper, we present Pyrlato, an innovative tool developed in Python for collecting acoustic data from YouTube. The development of this tool was motivated by the need to conveniently collect real-world spoken data. By executing this Python code, researchers can obtain a spoken corpus of specific words, syllables, constituents, and more. We illustrate the main steps of the execution to demonstrate how it works and how to use it. Additionally, we provide a complete example for reference, demonstrating how to customize Pyrlato according to specific requirements. Finally, we discuss the future developments we intend to cover for Pyrlato.

The explanation for the evolution of /ti̯/ and /ki̯/ yod contexts has been based on articulatory reasons. However, sound change has an important auditory and acoustic basis. This paper deals with two main topics: (a) it examines the confluence of the phonetic realisations of dental and velar stops in /ti̯/ and /ki̯/, and (b) it seeks to determine whether voicing occurs after the assibilation process. The results show that the allophones for /t/ and /k/ display acoustic similarities regarding point of articulation cues, which could explain misperceptions. Voicing also seems to be very frequent in these phonetic realisations, which points to a process simultaneous with assibilation.

Crimes related to sexual abuse or rape provoke great social mobilizations, as happened with the gang called “la manada”. How the aftermath of the social mobilizations and socioeconomic factors influence the perception of security and the perception of justice, measured as judiciary decisions, are the aims of this paper. A randomized sample collected in two waves was obtained (N=605). The first one (N1=454) was performed after the judicial sentence of the case. A second wave (N2=151) was performed four months later, after the social alarm decreased. The perception of security increased after the peak moments of social mobilizations. The trust in justice was low and decreased after the social mobilizations. The perception of justice was higher among higher income levels. The perception of security decreases during the social mobilizations but it improves in a short period of time. The effects on the perception of justice last for a longer period.

This paper discusses on oral (OAS) and nasal acoustic signals (NAS) of pre-nasalized [mb nd ŋɡ] and full nasal [m n ɲ] consonants of the Nhandewa-Guarani dialectal variety. The obtained results have shown that the duration of the murmur of [mb nd ŋɡ] does not exhibit significant differences concerning the murmur of [m n ɲ]. In pre-nasalized consonants, the nasal phase corresponds to 70% of the total duration of the segment, since the remaining 30% are due to the oral occlusion phase. For both groups of consonants, despite a higher concentration of energy at low frequencies, differences in amplitude of spectral peaks are noticed in the transition between the nasal-oral phases of pre-nasalized consonants.

This paper pretends to be a unifying response to the lack of connection between the synchronic and diachronic approaches based on the [ç] allophone of /x/ in South American Spanish. Two experiments were carried out: an acoustic analysis based on laboratory, semi-directed and spontaneous speech, and a perception experiment (AB discrimination task including spontaneous speech segments as well as German and Bulgarian sounds). The results obtained revealed an articulatory and historical explanation according to the evolutionary patterns of Spanish. Specifically, a parallel emerged between the assimilation by co-articulation of [t͡ʃ] and [ç], characterized by the evolution of a non-palatal sound with another neighboring palatal sound.

This paper investigates the impact of using benchmark-adjusted alphas to assess the performance of small market mutual funds, investing in domestic and European equities. For the 2000-2020 period, our results show that fund benchmarks exhibit significantly negative alphas, which lead to an underestimation of mutual fund performance when employing standard models. As a result, benchmark-adjusted alphas are significantly higher than unadjusted alphas for both fund categories, though differences are larger for domestic than for European funds. We also find that the impact of the benchmark-adjustment procedure depends on market states. The domestic (European) benchmark exhibits considerably lower (higher) alphas during crisis than during non-crisis periods. During market crises, differences between pre- and post-adjustment alphas are statistically significant only for domestic funds, whereas during non-crisis periods both fund categories exhibit significant performance improvements. Our findings suggest that the benchmark-adjustment procedure has a higher impact when benchmark indices exhibit higher concentration.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the health, economy, and social sectors, and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) worldwide, including in Indonesia. This paper examines the use of social media and e-commerce with an entrepreneurial orientation to enhance the business performance of MSMEs. The study should serve as a model for improving the quality of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in the Jambi Province, in Indonesia. The research employs quantitative and qualitative approaches. The latter method employs in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), and observation, whereas the former uses the partial least squares method (PLS). The findings and discussions conclude that social media adoption positively affected the performance and entrepreneurial orientation of MSMEs during the said period. Similarly, e-commerce positively affected the performance and entrepreneurial orientation of MSMEs. Entrepreneurialism and social media adoption had a significant impact on the performance of MSMEs, and due to its entrepreneurial orientation, e-commerce influenced the performance of MSMEs

This paper presents the characteristics of the intonation of Spanish spoken in Bucaramanga, Colombia, a variety considered as “strong and rude”. Spontaneous, semi-spontaneous and read utterances from four participants were analysed acoustically. After stylisation with MOMEL, the data was tagged according to the Sp_ToBI system, within the Autosegmental-Metrical model. The declarative, interrogative, and exhortative contours were compared with the intonational inventories available for Spanish. The results confirm prior dialectal boundaries based on lexical data and supports the dichotomy between coastal and mountain varieties in the dialects of Spanish spoken in Colombia.

This paper reports on a document in which the University of Alcalá ordered a set of tapestries from the series of Alexander the Great following the pattern of the tapestry maker François Raes.

This article reports some of the main achievements of the EU-funded PRINCIPLE project in collecting high-quality language resources (LRs) in the legal domain for four under-resourced European languages, namely Croatian, Irish, Norwegian and Icelandic. After illustrating the significance of this work for developing translation technologies in the context of the European Union and the European Economic Area, the paper outlines the main steps of data collection, curation and sharing of the LRs gathered with the support of public and private data contributors. This is followed by the description of the development pipeline and key features of the state-of-the-art bespoke neural machine translation (MT) engines for the legal domain that were built using this data. The MT systems were evaluated with a combination of automatic and human methods to validate the quality of the LRs collected in the project; the high-quality LRs were subsequently shared with the wider community via the ELRC-SHARE repository. The main challenges that were encountered in this work are discussed, emphasising the importance and the key benefits of sharing high-quality digital LRs.

La professionalització dels nivells directius en la gestió pública constitueix un clar indicador de la qualitat democràtica de les institucions, per la qual cosa, després de més de 15 anys des de l'aprovació de l'Estatut Bàsic de l'Empleat Públic, és necessari reflexionar sobre l'estat de la seva situació i quines han de ser les característiques en la definició de la Direcció Pública Professional. Partint d'una revisió del desenvolupament anèmic de la figura en els diferents nivells de l'Administració i d'una visió de futur, se n'aborda la contextualització en un escenari general marcat per dues greus crisis, la generada per la pandèmia i la derivada d'un conflicte bèl·lic a Europa; el paper de lideratge que correspon al sector públic, i com el reforç de la dimensió directiva pot contribuir al necessari procés transformador que, per enèsima vegada, afecta la modernització de l'Administració pública.

This paper presents the characteristics of the intonation of Spanish spoken in Bucaramanga, Colombia, a variety considered as “strong and rude”. Spontaneous, semi-spontaneous and read utterances from four participants were analysed acoustically. After stylisation with MOMEL, the data was tagged according to the Sp_ToBI system, within the Autosegmental-Metrical model. The declarative, interrogative, and exhortative contours were compared with the intonational inventories available for Spanish. The results confirm prior dialectal boundaries based on lexical data and supports the dichotomy between coastal and mountain varieties in the dialects of Spanish spoken in Colombia.

Based on a qualitative case study research, this paper investigates the efficacy of indirect translation as a strategy in the translation of terminology in private legal documents from Serbian to Albanian via English in Kosovo. The aim is to examine whether this approach may improve the accuracy, quality, and availability of translation services in an under-resourced linguistic combination. Research within this subfield seems necessary in the context of Kosovo, where Serbian is a minority language and translations of private legal documents in the Albanian < > Serbian language pair have been found to be of low quality, primarily due to a lack of professional translators and resources which are specific for that combination. Two official Albanian < > Serbian translators fluent in English were recruited as participants to translate a list of terms excerpted from documents translated for official procedures. One translator provided a direct translation from Serbian to Albanian and the other an indirect translation from Serbian to Albanian via English. Despite the limitations of the research, the comparative analysis of the submitted translated terminology indicates that the indirect translation via English in the context of Kosovo may provide accuracy, quality, and availability, thereby offering members of minorities in Kosovo the potential guarantee of a fair treatment within legal procedures.

Digitisation is a phenomenon that inevitably affects companies and economies. Consequently, the virtual market seems an excellent alternative for aspiring entrepreneurs. Recent statistics precisely point to accelerated growth of e-commerce. Indeed, this and entrepreneurship are business tools that allow a new dynamic in the market. However, recent research has barely explored the relationship between entrepreneurship and e-commerce, so this study contributes to the literature by filling the gap. In light of the above, this study has used several indicators from two groups of countries, namely Scandinavia, in broad terms (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland), and Iberia (Portugal and Spain) from the years 2012 to 2020. The Panel Corrected Standard Errors models have been used for the econometric treatment of the data. The findings confirm the bidirectional causality between entrepreneurship and e-commerce. In addition, from a widerperspective of entrepreneurship, the paper also reveals that intrapreneurship based on Research and Development (R&D) is an e-commerce driver. Therefore, this study opens up a new discussion and provides relevant support for the theoretical framework and a valuable contribution to the scarce literature on the relationship between entrepreneurship and e-commerce.

Crowdfunding is a popular approach for entrepreneurs to obtain financial support and has therefore gained importance in the literature and practice in recent years. The communication behavior of starters that lead to the success of a campaign will be summarized and expanded by new findings. As a theoretical added value, this article offers the first attempt to transfer communication theories to the field of reward-based crowdfunding to reveal success determinants in crowdfunders user behavior. The purpose of this paper is to give practical recommendations to starters on how to run a campaign successfully and, more generally, on how they can make full use of social media. By analyzing the dataset of crowdfunding campaigns from Startnext, the largest German-speaking reward-based crowdfunding platform, new success factors are identified using multivariate analysis methods. The results show that social media can offer significant value for businesspeople in terms of marketing if it is used strategically and frequently.

This paper proposes the attribution to the Sevillian sculptor Pedro Duque Cornejo (1678-1757) of a sculpture representing St Joachim, preserved in the church of Carmen in Popayán, Colombia. For this, it is reconstructed the creative context of the work, posing some hypotheses about its potential clients and evaluating its impact on the city, where it was copied up to three times. Its case is significant for the study of the sculpture trade between Spain and America during the eighteenth century, proving that Duque Cornejo’s workshop had and American expansion, unknown to date.

El treball analitza el model institucional dissenyat específicament per executar el Pla de recuperació, transformació i resiliència, a partir del Reial decret llei 36/2020, de 30 de desembre, pel qual s’aproven mesures urgents per a la modernització de l’Administració pública i per a l’execució del Pla esmentat, amb especial atenció a les diverses formes i instruments de col·laboració publicoprivada, tant de nova creació (projectes estratègics per a la recuperació i transformació econòmica), com preexistents (consorcis, societats mixtes), així com al paper especialment rellevant reservat a les subvencions. L’examen del dret positiu i dels diferents programes instrumentats mostra com les eines típiques de l’activitat de foment es configuren com el component principal d’aquesta col·laboració publicoprivada, amb una gran versatilitat per encarrilar els fons públics i privats i organitzar la cooperació entre empreses i entre centres de recerca, en contrast amb les limitacions que presenta l’actual configuració de la contractació pública com a motor de la recuperació econòmica.

Modern information technologies allow us to disseminate specialized knowledge through ask-an-expert forums that serve as a resource for transforming specialized concepts for a lay audience. This paper aims to add to the study of discourse production and is intended as a contribution to legal communication from a popularization-centered perspective. It considers the popularization of legal knowledge to a lay audience as a process of discursive accommodation to the reader’s knowledge base and of alignment of the cognitive levels of participants in asymmetrical interactions intermediated by explanatory strategies. Through the analysis of online legal-lay communication, the article builds a classification model of discursive strategies that allow experts, including forum lawyers, to represent complex and abstract specialized content in an intelligible way to prevent communicative problems from emerging and communicate efficiently. The findings illustrate how various popularization strategies function to align the cognitive levels of participants and eliminate knowledge asymmetries. Two types of strategy (popularization by formulation and reformulation and popularization by illustration) are analyzed and assessed. Definition as a type of popularization by reformulation, comprising 42% of all strategies found in the corpus, is the most common explanatory strategy. Metaphors employed to popularize legal knowledge by relating specialized and everyday domains of experience are the least common explanatory tools used by forum lawyers. These explanatory strategies can be combined to jointly contribute to the purpose of accommodating legal information to the knowledge base of lay forum users. This study is a vector for investigating the problems of asymmetrical interactions in institutional settings. The methodology or aspects of asymmetrical exchanges can be expanded and become an avenue for further research.

Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions all over the world were forced to make the executive decision of quickly and effectively transferring face-to-face classes into an online format. Issues such as technical difficulties, varying degrees of digital literacy within a given team of teachers or the question of how to preserve the essence of face-to-face classes in an online environment are among the many challenges that have affected and hindered the practice of instructors all over the world. With a focus on the teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language (Español como Lengua Extranjera, ELE) and video-conferencing platforms such as the software known as Zoom, in this paper we discuss the importance of continuing the practice of teaching speaking in an online environment. Subsequently, we present a number of strategies that we have put into practice in our online ELE classrooms in order to try and maintain the same or very similar level of interaction between our students when compared to face-to-face classrooms.

This paper discusses the corpus of Gran Canarian Spanish gathered in 2016 in order to provide an in-depth sociolinguistic account of the lenition processes identified in the dialect. After a detailed description of the methodology and database preparation, I present two case studies showcasing the utility of such corpora. First, I show the phonetic and social factors governing the distribution of different surface variants of the underlying coda /s/, pointing to generalised variation and hence incompleteness of any of the weakening options. Second, I provide a comparison of the spontaneous speech produced by the 6 informants of the corpus with their productions from a laboratory study, which leads to the conclusion that variation is subject to yet another important factor: social setting and that the options chosen on each occasion are reflections of competing stages on the same lenition trajectory systematically applied by language users.

Zombie companies can be classified as being nonprofitable, having low productivity and being ten years old or over; these businesses continue to exist due to the support of banks and governments. This paper aims to understand the impact of these types of firms on the investment, employment growth and labour productivity of healthy companies from the wholesale and retail trade and the hospitality sector during the period 2011-2018. The data obtained indicate that the prevalence of zombie companies in Portugal (in the sectors under study) is higher in periods of economic crisis and that most of them are old and large companies, especially in the hotel industry sector. By using panel data models with fixed effects, our investigation concludes that zombie firms negatively affect how healthy companies are run, because they reduce the latter’s investment expenditure and workforce productivity.

This paper is one of the first attempts to reconstruct the story of Afia Begum, wife —and later widow— of Abdul Hamid (a Bangladeshi immigrant in Thatcherite London), whose entry was cleared by the British Home Office in 1982, months before her husband died tragically in a fire in East London. Upon her arrival in the United Kingdom, Afia was told that her grant to stay in the country was no longer valid owing to the death of her husband; that she was now an illegal immigrant in Britain. In the process of the reconstruction, I also revisit the untold story of the Sari Squad, a group of Asian women who fought valiantly, though peacefully, to stop Afia’s deportation. Although Afia was deported on May 8, 1984, her case was heard in the European Court of Human Rights and debated in the European Parliament; in both forums, the highhandedness of the British Home Office was fiercely critiqued. By way of conclusion, I lay out a hermeneutic in which to read Afia’s story, in a literary sense, offering a skeptical stance to reading it in binary terms of success-defeat/victimization-survival of a female foreigner battling a racist state. In doing so, I draw upon Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s “connection between nationalism and reproductive heteronormativity”, to argue that the case of Afia’s deportation suggests that her nationality can only be —tragically— established by determining the citizenship of her husband; this ends up doubly othering and transcendentalizing her nationality, reducing her to her sociobiological reproductive heteronormativity, impregnated with the cryptic trace of her husband’s ghost which practically became the summum bonum of her deprived statehood.

Despite decades of European financial stimulation for cross-border projects, the attention for cross-border cooperation (CBC) is still volatile. The focus on CBC has been fluctuating for decades, depending on political and economic trends among other aspects. Irrespective of that, it remains difficult to encourage citizens in the Dutch-German borderland to engage in cross-border working and living. Without commitment among citizens at grassroots level, CBC will primarily remain an enjoyable pastime for the euroregional elite. Based on scientific debates on border studies, this paper highlights CBC by reflecting on border-related policy. By way of illustration, this research will zoom in on the northern Meuse-Rhine Euroregion, one of the Dutch-German Euroregions. Based on some contemplations on Dutch-German cooperation in recent decades, this article concludes with some action-oriented principles for CBC which could contribute to strengthening its impact.

This paper presents a way to visualize pitch patterns combiningmacoustic features (F0, intensity or duration) with other variables, like a basic notation on ToBI (Tone and Break Indices) or the projection of acoustic transformations, following MAS (Melodic Analysis of Speech) model. This visualization and the previous data transformation leading to it have been carried out with Oralstats, a tool developed in R that is conceived to merge speech transcriptions with prosodic, linguistic, and other variables. Here, the multiple melodic visualizations available in Oralstats are exemplified with intonational phrases taken from a corpus of YouTubers. The complete interactive dashboard is freely available on Github.