Mulleres na Lexicografía / Women in Lexicography

Anna Maria Gallina

Spanish and Italian

Professor at the University of Padova and lexicographer. Anna Maria Gallina was born on 1 October 1919 in Mira (Venice). She graduated in Foreign Languages and Literatures with a specialisation in Spanish language, in 1943, at the Royal University Institute of Economics and Commerce of the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. After a brief period of teaching at secondary school, in 1950 she began to work as a Lecturer in Spanish Language at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Padua. Shortly afterwards, in 1953, she became a lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at the same university, a post she held until her retirement in 1985, teaching Spanish Language subjects, with an eminently practical didactic orientation. She died in Mira (Venice) on 12 June 2011.

Anna Maria Gallina's research work has resulted in numerous publications that attest to her ability and rigour. In the bibliography we only include works and articles related to the lexicographical historiography of Spanish, which continue to be a reference in her field. She also devoted part of her production to studies on the didactics of Spanish, including several manuals, with a traditional and communicative approach (grammar, exercise book, Spanish course...), oriented towards the teaching given by Anna Maria Gallina at the Faculty of Political Science (Castillo 2018). In the field of practical lexicography, he published three small dictionaries with the Milanese publisher Mursia, in which he demonstrates a profound knowledge of Spanish and a simple and coherent lexicographical technique. These are two specialised dictionaries and a third of a general type. All of them are unidirectional, since they are aimed at Italian users. Considering the type of information provided in the micro-structure, especially in the articles corresponding to the Spanish-Italian part, their purpose is the comprehension and translation of Spanish texts.

In 1986 he published the Dizionario politico, economico, commerciale spagnolo-italiano, italiano-spagnolo. In 1990 the Dizionario spagnolo-italiano italiano-spagnolo and in 1992 the Dizionario commerciale: spagnolo-italiano, italiano-spagnolo (see bibliography). These specialised dictionaries had no precedent in Italy and their lemmary has, respectively, just over 7000 entries (1986) and almost 15,500 (1992). The general dictionary, on the other hand, has about 50,000 entries. The structure of these works is quite simple, in the style of compact dictionaries. The equivalences are always appropriate and the cultural words in the general dictionary usually have a definition. It makes proportionate and correct use of lexicographical markings and makes appropriate use, where necessary, of discriminations of meaning. Examples and pluriverbal units are given under the heading of phraseology, which functions as a "catch-all". "Although these dictionaries (and in particular Gallina 1990) represent a step forward in the Italian-Spanish lexicographical panorama, the gap that had to be filled was so large that this dictionary alone was not capable of doing so. The efforts to collect numerous phraseology, some neologisms and a certain number of colloquial elements are appreciable, but some absences such as those of Americanisms or the vulgar lexicon are relevant" (Calvo 2008, p. 336). The novelty and coherence of these works, their practicality and the fact that they overcame errors that larger dictionaries had been reproducing up to that time, demonstrate the knowledge and ability of the author, who always worked individually. If Anna Maria Gallina had managed to form a team that would have allowed her to tackle more ambitious projects, we would probably enjoy a larger and better Italian-Spanish lexicographical production today. Lexicographic biography of Anna Maria Gallina: 1955 - “Un intermediario fra la cultura italiana e spagnola nel sec. XVI: Alfonso de Ulloa”, en Quaderni ibero-americani, vol. 3, pp. 4-12. 1956 - “Un antico dizionarietto spagnolo-italiano”, en Quaderni Ibero Americani, vol. 24, pp. 601-604. 1957 - “Osservazioni sulla lessicografia italo-spagnola dei sec. XVI e XVTI”, en Filología romanza, 1, 13, pp. 398-435. 1959 - Contributi alla storia della lessicografia italo-spagnola dei secoli 16. e 17, L. S. Olschki, Firenze. 1986 - Dizionario politico, economico, commerciale spagnolo-italiano, italiano-spagnolo, Mursia, Milano, 351 pp. 1990 - Dizionario spagnolo-italiano italiano-spagnolo, Mursia, Milano, XXVI, 826 pp. [Reedición 1997]. 1991 - “La lexicographie bilingue espagnol-italien, italien-espagnol”, en Hausmann F. J. et al. (eds.), Wörterbücher/Dictionaries/Dictionnaires. Ein internationales Handbuchzur Lexikographie/An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography/Enciclopédie internationale de lexicographie, De Gruyter, Berlin-New York. 1992 - Dizionario commerciale: spagnolo-italiano, italiano-spagnolo, Mursia, Milano, XIII, 528 pp.

Calvo Rigual, Cesáreo (2008), "El Dizionario spagnolo-italiano, italiano-spagnolo (1990) y otras obras lexicográficas de A. Gallina", in Félix San Vicente (ed.), Textos fundamentales de la lexicografía italoespañola (1917-2007). Monza: Polimetrica, pp. 313-337. If one wishes to know these works in depth, Cesáreo Calvo's publication analyses in detail, from a metalexicographical point of view, Anna Maria Gallina's dictionaries. Castillo Peña, Carmen (2018), "Anna Maria Gallina y los primeros pasos de la enseñanza del español en la Universidad de Padua", in Italiano LinguaDue, n. 1º, 1, Milano, pp. 134-148. Thanks to the exhaustive research work of Carmen Castillo, it was possible to include the author's biographical data and to know the details of Anna Maria Gallina's academic career, with valuable information, also referring to the contents of the subjects she taught and the publications linked to them.

Maite Sanmarco Bande

Lola Sánchez Mosquera