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Reporting that in translated English. Evidence for subconscious processes of explicitation?
Abstract
This paper sets out to provide evidence of explicitation in translation into English through an analysis of patterns of inclusion and omission of optional that with the reporting verbs SAY and TELL. The notion of explicitation in the context of translation is first introduced and explained. An overview of the literature relating to that-clauses in Eng-lish is then given, and this forms the basis for subsequent data analysis. The sources of the data to be analysed are briefly described: the TEC (Translational English Corpus) providing us with translated English, and the BNC (British National Corpus) containing original Eng-lish. On the basis of a comparison of concordance data from the two corpora, quantitative results serve to illustrate the marked differences in use of that and zero with forms of SAY and TELL. Thus it is shown that the that-connective is far more frequent in TEC than in BNC, and conversely that the zero-connective is more frequent for all forms of both verbs in the BNC corpus than in TEC. A detailed investigation of the instances of occurrence of that/zero constructions in both corpora attempts to categorise, compare and contrast patterns of occurrence, and provides potential starting points for further research of this nature.
... According to Frawley (1984), such features of translated language or the "third code" (i.e., features peculiar to a translation and not found in the two languages involved) is independent of the languages involved in the translation activity, the translator, the text type, and of any historical period. Following Baker, many researchers such as Øverås (1998), Laviosa (1998a), Olohan and Baker (2000), and Puurtinen (2003b) tried to test such hypotheses, initiate new ones, and found differences between translated and non-translated texts in terms of their lexical and syntactic make-up (Xia, 2014). For example, some (e.g., Munday, 1998;Øverås, 1998) supported the existence of such universals, whereas others (e.g., Kenny, 2001;Xiao et al., 2010) found some evidence against them. ...
... Many studies applying Blum-Kulka's (2000) hypothesis investigated both meaningbased explicitation and textual or formal explicitation in the same study. They used either parallel (e.g., Øverås, 1998;Séguinot, 1988) or comparable corpora (e.g., Olohan & Baker, 2000;Puurtinen, 2004) or both (e.g., Pápai, 2004). Øverås (1998), for example, stated that both generalization and specification are due to explicitation. ...
... Various researchers have noted that informativity and specificity are important features of explicitation. Thus, Klaudy and Károly (2005) wrote that specification is only one type of explicitation, but Olohan and Baker (2000) associated it with the inclusion of extra information. Further, Klaudy (2008) added two types of shifts besides optional and obligatory shifts. ...
Abstract
Binomials, as a sub-type of collocation, are made of two connected words (e.g.,
heaven and earth), and they are considered challenging to translate because some are idiomatic, ambiguous, culture-specific, or alliterative, whereas others adhere to one common word order. More importantly, they are found more commonly in religious texts such as the Holy Qurʾān. Thus, preserving collocability for translated binomials is essential to produce a quality translation. Based on this, the present study examined the translations of Qurʾānic binomials by seven translators in terms of form and meaning. In other words, the researcher explored to what extent translators have maintained collocability in their translations and whether they normalized binomials or explicated them. In addition, the researcher analyzed binomials in relation to semantic categories and word class. Further,
translations were investigated in terms of semantic shifts of generalization, specification, mutation, and omission.
The current study is descriptive and corpus-based employing qualitative and
quantitative procedures in a mixed-methods approach. Besides using the Quranic Arabic Corpus that includes seven translations (i.e., Sahih International and translations by Pickthall, Yusuf Ali, Shakir, Muhammad Sarwar, Muhammad Al-Hilali and Muhammad Khan, and Arberry) of the Holy Qurʾān, the researcher utilized two reference corpora (i.e., the Bible Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English [COCA]) to decide on the collocability of binomial translations. She also developed a framework based on previous studies to explore normalizing (i.e., domesticating, using common terms, etc.) and explicating (i.e., explicative paraphrasing, of-constructions, rank shifts, etc.) shifts.
Results showed that there are 120 binomials in the Qurʾān occurring twice or more.
They consist mainly of complementary nouns denoting culture-specific items. However, others are made of proper nouns, whereas many are peculiar to the Holy Qurʾān. Further, results revealed that only 7% of the translations are with maintained collocability and are basically of universal, antonymous concepts. Collocability was mainly maintained by Pickthall, Yusuf Ali, Sarwar, and Hilali-Khan. However, less than a quarter of the translations, which are chiefly of complementary binomials, were normalized mostly by Arberry and Sarwar. On the other hand, less than half of the translations were prone to explicitation shifts more commonly by Hilali-Khan, Yusuf Ali, and Sarwar.
Regarding semantic shifts, they mark more than a quarter of binomial translations and affected basically one conjunct and are primarily associated with Sarwar's translation. In general, half of the semantic shifts are examples of generalization and basically characterize translations of antonymous binomials. However, shifts of omission were used scarcely and mainly by Sarwar. Results also indicated that shifts of generalization and mutation were used chiefly by Sarwar and Pickthall. However, the majority of specification shifts were utilized by Yusuf Ali. More importantly, specification shifts primarily mark antonymous binomials, whereas those of mutation characterize complementary ones. In general, Hilali-Khan and Arberry used the minimum of semantic shifts.
With or without shifts in form, semantic shifts are inevitable. This is due to a
number of reasons such as the need to produce either a source- or target-oriented
translation, translators' awareness of a specific group of readers, and lack of translators' knowledge of equivalent binomials. Furthermore, some binomials are culture-specific, idiomatic, polysemous, ambiguous, or peculiar to the Holy Qur'ān. Others consist of complementary conjuncts or suggest certain connotative meanings. More importantly, Qur'ānic binomials are contextualized. Thus, it is recommended that translators evaluate risks associated with translating religious texts and choose the appropriate method that ensures the minimum of semantic shifts.
... The overview of the results will be divided in three parts, (1) a review of the studies on explicitation, including an analysis on syntactic explicitation (Olohan and Baker 2000) of both obligatory features in one language that are optional in the other, such as the case of personal pronouns that are optional in Spanish and obligatory in English, as well as syntactic explicitation of articles that are optional in both languages (Jiménez-Crespo in press); this will be followed by a summary of the results of the study by Diéguez on explicitation in terminology (2008) ...
... Normally, personal pronouns functioning as subject are use in Spanish for emphasis or when the subject might be unclear. The rationale for the analysis is that the syntactic explicitation hypothesis (Olohan and Baker 2000) would be supported if the frequency of use of personal pronouns in localised texts is higher than in non-translated ones. ...
... The results of previous studies summarized on this paper confirm the explicitation hypothesis in a digital genre in which, in principle, explicitation resulting in longer renderings would not be expected. Localized websites have shown traces of optional syntactic explicitation (Olohan and Baker 2000) when compared to similar spontaneously-produced texts. This tendency was observed both when optional syntactic items can be due to interference (optional personal pronouns in Spanish that are compulsory in English) and in optional syntactic items in both languages (articles in navigation menus). ...
Since the emergence of Corpus-Based Translation Studies, research into potential regularities in translational behaviour or "general tendencies in translation" has been at its core. However, translation scholars have also criticized this type of descriptive research from methodological and theoretical grounds (i.e. Tymoczko 2005, 1998; Snell-Hornby 2006; House 2008). This paper reflects on these issues through an overview of studies on general tendencies using a translation modality, web localization. The goal is to discuss what this new modality as can add to the existing body of knowledge on general tendencies. Methodologically, the data for most studies was provided by the Spanish Web Comparable corpus containing 40,000 original and localized webpages from corporate websites. The overview of results will summarize the findings from published studies on explicitation, conventionalization and sanitation (-2008a, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, forthcoming a; Diéguez 2008), as well as an additional feature of translations, the tendency to "clone" source text structures (Larose 1998;-2009c, forthcoming b). This tendency has not been previously conceptualized as a general tendency, partly due to the fact that it cannot be directly studied using current methodologies and lexical analysis tools mostly focused on word-based metrics. 2
... She proposes the "Explicitation Hypothesis" (Blum-Kulka, 1986:300), which suggests that translated texts tend to be more explicit than source texts, regardless of inherent differences between the two languages involved. Olohan and Baker (2000) build on Blum-Kulka's work, acknowledging the limitation of defining explicitation solely as a hypothesis. They propose a definition that emphasizes the process itself: explicitation, to them, is the act of adding extra information to make implicit meaning in the source language more explicit in the target language (Olohan and Baker, 2000:142). ...
... Several scholars, including Vinay and Darbelnet (1958), Nida (1964Nida ( , 2003, Blum-Kulka (1986), and Olohan and Baker (2000), have explored the concept of explicitation. While their views share some similarities, differences also emerge in how they explain and differentiate it. ...
Within the context of university communication, the choice of translation strategies can significantly impact the clarity and effectiveness of academic correspondence. This study investigates the role of explicitation and implicitation in translating from English (source language) to Arabic (target language). We explore how these strategies manifest in institutional academic correspondence (circulars and memos) and determine which strategy is more prevalent. Skopos Theory serves as the theoretical framework for this research. The study analyzed a corpus of 196 academic documents issued by the University of Sharjah between 2014 and 2020. An extended version of Klaudy's (2009) classification model was employed to identify instances of explicitation and implicitation across various linguistic levels (syntactic, semantic, stylistic, textual, and pragmatic). Our findings reveal a preference for implicitation in the English source texts compared to the Arabic translations. Furthermore, the analysis identified diverse manifestations of both strategies across different linguistic levels. The study concludes that explicitation and implicitation are both utilized in academic correspondence translation, but with varying frequencies.
... Hall 2019), literary studies (Moratto and Li 2022;Hoover, Culpeper and O'Halloran 2014), translation and interpreting studies (cf. Olohan and Baker, 2000;Sun and Li 2020;Li and Halverson 2020;Wu and Li 2022) and linguistics as a whole (Jiang and Hyland 2022). Taking advantage of the technological affordances, these studies have provided new perspectives to the humanities, promising to foster win-win and mutually beneficial interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary cooperation. ...
... Over the years, scholars have carried out empirical studies aiming to explore the inherent (universalist) characteristics and linguistic features of the 'third code' (Frawley 1984) that is translational language. Through, for instance, comparing translated and non-translated language, scholars have pointed to a number of translation universals hypotheses, including simplification, explicitation, normalization, and levelling-out through examining a range of linguistic categories and features in different contexts and text genres (Kruger & Van Rooy 2016;Olohan & Baker 2000;Tsai 2021;Xiao 2010;Kenny 2014). More recently, increasingly sophisticated analysis has been carried out. ...
The year 1993 represents a momentous milestone in the not-so-long history of translation and interpreting studies (TIS). The foundational paper published by Mona Baker entitled ‘Corpus linguistics and translation studies: Implications and applications’ in 1993 has signalled a defining moment in the application of digital humanities (DH) approaches in TIS. Since then, corpus-based TIS, as a most visible manifestation of DH in TIS, has come into being and is now gradually entering into maturity. Compared with the previously largely anecdotal, impressionist, and prescriptivist accounts of translation and interpreting, the incorporation of DH tools (e.g. CL) has significantly enriched TIS with new perspectives. This makes it possible for researchers to explore the various aspects of translation and interpreting in a more objective and systematic way, drawing on real-world data. Now one-third of a century has passed since the publication of Baker’s seminal paper, DH-inspired studies of translation and interpreting are in full swing. As we are reaching the 30-year mark of the influential publication, it is important for us to take stock of the previous achievements and look to the future both with pride and a cool head. In this article, we trace the developments of a DH approach to TIS and present the state of the art, before discussing some of the limitations and pitfalls and the road ahead going forward.
... More recently, some scholars have refined the notion of explicitation and their findings have been taken as supporting evidence for the Blum-Kulka's hypothesis, such as Séguinot (1988), Øverås (1998), Olohan and Baker (2000), Pápai (2004), Klaudy (2001Klaudy ( , 2006Klaudy ( , 2009 and others. Séguinot (1988: 108) suggests that explicitation not only occurs when a translation is more redundant than its original, but also when a translation introduces something unexpressed in the original, or when a certain meaning implied or presupposed in original is explicitly stated in the translation. ...
... She however related the explicitation trend in both texts to the editing strategies carried out by the revisers of the translations rather than to language constraints. Olohan and Baker (2000) studied the optional use of the complementizer "that" after the two verbs "say" and "tell" in translated narratives taken from Translational English Corpus and corresponding non-translated from British National Corpus. They found that the optional complementizer is more frequent in the translated texts compared to the non-translated, and viewed it as an indication of greater explicitness in the translated texts. ...
This study explores the different types of shifts in the translation of deictic expressions in three Arabic translations of an English novel to see how these shifts can be related to the framework of universals of translation, namely Blum-Kulka's (1986/2000) Explicitation Hypothesis. The data suggest a tendency in translation to reveal more deictic features than the original, suggesting a more explicit text than its original. Although this general trend may point to strengthening of textual relations at the explicit level, it may weaken the dynamic interactive relationship between the linguistic expression and context of use/user, arousing less interpretive inferences and allowing less projection of the reader's personal views into the text.
... Existing corpus-based studies of explicitation and implicitation often looked into comparable data, contrasting distributions of discourse connectives in the subcorpora of translations and comparable non-translations in the target language (Puurtinen, 2004;Olohan and Baker, 2000). At the same time, detection of explicitation and implicitation effects is believed to require analysis of parallel corpora, i.e. looking at the aligned source texts and their translations (see e.g. ...
... As already mentioned above, corpus-based analyses of explicitation and implicitation either look into comparable corpora, defining explicitation as a higher degree of cohesive explicitness in translations if compared to comparable non-translations (Puurtinen, 2004;Olohan and Baker, 2000), or analyse parallel data to uncover transformations from the source text to the target (Marco, 2018;Zufferey and Cartoni, 2014). Explicitation or implicitation effects are often related to the increased usage of discourse connectives and have been extensively analysed so in both human and machine translation (Shi et al., 2019;Meyer and Webber, 2013;Hoek and Zufferey, 2015;Hoek et al., 2015, amongst others). ...
We present a study of discourse connectives in English-German and German-English translation and interpreting where we focus on the phenomena of explicitation and implicitation. Apart from distributional analysis of translation patterns in parallel data, we also look into surprisal, i.e. an information-theoretic measure of cognitive effort, which helps us to interpret the observed tendencies.
... Moreover, other results showed considerable but non-significant shifts in translations. By comparing human translations with original target language texts, some studies have also probed into coherence-related phenomena such as text-organizing connectors (Mauranen, 2000), reporting that (Olohan & Baker, 2000), clausal connectives (Puurtinen, 2003), the optional complementiser that and linking adverbials (Kruger, 2012), causal connectives (Zufferey & Cartoni, 2014), metadiscursive markers (Granger, 2017) and overt cohesive devices (Kajzer-Wietrzny, 2022). Most of these studies aimed at testing the explicitation hypothesis in translations. ...
... In contrast, the metrics of the situation model (INTEp, SMTEMP) are more frequently used in original texts. The more frequent use of connectives (here adversative and contrastive) in the translations echoes some earlier studies that found the explicitation universal realized by cohesive markers (Øverås, 1998), word cluster and reformulation markers (Xiao, 2011), that-connective (Olohan & Baker, 2000), and metadiscursive markers (Granger, 2017). Besides, the more frequent use of semantic overlaps in human and machine translations confirms to some extent Blum-Kulka (1986) and Károly (2010). ...
Earlier studies have corroborated that human translation exhibits unique linguistic features, usually referred to as translationese. However, research on machine translationese, in spite of some sparse efforts, is still in its infancy. By comparing machine translation with human translation and original target language texts, this study aims to investigate if machine translation has unique linguistic features of its own too, to what extent machine translations are different from human translations and target-language originals, and what characteristics are typical of machine translations. To this end, we collected a corpus containing English translations of modern Chinese literary texts produced by neural machine translation systems and human professional translators and comparable original texts in the target language. Based on the corpus, a quantitative study of discourse coherence was conducted by observing metrics in three dimensions borrowed from Coh-Metrix, including connectives, latent semantic analysis and the situation/mental model. The results support the existence of translationese in both human and machine translations when they are compared with original texts. However, machine translationese is not the same as human translationese in some metrics of discourse coherence. Additionally, machine translation systems, such as Google and DeepL, when compared with each other, show unique features in some coherence metrics, although on the whole they are not significantly different from each other in those coherence metrics.
... Over the course of the last three decades, research on the supposed universal or recurrent features of translated language has proposed a number of features, which are usually described in terms such as explicitation/increased explicitness: the tendency to make implicit information explicit in the target text, enhancing clarity and coherence (Becher, 2011;Olohan & Baker, 2000); simplification: the tendency to use simpler language and structures to make the text clearer (Kajzer-Wietrzny et al., 2016;Puurtinen, 2003); normalization/conventionalization: the tendency to conform to the typical patterns and norms of the target language (Hansen-Schirra, 2011;Xia, 2014); levellingout/homogeneity: the tendency to reduce stylistic variation, making the translation more uniform (Redelinghuys, 2016); and CLI/interference/shining-through: the influence of the source language on the target text, often leading to language transfer issues (Mauranen, 2004). ...
... In fact, advanced statistical approaches may overturn the findings of earlier research. Conducting a multifactorial analysis for Baker and Olohan's (2000) bivariate study on explicitation, De Sutter and Lefer (2020, 13) refute the original authors' conclusion, finding instead that the use of that -whether in original or translated texts -is more attributable to "the complexity of the syntactic environment and on the basis of register" than simply texts' translation status. The authors characterize the tendency for corpus-based translation research to take the form of bivariate (i.e., monofactorial) observational studies as a limitation which adjacent fields have long abandoned, and argue instead that research designs involving corpus methods should be multifactorial, interdisciplinary, and multi-methodological (De Sutter and Lefer 2020, 5-6). ...
Formative works in descriptive translation studies assert that language power relations – asymmetries between the “status” or “prestige” of source languages (SLs) and target languages (TLs) – broadly determine translations’ linguistic features (Baker 1996, 183; Toury 2012, 314). To date, these claims have not been tested in any systematic, empirical investigation involving a variety of languages and linguistic features. The central research question addressed by this doctoral thesis is thus whether translations from comparatively higher-status SLs tend to exhibit higher levels of SL influence, conceptualized as interference and foreignization.
The project applies comparable corpus methodology. It constructs a corpus of literary prose from the late 19th and early 20th century, where texts are either translated into or originally composed in English, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Croatian, or Irish. Using a novel method of assessing language status developed from Lewis and Simons’ (2010) EGIDS model, the relative status for each selected language is expressed ordinally and synchronically. The thesis subsequently conducts corpus-based studies measuring the potential association between SL status and SL influence on the lexical, syntactic, and paratextual features of translations. Lexical interference is operationalized as the relative frequency (RF) of loanwords originating in the SL and attributable to the translator. Syntactic interference is operationalized using a novel metric called the syntactic interference/normalization coefficient (SINC), which measures the extent to which a translation’s RF distribution of part-of-speech (POS) n-grams resembles those of comparable SL and TL texts. Paratextual foreignization is operationalized as the RF of translator-attributed footnotes and endnotes. The studies test for the hypothesized positive association between SL status and each of the aforementioned response variables using the Kendall rank correlation coefficient. Finally, the results of the three studies are synthesized to determine whether there is a positive association between SL status and SL influence on translations’ linguistic properties.
The project's findings offer strong empirical evidence that more powerful source languages like English and French tend to induce more loanwords in translation than less prominent source languages like Swedish or Croatian. This outcome indicates that language power dynamics do in fact play a decisive role in determining source-language influence on translations – at least on the lexical level.
... T he past three decades have witnessed a surge in corpusbased translation and interpreting studies, aiming to characterise language produced in mediated contexts (Baker, 1993;Shlesinger, 1998). This burgeoning field posits that interpreted language constitutes a distinct language variety, diverging from both its source and target counterparts and exhibiting features such as simplification, explicitation, and normalisation, collectively referred to as "translation universals" (Olohan and Baker, 2000;Laviosa, 2002;Kruger and Van Rooy, 2016;Xu and Li, 2022;Liu et al. 2023). Recent scholarship, however, has critically reflected on this trajectory, highlighting several limitations and advocating for new avenues of exploration (De Sutter and Lefer, 2020;Gu, 2024;Wu et al. 2024;Calzada Pérez and Ramos, 2021). ...
The integration of corpus linguistics within translation studies has revolutionised our understanding of mediated language. This study endeavours to advance this burgeoning field by employing a full multi-dimensional analysis to investigate linguistic variation in interpreted language within the specialised context of diplomatic discourse. Specifically, the research examines the co-occurring patterns of linguistic features in interpreted diplomatic language vis-à-vis its non-interpreted counterpart. Employing a multivariate statistical technique, this investigation conducted a factor analysis of 113 linguistic variables, yielding five distinct linguistic dimensions: (1) Involved vs. Informational Production, (2) Objective vs. Addressee-focused Narration, (3) Literate-Oral Continuum, (4) Information Elaboration, and (5) Narrative vs. Non-narrative Concerns. The resulting patterns demonstrate that interpreted diplomatic language tends to be more informative, objective, less elaborated, non-narrative, and aligns more closely with formal registers compared to its non-interpreted counterpart, although both navigate the literate-oral continuum. This study delineates the prevailing co-occurrence patterns in interpreted and non-interpreted diplomatic languages and seeks to elucidate the potential factors shaping these linguistic variations by situating these patterns within the context of diplomatic communication. In doing so, it contributes to a nuanced understanding of how specialised contexts influence mediated language use. The findings have significant implications for corpus-based interpreting studies, shedding light on the multi-dimensional nature of interpreted language and informing the development of targeted pedagogical approaches for diplomatic interpreter training.
... The effect of ontology (or in other words, the status of being translatedi.e., mediatedor not) has been a matter of ongoing debate in Translation Studies since the marriage between corpus linguistics and Descriptive Translation Studies (Baker 1995(Baker , 1996Chesterman 2017). The majority of the extant research has concluded that translated language is generally more simplified, explicit and normalized than original non-translated/non-mediated texts in the target language, demonstrating a strong ontology-dependent effect (Baker 1996;Olohan and Baker 2000;Kruger and Van Rooy 2012), although conflicting results have also been reported. This conclusion has also been supported by empirical studies based on machine learning, which report that translated texts can be automatically distinguished from non-translated originals in the same language (Baroni and Bernardini 2006;Volansky, Ordan, and Wintner 2015;Avner, Ordan, and Wintner 2016), lending further support to the claim of strong ontology-dependent patterns of translated language. ...
This article explores the features of simultaneous interpreting (SI) from a multidimensional (MD) analysis perspective ( Biber 1988 ), drawing on a newly built comparable intermodal corpus, the LegCo+ corpus. The corpus incorporates Cantonese speeches that are both interpreted and translated into English, as SI and written translation (WT), respectively. Additionally, a third English corpus consisting of English native speeches (NS), without mediation, serves as a benchmark comparison. We aim to examine the extent of similarities and differences between SI, NS and WT in terms of the linguistic patterns they display. Our findings show that: (1) SI is a hybrid language mode, exhibiting features that lie between those of non-mediated spoken language and mediated written language; (2) in terms of its spoken nature, SI resembles NS in certain dimensions where typical features are associated with orality, suggesting a strong modality effect; and (3) in terms of its mediated status, SI demonstrates similarities with WT, despite their perceptibly distinct modalities, pointing to a potential mediation-specific effect. These empirical findings emphasize the necessity of understanding the multidimensionality inherent in interpreted language.
... Studying "that" omission in native and learner English, Olohan and Baker (2000) found that the optional usage of "that" conjunction typically follows reporting main verbs -such as "say", "think", "suggest". Our data largely supports this observation: while the total of 434 distinct main verb lemmas were found to precede the optional "that", roughly two thirds (64.7%) of all usages (or potential usages -omissions) are covered by the top-10 most frequent lemmas in the dataset. ...
... This inconsistency makes it difficult to establish consistent criteria for identifying and categorizing these features in translation. For instance, some studies (e.g., De Metsenaere 2016; Kamenická 2007;Olohan and Baker 2000;Saldanha 2008) follow different interpretations, despite ostensibly utilizing the same definitions. This poses a challenge, as scholars believe they analyze identical concepts when in fact their notions diverge significantly. ...
This article delves into the trajectory of corpus translation studies (CTS) over the past two decades, summarizing key areas of existing research and identifying potential gaps and challenges within the field. The review encompasses various research areas, including translation universals, translator style, translation norms, and translation pedagogy. It acknowledges the valuable contributions made in these areas while also highlighting potential areas for improvement, such as the need to incorporate functional aspects in translator style research and align translation training programs with professional requirements. The review introduces (De Sutter, Gert, and Marie-Aude Lefer. 2020. “On the Need for a New Research Agenda for Corpus-Based Translation Studies: A Multi-Methodological, Multifactorial and Interdisciplinary Approach.” Perspectives 28 (1): 1–23) new research agenda for CTS, which advocates for multifactorial designs, methodological pluralism, and interdisciplinarity. This agenda facilitates two analysis modes: one utilizing corpus methods to examine translation products, and the other employing diverse methods to investigate products, processes, participants, and contexts in corpus-assisted translation practices. It is argued that these two analysis modes offer valuable guidance for future corpus-assisted translation studies.
... T-universals are concerned with the intralinguistic comparison between translated texts and non-translated original texts in the target language while S-universals are concerned with the interlinguistic comparison between source texts and translated texts. On the other hand, some proposed that the hypothesis consists of many sub-hypotheses like simplification (Laviosa, 1998a;Malmkjaer, 1997), explicitation (Olohan, 2003;Olohan & Baker, 2000;Øverås, 1998), normalization (Kenny, 2014(Kenny, , 2017, levelling out (Laviosa, 1998b), and the unique item hypothesis (Eskola, 2004;Tirkkonen-Condit, 2004), to name a few. Among these, explicitation stands out to be the most semantically salient hypothesis. ...
Albeit extensive studies of translation universals at lexical and grammatical levels, there has been scant research at the syntactic-semantic level. To bridge this gap, this study employs semantic role labeling and textual entailment analysis to compare Chinese translations with English source texts and non-translated Chinese original texts. The research has found substantial evidence for translation universals like explicitation, simplification, and levelling out at the syntactic-semantic level, which is illustrated by significant differences between syntactic-semantic features of Chinese translations and those of English source texts and Chinese original texts. This suggests a distinct syntactic-semantic uniqueness of Chinese translations, wherein the overall features exhibit an “eclectic” characteristic, showcasing contrasting outcomes such as explicitation identified as S-universal and implicitation deemed T-universal. This could be attributed to the gravitational pull from the two language systems. In the inspection of specific semantic roles, features of agents and discourse markers are found to be evidence for both S-explicitation and T-explicitation, potentially reflecting the role of socio-cultural factors in shaping the uniqueness of syntactic-semantic features of Chinese translations. These findings further underscore the complexity inherent in translation, highlighting its function as a dynamic balance system.
... Studying "that" omission in native and learner English, Olohan and Baker (2000) found that the optional usage of "that" conjunction typically follows reporting main verbs -such as "say", "think", "suggest". Our data largely supports this observation: while the total of 434 distinct main verb lemmas were found to precede the optional "that", roughly two thirds (64.7%) of all usages (or potential usages -omissions) are covered by the top-10 most frequent lemmas in the dataset. ...
The Uniform Information Density (UID) hypothesis posits that speakers optimize the communicative properties of their utterances by avoiding spikes in information, thereby maintaining a relatively uniform information profile over time. This paper investigates the impact of UID principles on syntactic reduction, specifically focusing on the optional omission of the connector "that" in English subordinate clauses. Building upon previous research, we extend our investigation to a larger corpus of written English, utilize contemporary large language models (LLMs) and extend the information-uniformity principles by the notion of entropy, to estimate the UID manifestations in the usecase of syntactic reduction choices.
... Meanwhile, Puurtinen (2004) looks for linguistic indicators of explicitation at the level of lexis. At the level of syntax, indicators include the distribution in translated and non-translated texts of devices explicitating optional choices (Olohan and Baker, 2000;Jiménez-Crespo, 2011). The level of discourse embraces explicitating shifts in lexical cohesion in translated texts as compared to their sources (Øverås, 1998), conjunctive explicitness (Pápai, 2004) and explicative reformulation (Xiao, 2011). ...
This preliminary qualitative research aims to examine the changes in the level of explicitness of cohesive elements during the translation process. It does so by comparing an excerpt from Jane Austen's English novel "Pride and Prejudice" (1993) with its two Vietnamese translations by Diep Minh Tam (2002) and Lam Quynh Anh and Thien Nga (2017). The study focuses on how these translations handle cohesive elements based on Halliday and Hassan's cohesion taxonomy (1976). It also considers the tendency for explicitation, as suggested by Blum-Kulka's hypothesis (1986) and Gumul's framework (2017). The analysis involves identifying these cohesive devices in the source text and comparing them with their counterparts in the target texts to detect translational shifts towards greater explicitness. Additionally, the study examines how the two Vietnamese translations differ from each other in handling these elements. The findings of this descriptive study reveal that both Vietnamese translations employ explicitation techniques, including reiteration, the transformation of pro-forms into lexical cohesion, and the restoration of substitution and clausal ellipses used in the original text. The analysis also reflects different translation decisions in transferring the same source language content into the target language between the two translators, which manifests in the usage of explicitation shifts in the target language texts under study.
... To be precise, the explicitness in translation output helps convey particular representations of texts, which seem to be consistent with studies on translations and the nuance of the TT contents (e.g., Olohan and Baker 2000;Zhang et al. 2020). Certainly, in the present study, pronouns rao and we play a crucial role in establishing a fundamental interpersonal link between the discourse producer and receiver. ...
This article examines the English translations of former Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s statements on the international stage and the shifts in the first-person pronoun. Looking at interpersonal positioning through a systemic functional linguistic lens, we found that the translations underline the explicitness of agency, highlighting the variation of stylistic choices and interplay with source-text politics. The shifts come with a modified degree of willingness, a more active agency, an increase in the modality of inclination, and more force in attitude. These interpersonal overtones largely contribute to recasting the image of the Thai government to ensure its legitimacy, promote national unity, and appeal to the international community. These crafted translated texts seem to hone the leader’s public persona in front of global audiences by continuing to enhance the country’s reputation, thereby maintaining the speaker’s dignity and prestige–an essential for the national leader’s image.
... Studies on translation universals, greatly advanced by corpus-based translation studies (Baker, 1995), have revealed linguistic features either overused or underused in translated texts compared to non-translated ones. However, the features chosen to justify translation universals, namely simplification, explicitation, normalization, and leveling, are usually few and loosely connected across studies, such as the optional complementizer "that", linking adverbials, mean word length (Baker, 2004;Hu, et al., 2019;Olohan and Baker, 2000). Nevertheless, such an approach is sustained by interpreting scholars to specify interpreting universals characterized by linguistic features whose uses consistently exceed expectations in interpreted texts as opposed to noninterpreted ones. ...
This study uses a multidimensional analysis (MDA) proposed by Douglas Biber to investigate the difference in communicative functions between the interpreted and non-interpreted political discourses, based on a comparable corpus of English interpretations of Chinese government press conferences and original English of U.S. government press conferences. The findings show that MDA distinguishes the interpreted from the non-interpreted discourse along several communicative dimensions and that the former is just as persuasive as the latter but has a higher information density and yet a lower degree of involvement, more non-narrative content, higher reference clarity, more abstract information, and a slightly lower degree of information elaboration. These differences can be explained by the nature of the interpretation of government press conferences as an institutional discourse, the interpreting norms, the interpreters’ professional habitus, as well as the working and broadcasting modes of consecutive interpretations in a political setting. MDA used in this study proves its effectiveness in identifying the differences in stylistics and discourse functions between the interpreted and non-interpreted discourse in similar communicative contexts and settings.
... Explicitation: Explicitation, as defined by Olohan and Baker (2000), involves making implicit information from the source text explicit in the target text. Amplification is a form of explicitation where important implicit elements in the source language are explicitly identified in the receptor language. ...
... As a putative universal, simplification is believed to be "inherent in the translation process itself" (Baker, 1993, p. 243). Simplification is presumed to apply subconsciously and is inaccessible to the translator (Baker, 1996;Olohan & Baker, 2000). However, there is no evidence, to date, supporting this process-inherent automaticity claim. ...
Translated text (TT) is characteristically simpler than non-translated (NTT) authentic text in terms of its lexicon, syntax, and style. It is still not clear what causes this phenomenon, and scholars continue to debate the issue. The traditional lexical metrics that are implemented in the simplification literature are often criticised as unreliable and lacking cognitive grounding. Moreover, being predominantly product-oriented, they cannot tell us how (or why) simplification happens. This paper addresses this limitation in the literature and proposes a paradigm that uses complexity-based measures adopted from Phonology and Cognitive Psychology. Calculations are run on a corpus of 100 translated and non-translated article abstracts drawn from five academic disciplines. Statistical analyses reveal significant differences between TTs and NTTs. The paper discusses the implications of these results and concludes that a cognition-informed approach is a key to demystifying simplification. Keywords: linguistic complexity; simplification; phonological complexity; neighbourhood density, phonotactic probability
... Despite these controversies, Baker's initial proposal suggested several research directions that have yielded new insights into the features of translational language (e.g., Olohan and Baker 2000;Xia 2014;Liu and Afzaal 2021). Baker (1993Baker ( , 1995Baker ( , 1996 also pioneered the application of corpus methods to identify features of translated texts, especially the use of comparable corpora to compare translated texts with non-translated ones. ...
The advance of corpus-based methodology in translation studies has greatly enhanced our understanding of the nature of translational language. While most research efforts have focused on identifying the unique features of translations carried out by professionals, comparatively fewer studies have investigated the linguistic features of student translations. In this corpus-based study, we examine if learner translations carried out by Hong Kong students exhibit lexical simplification features vis-à-vis comparable written texts. The study is based on two comparable corpora: the International Corpus of English in Hong Kong (ICE-HK) and the Parallel Learner Translation Corpus (PLTC) compiled at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Following Laviosa (1998), we compare four main lexical features (lexical density, type-token ratio, core vocabulary coverage, and list head coverage) to investigate if student translations show a simplification trend. The results demonstrate that Chinese-to-English translation is not lexically simpler than English as a Second Language (ESL) writing. Furthermore, it is lexically denser than ESL writing. Our study aims to provide new insights into learner translation as a form of constrained communication.
... They move further to identify different levels of linguistic analysis that are used to represent these strategies, namely lexical, syntactical, semantic and discourse levels. For instance, Olohan and Baker (2000) investigated the frequency of the use of that after reporting verbs in English such as say and tell in the Translational English Corpus (TEC) compared to its frequency in the British National Corpus (BNC). They found that the conjunction that tends to appear more frequently in the TEC than in the BNC, which is possibly indicative of a tendency towards syntactic explicitation in translated English. ...
In film, the communicative meanings associated with linguistic varieties in dialogue fulfil different diegetic functions, such as character portrayal. Consequently, the subtitling of linguistic varieties has received considerable critical attention with regard to audiovisual translation in different language pairs. However, existing studies on this topic have focused solely on the verbal mode, at the expense of non-verbal modes. Few discussions consider the impact of these strategies on diegetic functions constructed by the linguistic varieties within the context of intermodal relations established between different modes in the film. In addition, few studies have focused on the subtitling of linguistic varieties in Egyptian films into English. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the linguistic varieties used in Egyptian comedies and their English subtitles by compiling a corpus. It will also develop a new multimodal analytical framework to account for all the modes that contribute to the construction of meaning in the films. It will then combine this multimodal theoretical framework with a corpus approach. The results of the analysis of the source texts show that there are four categories of linguistic varieties: the ‘standard social’, ‘standard social-specific’, ‘non-standard regional’ and ‘sub-standard social’ varieties. The findings also reveal that the preservation strategy of centralisation is the most common strategy used in the English subtitling. The findings of the analysis also show that the most regular intermodal relations identified in the source texts (STs) are intermodal relations of ‘confirmation’ and, to a lesser extent, intermodal relations of ‘contradiction’. The use of the ‘standard’ variety in the target texts (TTs) establishes more intermodal relations of ‘contradiction’ in comparison to the STs. The use of the ‘non-standard colloquial’ variety modifies the STs’ intermodal relations of ‘confirmation’ while the use of the ‘sub-standard social’ variety preserves the STs’ intermodal relations of ‘confirmation’. The new and innovative analytical framework proposed in this study provides a valuable tool to combine a multimodal theoretical framework with corpus analysis for the multimodal study of subtitling in general and the subtitling of linguistic varieties in audiovisual products in particular.
... Большинство из этих различий трактуется в настоящее время как переводческие универсалии (Most of these differences were interpreted as direct evidence for one or more so-called translation universals, such as explicitation, simplification and normalisation [Baker 1993, Baker 1996]. For instance [Olohan, Baker 2000], consider the higher frequency of explicit complementiser that in translated ...
The paper shows that traditional ways of introducing new lexicographic items into the terminology of Russian, such as calquing (literal translation), transliteration and transcription from a foreign language, cannot be used in translating contemporary English extended digital terminology. New items cannot be rendered word by word because of their language-specific character. Contemporary corpus-based translation studies reveal that language use in translat-ed and non-translated texts differs considerably on all linguistic levels — lexical, grammatical, and discursive, and these phenomena are not lexicographically fixed yet. Most of these differ-ences were interpreted as direct evidence for the so-called translation universals, such as ex-plicitation, simplification and normalization, that are supposed to be incorporated into the fu-ture digital lexicographic products.
... Baker (1993) first proposed that translation is constrained by a fully articulated text in another language that inevitably leaves traces in the language translators produce. But corpus-based studies of translation go further, providing evidence that translators tend to make explicit what is either implicit in the source text or would be implicit in a non-translated text in the same language -e.g., they have a tendency to spell out the optional that in reporting structures in translated English text compared to non-translated English in the same genres (Olohan and Baker 2000). De Sutter and Lefer offer a critical analysis of the current state-of-the-art and outline a revised research agenda based on 'multi-methodological designs and advanced statistical modelling' (2020: 18) that nevertheless focuses on the nature of translation as a form of 'constrained communication ' (ibid.:19). ...
Increased globalization, growing mobility of people and commodities, and the spread and intensity of armed conflicts since the turn of the twenty-first century have established translation and interpreting more firmly in the public consciousness. Following a brief introduction and historical survey of translation and interpreting studies as a scholarly discipline, this chapter explores a range of issues that have interested both translation scholars and applied linguists in recent years. These include the contribution that translation and interpreting make to the delivery of institutional agendas in various settings; the negotiation of power differentials in a range of social settings; the role of translation in social movements and activist initiatives seeking to redress inequality; and the involvement of translators and interpreters as important political players in armed conflicts. The chapter then focuses on the role that translation and interpreting play in promoting cultural and linguistic diversity against the backdrop of the dominance of English as a lingua franca, examining the challenges posed by new multimodal genres arising from technological developments in digital culture. Future directions for the discipline of translation and interpreting studies are considered in the concluding section
... There are further discussions on what causes explicitation. Explicitation is explained as a result of unconscious cognitive processes (Gumul, 2006(Gumul, , 2021Olohan & Baker, 2000;Serhii, 2019), risk avoidance (Becher, 2010;Kruger & van Rooy, 2016b;Pym, 2005Pym, , 2015, and other factors. ...
Research on explicitation has been criticized by a lack of diachronic analyses and multi-lingual comparisons. This study, therefore, conducts a 50-year (1970–2019) comparison of referential explicitness between a 11,721,608-token corpus of English translated diplomatic discourse from 56 languages and a 11,113,036-token corpus of English original diplomatic discourse extracted from the United Nations General Debate Corpus (UNGDC) with the Multi-dimensional Analysis (MDA) framework. The findings suggest 1) a general tendency towards less explicitation for the English translated discourse in the UNGDC with time, 2) referential explicitation in Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, and 31 other languages (more often from Sino-Tibetan, Mongolic-Khitan, and 6 other language families) and implicitation in Japanese and 21 other languages (more often from Japonic and 4 other language families), and 3) changes in referential explicitness in the discourses of China, Russia, Spain, and UAE in comparison with Britain and the United States. The potential influence of language contact and source language interference may be further taken into account. With the findings, this study calls for more dynamic views and multi-lingual comparisons on explicitation in diverse genres to present a fuller picture of the translation universal.
... If so, the implicit semantic relationship between constituents needs to be expressed more explicitly in French, which may pose an additional challenge. This aspect of explicitation has been a topic of interest in translation studies (Olohan and Baker, 2000;De Sutter and Lefer, 2020), and the present study may demonstrate to what extent this occurs in the different subtypes. ...
English [Noun+Adj] compound adjectives containing an intensifying metaphor (e.g. crystal-clear) pose particular challenges for French translation, due in part to the absence of a direct equivalent construction. Our study examines morphosyntactic and conceptual-semantic translation procedures that capture how these challenges are resolved. We also explore the little-investigated aspect of translation variation (the number of different solutions for each item). We analyze the potential effects of two factors: the presence or absence of figurative intensification and the items’ frequency of use in English. Our results indicate that translators prefer different morphosyntactic procedures for different compound subtypes. Overall, an adjective constituent is most frequently retained, although complete reformulations with a noun or verb also occur. Semantically, the intensifying meaning is often rendered non-figuratively, depending on what is available in idiomatic French usage. Intensification is also frequently dropped. Translation variation is remarkably high, due in part to extensive use of near-synonyms. High-frequency items do not appear to converge on a smaller number of translations, but instead provide more opportunities for diversification.
... gender, main occupation, language background). In early corpus translation studies such as Laviosa (1998) and Olohan and Baker (2000), data extracted from TEC were typically compared with data drawn from comparable portions of the British National Corpus. Importantly, source texts were not included in TEC because Baker insisted that translations be studied in their own right, i.e. without reference to the prior text. ...
... After the corpus was applied to the field of translation research in the 1990s, people were no longer limited to the perceptual understanding of the translation, but began to use the powerful computing power of the computer to calculate the relevant data of the translation and analyze the characteristics of translation. Previous studies mainly focus on translation teaching, lexicography [5], corpus construction [10], translation universality [2] [8], and translator's style [4]. Baker points out that translation studies has inherited from literary studies its preoccupation with the style of individual creative writers and from linguistics the preoccupation with the style of social groups of language users [3]. ...
... Since its emergence in the early 1990s under the impetus of Mona Baker (1993), CBTS has grown to become a recognized area of research in translation studies. Since 1995, Mona Baker and her team have started to build the first translational English corpus (TEC), and have conducted a series of corpus-based translation studies, including translation universals (Baker 1995, Laviosa 1998, Olohan and Baker 2000, translator's style (Baker 1999) and translation norms (Kenny 1998), etc. After the progress made in the past decades, it emerges clearly that CBTS now makes widespread use of theoretical insights and research methods borrowed from neighboring disciplines, such as translation process research, linguistic theory, contrastive linguistics, variational linguistics, contact linguistics, second-language acquisition and psycholinguistics (Kruger and Van Rooy 2016, Halverson 2017, Kruger and De Sutter 2018, De Sutter and Lefer 2020. ...
The field of corpus-based translation studies (CBTS) relies on corpus-linguistic methods and tools to analyze electronic corpora of authentic translations. Since its emergence in the early 1990s under the impetus of Mona Baker, CBTS has grown to become a recognized area of research in translation studies. By offering an overview of the field and presenting a variety of fresh perspectives provided by leading experts, The book Extending the Scope of Corpus-Based Translation Studies extends the scope of CBTS in multiple ways, and sheds light on the future of the translation industry.
... Baker 1993) and ascribe it to the nature of the translation process itself (e.g. Blum-Kulka 1986;Shlesinger 1995;Olohan and Baker 2000;Whittaker 2004). Greater explicitness of a translated text has also been attributed to translators' cognitive processes underlying text comprehension (e.g. ...
The paper reports on process- and product-oriented analysis of trainee interpreters’ motivations in explicitating the translated message and their own perception of the role of such shifts. The research method is self-retrospection triangulated with product analysis (manual comparison of source and target texts). The study aims to find out to what extent the effects produced by explicitations in target texts coincide with the reported motivations of trainee interpreters to perform explicitating shifts. The results show a low level of correspondence between trainee interpreters’ motivations in performing explicitations and the actual effect such shifts exert on target texts. Trainees’ awareness of the consequences of explicitation appears to be related to the metafunction of such shifts. While the subjects in this study show some degree of awareness how their textual and interpersonal shifts affect the message, very few of them appear to be conscious of the consequences of ideational shifts.
This parallel corpus study looks into the contrastive connective and degree modifier uses of two cognate adverbs that can be considered each other’s crosslinguistic counterparts, English rather and French plutôt. These adverbs have very similar functional profiles, both being able to act as compromisers and to express the same range of contrastive relationships—reformulation, preference, replacement and antithesis. This study confirms earlier findings regarding the predominance of the contrastive uses over the degree uses and the overall trend for the contrastive markers to mostly be translated by each other. In addition, however, this study has shown that despite the adverbs’ cross-linguistic similarity, translators often opt for alternative renderings of these adverbs rather than their immediate corresponding forms in the target language. Whereas omission is sometimes opted for, especially for the contrastive uses and for degree rather, explicitation could often be observed.
The study of compilation of texts, under the banner of corpus linguistics, has been used for linguistic analyses of the nature, structure and uses of language for a long time. It is not only designated as a field of theoretical linguistics, but also as an emerging methodological approach to language-related research in the present day. For the sake of a thorough understanding about corpus linguistics and its application in arrays of language studies, this chapter offers conceptual discussion about using corpora to explore practical issues pertaining to Translation Studies. The chapter first offers a brief history of corpus linguistics, including its varied definitions and theoretical positions, as well as the influences of changes in theoretical perspectives on its development. The chapter then presents different corpus-based approaches to Translation Studies and characterizes types of corpora used for research purposes. It also discusses the strengths and weaknesses of using corpora as data sources and for data analyses. The chapter ends with recommendations on possible application of corpus-based approaches to research in Translation Studies.
free online copies of eprint link:
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In this study, we explore the under-examined area of joint translation within translation studies academia through a detailed stylometric analysis of the English rendition of the classic Chinese novel Hongloumeng (literally A dream of red mansions, also known as The story of the stone). Initially, we scrutinize the translation’s lexical diversity employing metrics such as MATTR and MWL, alongside analyzing sentence length via MSL and idea density through the use of CPIDR. Subsequently, we apply a multidimensional analysis with the MAT 1.3.2 framework. Finally, we delve into the implications our stylometric findings have for stylistic analysis. Our comprehensive quantitative evaluation underscores the efficacy of multi-perspective stylometric analysis in enhancing descriptive studies of translator and translation styles, thereby effectively distinguishing ‘translator-ship’.
Explicitation might be the most discussed phenomenon in Translation Studies history, and yet the most elusive of them all. This study aims to contribute to the literature on the cognitive relevance-theoretic approach to explicitation and implicitation, adopting the view that translation is a type of pragmatically communicative and interpretive act. First, the study presents a brief critical overview of selected existing accounts of explicitation and implicitation to show how the definitions are riddled with circularity and the classifications with lack of conformity. Second, it addresses the existing relevance-theoretic models in an attempt to reconcile their classifications in a unified, applicable relevance-theoretic model of analysis. It puts to good use the fuller account of the range of pragmatic processes widely discussed in Relevance Theory; namely, disambiguation, reference assignment, free enrichment, higher-level explicature and ad hoc concept. The corpus of the study is selected articles from Nature , as representative of scientific and technical discourse, in English and their translations into Arabic as published in the Arabic edition of Nature . The study leans upon Gutt's Optimal Relevance theory and Pym's Risk Management hypothesis to explain the outcomes of the analysis.
This article considers the possibility of translational processes beyond translation through a genetic editing approach to an understudied phenomenon in Translation Studies, namely the use of intermediary allograph translations in collaborative self-translation. It considers a self-translator’s practice of involving a hired translator to provide an initial translation of an entire work, later to be revised extensively by the author. With a focus on Romain Gary as its case study, it argues that an inductive extension of our notion of what is translational can offer a pathway to distinguishing between literal and metaphorical use of translation in literary theory. It thus suggests a potential alternative to existing translational discourse in interdisciplinary settings, as well as presenting a view of collaborative self-translation as a practice that can be fruitfully theorised within multiple paradigms in Translation Studies.
This study investigates the phenomenon of chunk explicitation in Chinese-English diplomatic interpretation during the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on high-frequency chunks employed by prominent national leaders, including General Secretary Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, and State Councilor Wang Yi. The research utilizes monolingual corpus analysis and AntConc software to analyze six actual speech interpretations. It categorizes explicitation into four types: obligatory, optional, pragmatic, and translation-inherent explicitation. The study identifies three main motivations behind chunk explicitation in diplomatic interpretation: linguistic motivations stemming from syntactic and grammatical differences, cultural motivations arising from bridging cultural gaps, and interpreter motivations related to conveying information effectively. Additionally, the research assesses the implications of explicitation, including its impact on clarity, comprehensibility, and its role in conveying emotions and tone in diplomatic speeches. Chunk explicitation is a common phenomenon in Chinese-English diplomatic interpretation during the pandemic. It serves linguistic, cultural, and interpreter motivations, enhancing clarity and conveying emotions in diplomatic communication. The study contributes to diplomatic interpretation and provides practical guidance for interpreting learners and practitioners. Future research may expand the scope and classification of interpretation types, further advancing our understanding of this complex process. Ultimately, this research aids in promoting effective diplomatic communication and global understanding during crises.
This volume presents innovative research on the interface between pragmatics and translation. Taking a broad understanding of translation, papers are presented in four different parts. Part I focuses on interpreting; Part II centers on the translation of fictional and non-fictional texts and spaces; Part III discusses audiovisual translation; and Part IV explores translation in a wider context that includes transforming senses and action into language. The issues that transpire as worth exploring in these areas are mediality and multi-modality, interpersonal pragmatics, close and approximate renditions, interpretese and translationese, participation structures and the negotiation of discourses and power.
A coletânea segue em essência o escopo da PERcursos, visto
que apresenta trabalhos diversos com diferentes abordagens,
teorias e práticas. Apesar da proposital diversidade, o leitor terá a
oportunidade de encontrar em cada contribuição a persistência na
realização de um trabalho sério que reafirma a importância da
linguística no mundo contemporâneo, bem como as inúmeras
possibilidades de se encarar os desafios em se perseguir problemas
relacionados à linguagem.
Third code research has documented the distinctiveness of translated language and singled out recurrent tendencies framing them as translation universals. This paper aims to identify the interaction between interference, explicitation, implicitation and normalization and their potential relationship(s) with other variables, such as register. The focus of the study is on Spanish discourse markers (DMs) translated from English. This study uses interference, explicitation, implicitation and normalization as methodological tools to unveil these patterns. Evidence comes from a bilingual parallel corpus (P-ACTRES 2.0), a corpus of translated Spanish (CETRI), and a reference corpus of contemporary Spanish (CORPES XXI). We select the input DMs according to two criteria: first, we focus on DMs showing cross-linguistic formal correspondence, indicating the possibility of grammatical interference; second, we consider different procedural meanings for the DMs to anticipate potential regularity distortions. Results indicate that DM underuse in the target texts generally co-occurs with explicitation. Register is an important variable: implicitation is more frequent in non-fiction and, together with normalization, affects the majority of DMs. Evidence also points to the DMs' semantics influencing implicitation and explicitation.
This engaging overview covers the key theories of equivalence, solution types, purpose, scientific approaches, uncertainty, automation, and cultural translation. Fully revised, this third edition adds coverage of Russian and Ukrainian theories, examples from Chinese, advances in machine translation, and research on translators’ cognitive processes. Readers are encouraged to explore the various theories and consider their strengths, weaknesses, and implications for translation practice. The book concludes with a survey of the way translation is used as a model in postmodern cultural studies and sociologies, extending its scope beyond traditional Western notions.
Translators theorize as they translate, projecting frames for their choices between alternative renditions. That initial theorization then produces terms and concepts as translators participate in discussions and debates, leading eventually to formalized theories that seem artificially separated from translation practice. As this happens, different ways of seeing and defining translation evolve, to the extent that proponents of one theory may simply not understand the adepts of another. This book has a position in that relativist play of differences: the theories it explores mostly concern the translation concept that developed in Europe in the Early Modern period and has since been disseminated as a fellow traveller of modernity. The limits and limitations of that concept can nevertheless be challenged by the dynamic, comparative, and practice-oriented testing of translation theories in the classroom, widening the range of alternatives available to the translator.
Previous studies on translator’s or translation style have mostly focused on literary works. This study is a stylistic analysis of Chinese-language editorials and commentaries published in the Hong Kong Economic Journal (HKEJ) and their print and web versions of English translations. The study includes a corpus analysis of the original and translated news texts’ average sentence length, standardized type-token ratio, reporting verbs and high-frequency words. These are interpreted in relation to the translators’ personal attributes and the socio-cultural contexts to identify several major factors contributing to stylistic differences. This study finds that the news translation style is influenced by both source language linguistic features and target language conventions. The production of translated news texts involves the input of multiple agents, which is demonstrated in the collective traces of translation styles. The stylistic shifts between the original and translated news editorials and commentaries reflect the news outlet’s editorial stance and targeted readership. The empirical findings contribute to our understanding of the critical role stylistic features play in Chinese-to-English journalistic translation.
The main goal of the project is to create the English-Polish-Belarusian Literary Parallel Corpus (EPB corpus) and present its applications in several linguistic disciplines, including translation studies and discourse analysis. The thesis provides an outline of corpus linguistics research and corpus linguistics as a methodology, then addresses the problem of the differences in the development of corpus linguistics in the three languages: English (as a lingua franca), Polish (a
statutory national language) and Belarusian (a minority language). The analysis of available tools and resources for each of these languages proves the need for the EPB corpus in order to develop useful new resources for Belarusian in particular.
A substantial part of the thesis presents the documentation of the process of creating the corpus. Various aspects of corpus design, text collection and text encoding are discussed in the context of the availability and usability of numerous tools. Special attention is paid to the tools specifically designed for each language and to the solutions that enable the data processed by these tools to be merged.
Using corpus linguistics techniques (e.g. linguistic distribution, lexical density, vector-based semantic similarity measures) the thesis goes on to explore the application of the EPB corpus in investigating translation universals, in exploring the dependency between the author’s and the translator’s style, in supporting translation students and professionals, and in analysis of gender discourse. These case studies clearly show the practical value of the resource.
Finally, the thesis provides a detailed overview of the plans and possibilities for further development of the project in the broader context of the evolution of Polish and Belarusian corpus linguistics.
Chapter 5 discusses claims that different norms govern translation and the nature of translated text in different temporal and geographical contexts, and that translated texts differ from first-written texts. It considers the troubled relationship between the notions of norms and translation universals, and addresses the question of what constitutes a translation ‘proper’, and what characterizes the task a translator takes on when translating a piece of literature. It gives an account of the variety of approaches and attitudes taken to this task since Ancient Roman times, through to the work of Gideon Toury on translation laws and later developments that this has inspired, including work on norms, the nature of translated text, and translation universals. Translations and retranslations into English of Henrik Ibsen’s plays are used for purposes of illustration.
Résumé
Cet article traite de la "centralité" des études basées sur le corpus par rapport au domaine entier de la traductologie. L'auteur met le lecteur en garde contre la tentation de faire de la rigueur scientifique une fin en soi par des études quantitatives vides et inutiles.
: The development of a coherent methodology for corpus-based work in translation studies is essential for the evolution of this new field of research into a fully-fledged paradigm within the discipline. The design of a monolingual, multi-source-language comparable corpus of English as a resource for the systematic study of the nature of translated text can be regarded as an important step towards the development of such a methodology. This paper deals with a crucial and problematic aspect of the design of a monolingual comparable corpus, namely the achievement of an adequate level of comparability between its trans-lational and non-translational components.
Résumé: Une méthodologie cohérente pour l'étude de corpus de traductions s'impose si l'on entend conférer à celle-ci la valeur d'un paradigme au sein de la traductologie. L'étude systématique du texte traduit qui s'étaye sur un corpus comparable d'anglais à plusieurs langues-sources peut être considérée comme une étape importante de ce processus. Le présent article étudie un aspect essentiel mais problématique de la constitution de corpus monolingues comparables, à savoir la mise au point d'un niveau approprié de comparabilité entre ses parties traduites et non-traduites.
: Corpus-based research has become widely accepted as a factor in improving the performance of machine translation systems, and corpus-based terminology compilation is now the norm rather than the exception. Within translation studies proper, Lindquist (1984) has advocated the use of corpora for training translators, and Baker (1993a) has argued that theoretical research into the nature of translation will receive a powerful impetus from corpus-based studies. It is becoming increasingly important to take stock of what is happening on this front and to start working towards the development of an explicit and coherent methodology for corpus-based research in the discipline. This paper discusses the current and potential use of corpora in translation studies, with particular reference to theoretical issues.
Résumé: On s'accorde à voir dans la recherche sur corpus un facteur susceptible d'améliorer les systèmes de traduction automatique; la terminologie basée sur corpus devient la règle plutôt que l'exception. A propos des recherches sur la traduction, Lidquist (1984) a prôné le recours aux corpora dans la formation des traducteurs; selon Baker (1993a), l'étude théorique de la traduction bénéficiera des recherches fondées sur corpus. Il importe désormais de répertorier les acquis en ce domaine, afin de mettre au point une méthodologie explicite et cohérente. L'article qui suit analyse l'usage présent et possible des corpora dans les recherches sur la traduction, et prêtant une attention particulière aux questions théoriques.
Thesis (doctoral)--University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, 1996.
The English Comparable Corpus: A Resource and a Methodology Unity in Diversity: Current Trends in Translation Studies
- S Laviosa
Laviosa, S. 1998. The English Comparable Corpus: A Resource and a Methodology. In: Bowker,
L., Cronin, M., Kenny, D. & Pearson, J. (eds.). Unity in Diversity: Current Trends in
Translation Studies. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. 101–112.
That's That. The Hague: Mouton
- D Bolinger
Bolinger, D. 1972 That's That. The Hague: Mouton.
Norms and Creativity: Lexis in Translated Text: Centre for Translation Studies
- D Kenny
Kenny, D. 1999. Norms and Creativity: Lexis in Translated Text. PhD Thesis, Manchester: Centre
for Translation Studies, UMIST.
On the History of that/zero as Object Clause Links in English
- M Rissanen
Rissanen, M. 1991. On the History of that/zero as Object Clause Links in English. In: Aijmer, K.
and Altenberg, B. (eds.) English Corpus Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik.
London & New York: Longman. 272–289.
Do Literary Translators Have 'Style'? A Corpus-based Exploration
- M Baker
- Forthcoming
Baker, M. Forthcoming. Do Literary Translators Have 'Style'? A Corpus-based Exploration.
A Corpus-based Study of Translational English, MSc Dissertation, Manchester: Centre for Translation Studies
- S Burnett
Burnett, S. 1999. A Corpus-based Study of Translational English, MSc Dissertation, Manchester:
Centre for Translation Studies, UMIST.