Can dependency distance and direction be used to differentiate translational language from native language?

Abstract

Translational language is called “the third code” or “the third language” by some researchers. However, whether “the third code” truly exists or not has been an issue of controversy for decades ever since it was proposed. In this study, in the framework of dependency grammar, we use mean dependency distances (MDD) and dependency direction for analyzing translated texts and native texts in an attempt to differentiate translational language from native language in a quantitative way, while displaying holistic features. We built a dependency-annotated treebank consisting of translated English texts, native English texts and native Chinese texts. To eliminate the influence of sentence length and text size on the MDD and dependency direction, we calculated the MDD of each sentence length, and made sure each text was similar in size. We found that: (1) the MDD of the translated English texts was significantly different from that of native English texts, with the MDD of the former much longer than that of the latter; (2) texts of the two types were also significantly different in dependency direction, with the translated English texts being more head-initial compared with the native English texts. Differences in the MDD is probably influenced by the bigger cognitive effort in dealing with Chinese source language and difference in dependency direction is probably due to translators’ tendency of putting the informational focus ahead while making decisions. These findings suggest that (1) dependency distance and direction can be used to differentiate translational language from native language; (2) typologically speaking, translational language, a third language which is distinctive from native language may exist; (3) translational language is produced under the combined effect of cognitive effort and decision-making process by translators; and 4) syntactic quantitative methods can be applied to translation studies.