Exploring the Roles of Semantic Prosody and Semantic Preference for Achieving Cross-Language Equivalence: A Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis of Translation Pairs in English and Chinese

Abstract

Recent corpus-based studies of translation equivalence indicate that cross-language equivalence resides in units of meaning larger than single words, and that equivalence can be established by assessing co-selection patterns of translation pairs. This study explores the roles of semantic preference and semantic prosody for achieving cross-language equivalence between English and Chinese. Analysing the recurrent word-level translation equivalents extracted from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Parallel Corpus, this study examines the semantic preferential and prosodic profiles of the equivalents in two comparable corpora. This chapter argues that cross-language equivalence lies in co-selection patterns and that semantic prosody serves as a defining criterion for establishing pattern equivalence. Finally, the chapter addresses practical implications for contrastive studies of phraseology, translation studies, and foreign language pedagogy.