Some Problems of Automatic Emotion Extraction (by Example of Diplomatic Discourse Texts)

This article is devoted to the study of German diplomatic discourse as a linguistic phenomenon in the perspective of its translation and transfer by means of semantic transformations from German into Russian. The diplomatic discourse of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the former German Foreign Minister (2005-2009 and 2013-2017), is used as a research material. As a result of the analysis, the author confirms the hypothesis that modulation is the dominant semantic transformation in the translation of diplomatic discourse, and that the translator of diplomatic texts should pay special attention to clarifying semantic development and concretization, holistic transformation and context synonyms. In addition, the author concludes that such kind of transformation as adaptation is not applied in translating texts of diplomatic discourse.

The paper is focused on the research of translation peculiarities of the texts of political discourse in the global contemporary information space. Politics is one of the constituents of cultural system of society which possesses high influence on social everyday life. In its turn, a language plays a fundamental role in the process of any political activity, as it makes basis of gaining and holding power, as well as ruling the society. Considering that texts of political discourse are an important instrument of impact on national and international public, it is obvious that they need a detailed analysis and a careful interpretation in transmission to a target language. Texts of political discourse may belong to different genres and possess various stylistic characteristics. From a functional point of view, texts of political discourse have a different aim depending on the type of political activity, being a part or result of it. Among them we define texts of diplomatic discourse, texts of official speech of politicians for certain public of a certain country, and texts of political discourse, the authors of which are not politicians. Texts of political discourse are complex multilayer structures, marked by cultural, ideological and stylistic features, which make translators highly responsible and careful in the transmission of the author’s ideas and messages in other languages.

The article presents the analysis of the texts of the Portuguese diplomatic discourse (congratulatory telegrams, welcome notes, protocol and ceremonial documents, etc.) from the point of view of means serving to create a positive image of the country. Linguistic and conceptual analyses are carried out; the basic tools of forming a conceptual field of the text are defined. Words and expressions representing the concepts of “Amizade” (“Friendship”), “Povo” (“People”), and “Confiança” (“Trust”) are seen as the basic means used to create a positive image. The concept of “Amizade” (“Friendship”) is the main concept accounting for the image’s linguocultural structure, linking together all the other concepts. It helps the Portuguese diplomats to form an image of Portugal as a community of friendly people. As a result, Portugal is seen as a friendly country towards all international actors, ready to demonstrate confidence and to improve relations at the collective and individual level. The article concludes that translator or interpreter while making his or her translation should take into account the conceptual structure of the text as part of the diplomatic discourse to convey most accurately the culturally significant meanings of the text.

The aim of the given study consists in exploring the techniques of translation of the texts of Russian diplomatic discourse into Arabic. Full texts of speeches, speech transcripts and opening remarks of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation S. V. Lavrov published on the site of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2004 to 2018 and the available translations of these texts into Arabic served as material of analysis. The paper also analyzes the quotations from S.V. Lavrov’s speeches translated into Arabic and published on other Arabic sites. The paper considers the interpretation of the terms of “translation techniques”, “translation transformations” and “translation equivalents” in the works on translation studies. In general, all the terms are used to denote various methods of changing the source text used by translators in their professional activity. As long as translation difficulties bring about the necessity to carry out interlingual changes demanding reorganization at different linguistic levels, the authors of the article prefer the term “transformations”. While considering translation equivalents, it is important to differentiate between microtranslation (regular equivalents for translation of the source language units by means of the corresponding target language units) and macrotranslation (non-regular equivalents, which are occasional and contextually bound). The analysis of translations of S. V. Lavrov’s speeches has shown that translators use some transformations. These transformations can be subdivided into lexical (transcriptions/transliterations while translating proper names and international words and loan translations), lexico-semantic (concretization, generalization, modulation), lexico-grammatical (antonymic translation - substitution of a negative construction by a positive one in the target language and vice versa -, compensation), and syntactic (word-for-word translation, permutation, substitution, sentence division, addition, omission, including stylistic correction of the source text containing pleonasms). While analyzing the translation transformations in the translations of the texts of S. V. Lavrov’s speeches, the authors noted the absence of two techniques: the technique of sentence uniting and the technique of descriptive translation. This fact can be explained by the accuracy typical of diplomatic discourse translation.

This descriptive research discusses the use of discourse markers in a diplomatic setting between the governments of Indonesia and Australia during a Joint Press Conference between Indonesia-Australia Foreign and Defence Ministers. The particular aims of this research are to identify and analyze forms of discourse markers employed by the representatives of each government and describe the most frequent discourse markers used by these representatives. The data were collected from the transcript of the Joint Press Conference between Indonesia and Australia Foreign and Defence Ministers (2+2) Dialogue. The data are classified based on the typology of discourse markers and analyzed to identify their function within the diplomatic discourse. The data are input into the AntConc corpus analysis toolkit for analysis. The results show that the Foreign and Defence Ministers of Indonesia employed three forms of discourse markers, namely textual discourse marker, interpersonal discourse marker, and cognitive discourse marker, whereas the Foreign and Defence Ministers of Australia only applied textual discourse marker and cognitive discourse marker. Both representatives employed textual discourse markers more frequently than other forms of discourse markers. Discourse markers partially control how meaning is constructed by showing turns between speakers, joining concepts, displaying attitude, and finally, controlling communication. By understanding the discourse markers in ministerial dialogues, spectators can learn to find clues in the change of direction in their talks to better understand the conversation that affects the policies and citizens of both countries involved.