Corpus-based Translation Studies Research Articles

Translating (and rewriting) Jane Austen’s food across time and space

ABSTRACT This study incorporates House’s TQA framework into corpus-based translation studies to evaluate how Jane Austen’s depictions of food have been translated and perceived within Chinese contexts. This study’s dataset includes a Jane Austen corpus in English compiled by Lancaster University and our self-built diachronic corpus of Austen’s translations in Chinese from 1935 onwards. Our study shows that translations of Austen’s references to food require a dynamicity that bridges time and space and which links cultures and languages; the translations create texts that are novel and original to Chinese audiences. Different strategies have been used by translators to connect food culture in Austen’s era to contemporary China. Translations initially recreated and domesticated original textual references within Chinese culture, while later translations were more contemporary and closer to modern day Western dishes and customs. This study also shows that terminological inconsistency, translation loss, and mistranslation have existed in Chinese translations of Austen since 1935. This research outlines how translators have bridged the temporal distance and cultural space between the epochs of 19th century Britain and modern China in the context of literary depictions of food.

Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Interaction and Reaction

This paper focuses on one particular parallel development in linguistics and translation studies, namely corpus-based analysis of language use. Recent years have seen the compilation of corpora of translations, designed specifically to investigate the language and features of translation, usually by comparing translations with non-translations. Some of the interactions between corpus linguistics and corpus-based translation studies are traced in terms of perceptions of translated texts and underlying assumptions of corpus-based studies. Corpus-based translation studies is placed in the con¬text of current theoretical trends in translation studies and, through brief re¬ference to research which has aimed to investigate potential features of translation, attention is drawn to the importance of contextualising translation by combining corpus-based investigations with other kinds of methodologies and analyses.

Syntactic complexity in translated and non-translated texts: A corpus-based study of simplification.

This study approaches the investigation of the simplification hypotheses in corpus-based translation studies from a syntactic complexity perspective. The research is based on two comparable corpora, the English monolingual part of COCE (Corpus of Chinese-English) and the native English corpus of FLOB (Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English). Using the 13 syntactic complexity measures falling into five subconstructs (i.e. length of production unit, amount of subordination, amount of coordination, phrasal complexity and overall sentence complexity), our results show that translation as a whole is less complex compared to non-translation, reflected most prominently in the amount of subordination and overall sentence complexity. Further pairwise comparison of the four subgenres of the corpora shows mixed results. Specifically, the translated news is homogenous to native news as evidenced by the complexity measures; the translated genres of general prose and academic writing are less complex compared to their native counterparts while translated fiction is more complex than non-translated fiction. It was found that mean sentence length always produced a significant effect on syntactic complexity, with higher syntactic complexity for longer sentence lengths in both corpora. ANOVA test shows a highly significant main effect of translation status, with higher syntactic complexity in the non-translated texts (FLOB) than the translated texts (COCE), which provides support for the simplification hypothesis in translation. It is also found that, apart from translation status, genre is an important variable in affecting the complexity level of translated texts. Our study offers new insights into the investigation of simplification hypothesis from the perspective of translation from English into Chinese.

Speaker-Audience Interaction in Spoken Political Discourse : A Contrastive Parallel Corpus-Based Study of English-Persian Translation of Metadiscourse Features in TED Talks

Metadiscourse features refer to those elements by which interaction between writer-reader and/or speaker-audience is constructed. Taking this into account, the objective of this contrastive parallel corpus-based study was to explore the way metadiscourse features were used and distributed in the English discourse and their translation in the Persian language as well as analyzing the speaker-audience interaction in translation. For this purpose, 30 different TED talks in politics were randomly selected to ensure the issues of corpus representativeness and balance. The corpus consisted of 21681 tokens in English and 21164 tokens in Persian. For classifying the metadiscourse features, the model introduced by Hyland (Metadiscourse: exploring interaction in writing. Continuum, London, 2005), whose model is classified into two main subcategories of interactive and interactional, was employed. The quantitative analysis showed that overall the number of interactional metadiscourse features was used more than that of the interactive ones in both corpora. Moreover, the results of the Chi-square test revealed that there was statistically no significant difference between the distributional pattern of metadiscourse features in English corpus and their Persian translation. The qualitative analysis revealed that there were four kinds of changes in translation as (im) explicit change, (dis)information change, (in) visibility change, and (de)emphasis change. Besides, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the corpus revealed that the interaction between the speakers of the TED talks and the audience did not change when metadiscourse features translated from English into Persian. The results of this research can be found useful for researchers in contrastive analysis, translation studies, and corpus-based translation studies.

Hedging in interpreted and spontaneous speeches: a comparative study of Chinese and American political press briefings

AbstractThe investigation of potential stylistic differences between translated and non-translated texts has been proven to be a promising line in corpus-based translation studies, yet similar research on the product of interpreting seems both smaller in scale and slower in development. This study compares the use of hedges in interpreted and spontaneous English speeches collected in similar settings. Specifically, we gathered the two types of speech data from Chinese and American political press briefings respectively and analyzed their differences in the employment of various hedging devices. The results show that interpreted speeches not only contain significantly fewer hedges but they are also dependent on a narrower range of such devices than spontaneous speeches, which is consistent with the tendency towards simplification in translations. Also, our findings suggest that interpreted and spontaneous speeches tend to follow distinct hedging patterns in terms of preferred linguistic choices. Potential factors triggering such differences are discussed.

From text to data mediality in corpus-based translation studies

This paper seeks to promote deeper reflection within the field of corpus-based translation studies (CTS) regarding the digital tools by means of which research in this discipline proceeds. It explicates a range of possibilities and constraints brought to the analysis of translated texts by the keyword in context (KWIC) concordancer and other data visualisation applications, paying particular attention to the ways in which these technological affordances have actively shaped central theoretical hypotheses within CTS and related fields, as well as the general principles of corpus construction. This discussion is illustrated through a small case study which applies the suite of corpus analysis tools developed as part of the Genealogies of Knowledge project to the investigation of two English translations of the Communist Manifesto.

Explicitation, simplification and neutralisation in the translation of reference

Recurrent features of translation, sometimes labelled as ‘translation universals’, have been intensively investigated within Descriptive Corpus-based Translation Studies. Numerous language pairs have been set under researchers’ lens with a view to observing languages from a contrastive viewpoint, but also individually, in their translational manifestations. This has enabled the identification of characteristic features of the translational facets of languages, which have generated more and more nuanced scholarly theories. This paper examines the occurrence of some of the most frequent features of translation, namely: explicitation, simplification and neutralisation in the translation of reference as a cohesive device. Methodologically speaking, the investigation combines the theoretical and applied areas of Translation Studies, with an interdisciplinary dimension provided by the fusion of methodological input borrowed from Descriptive Translation Studies, Discourse Analysis and Contrastive Studies. The theoretical component of the research refers to issues of contrastiveness between English and Romanian viewed from a translational angle, in terms of equivalence and the occurrence of the three features of translation. The applied area of Translation Studies comprises the empirical approach to the translation of reference, while addressing not only the researchers’ community, but also the practitioners in translation and the translator training environment. The research applies both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the data selected from John Fowles’ novel Mantissa (1982) and its translation into Romanian by Angela Jianu (Fowles 1995). The findings provide insights into the nature and functions of referring expressions as formal links, but also as stylistic devices, and shed light into issues related to contrastiveness of reference between English and Romanian, to aspects of equivalence and translatability, as well as to the occurrence of translation universals.

Introducing corpus-based translation studies

Introducing corpus-based translation studies

Onde podemos encontrar a impressão digital da legendista? Um estudo sobre o emprego da colocação pronominal e de marcadores discursivos em legendas de Star Trek: Enterprise

Este artigo apresenta alguns resultados de uma pesquisa de mestrado que objetivou caracterizar o estilo de uma legendista. O foco deu-se na forma que ela empregou a colocação pronominal e marcadores discursivos (MDs) em legendas em Português Brasileiro, feitas para episódios da série de TV Star Trek: Enterprise. A investigação afiliou-se metodologicamente aos Estudos da Tradução Baseados em Corpus, principalmente por meio do auxílio de dois programas do WordSmith Tools©, 7, o WordList e o Concord. O corpus de estudo se constitui por arquivos de legendas disponíveis na Netflix, em português brasileiro, dos episódios 10 e 11 (temporada 1) e 16 e 24 (temporada 2), enquanto o corpus de referência consiste em outros arquivos de legendas das mesmas temporadas da série feitos por outros legendistas. Os resultados mostram que a impressão digital da legendista em estudo pode ser encontrada por sua preferência pela ênclise e por MDs mais facilmente aceitos nos guias normativos de legendagem da Netflix. Sendo assim, nota-se seu uso variado de registros linguísticos, especialmente do registro formal da língua portuguesa.Palavras-chave: Impressão digital da legendista. Registros linguísticos. Colocação pronominal. Marcadores discursivos.

The Multilingual Student Translation corpus: a resource for translation teaching and research

The Multilingual Student Translation (MUST) corpus is a corpus of translations produced by foreign language learners or trainee translators collected collaboratively by a large number of partner teams internationally. The corpus represents a prime example of community sourcing, as the data are collected and shared by the members of the MUST network. Two key characteristics of the corpus are that it involves a large number of language pairs and that each text is accompanied by a rich set of standardized metadata related to the source texts, the translation tasks and the students. The web interface on which the corpus is stored allows the data to be aligned and annotated with a purpose-built translation annotation system. The resulting corpus data lend themselves to a range of applications (translator training, materials design, pedagogical lexicography) and can also be used to advance empirical research in corpus-based translation studies.

A presença do sagrado em duas traduções do conto “The Hammer of God”, de Gilbert K. Chesterton: uma análise à luz da linguística de corpus

Este estudo apresenta uma análise de duas traduções para o português brasileiro do conto “The Hammer of God”, da coletânea The Innocence of Father Brown, de Gilbert K. Chesterton, publicada pela primeira vez em 1911, sendo o primeiro dos cinco volumes sobre o padre-detetive. As traduções selecionadas para este estudo, foram: “O Martelo de Deus”, de Carlos Nougué (2006) e “A Marreta de Deus”, do grupo de tradução de Beatriz Viégas-Faria (2011). A partir do arcabouço teórico dos Estudos da Tradução Baseados em Corpus (ETBC) (BAKER, 1995, 1996, 2000; CAMARGO, 2007) observamos o que diferencia os textos em termos de apropriação do universo religioso habitado por Father Brown, personagem principal da série. Para efetuar as análises utilizou-se o programa WordSmith Tools, em especial as ferramentas WordList, Concord e Aligner, adotadas para a verificação das opções tradutórias dadas aos vocábulos pertencentes ao campo semântico da religião. Os resultados sugerem a valorização do aspecto religioso em ambas as traduções, em termos de frequência e variedade, a despeito das diferenças entre as escolhas tradutórias em cada caso. O estudo do corpus evidencia que o caráter investigado está mais presente em “A Marreta de Deus”.

Corpus-based Critical Translation Studies: Research Areas and Approaches

This paper discusses the origin, features, research areas, and approaches, as well as the implications, of corpus-based critical translation studies (CCTS), with a view to establishing a theoretical framework. It is argued that CCTS, born of corpus-based translation studies and critical translation studies, will serve to unveil ideological factors behind the translated texts and the process involved. The birth of CCTS has not only revolutionized the methodology of critical translation studies, but has also broadened its scope.

The Goodland & Colchie’s Stylistic Pattern in a Translational Process for Brazilianisms compared with Brazilian Literary Works present in Translational English Corpus (Tec)

This article aims at analyzing possible stylistic patterns related to the translational process of brazilianisms present in a Darcy Ribeiro’s work, Maíra (1978), comparing it to other translations of Brazilian publications which integrate the Translational English Corpus (TEC). We base our research on canonical works of Corpus-Based Translation Studies (OLOHAN: 2001; BAKER: 1992 1993 1995; CAMARGO: 2005 2007), as well as of Terminology (FAULSTICH: 1995 2001 2002; BARBOSA: 2006), in order to investigate the sociocultural data by the use of WordSmith Tools - version 4.0 (SCOTT: 2004) and TEC Tools. We intend to promote a reflexive observation of brazilianisms, with regard to variation and loans, providing subsidies for the comprehension of translation as a social and linguistic behaviour.

On the need for a new research agenda for corpus-based translation studies: a multi-methodological, multifactorial and interdisciplinary approach

ABSTRACTTwenty-five years after the emergence of corpus-based translation studies the present paper offers a critical analysis of the current state of the art in corpus-based translation studies, focusing on what it has yielded in terms of description, methodology and theory. This analysis leads to the detection of problem areas which result in limitations to progress in the field. We argue that these limitations can be overcome, by adopting a revised research agenda for empirical translation studies, with a broader methodological scope and more theoretical awareness. At the very heart of this agenda is the description of translation as an inherently multidimensional linguistic activity and product, which is simultaneously constrained by sociocultural, technological and cognitive factors, leading ultimately to a better understanding of what translation exactly is, how it is shaped by varying circumstances, and how it relates to other types of constrained communication. The added value of this research agenda is illustrated in two case studies on optional that in English complement clause constructions.

A utilização do corpus de culinária da plataforma CoMET como base para elaboração de atividades lúdico-pedagógicas para o ensino de competências profissionais do tradutor

Com o crescente desenvolvimento dos Estudos da Tradução, principalmente aqueles voltados ao uso de corpora para a aquisição de competências indispensáveis à formação profissional, tornou-se clara a necessidade de se criar estratégias para que aprendizes aperfeiçoem seus saberes, em especial no tocante ao processo tradutório de linguagens de especialidade. Assim, partindo de tais premissas, procuramos elaborar atividades lúdico-pedagógicas que possam ser inseridas na disciplina Prática de Tradução I, presente nos anos iniciais das grades curriculares dos cursos de graduação brasileiros. Tais ações se pautam na utilização dos dados do subcorpus de culinária do Cortrad dentro Projeto CoMET na direção português ↔ inglês. Para tanto, nos pautamos na Linguística de Corpus (BAKER, 1995; BERBER SARDINHA, 2004; OLIVEIRA, 2009; O’KEEFFE; MCCARTHY, 2010; SERPA, ROCHA, 2016); nos Estudos da Tradução Baseados em Corpus (DAYRELL, 2015), além de investigações sobre Competências Tradutórias (PICCIONI; PORTRANDOLFO, 2017; SERPA, 2017) e sobre Educação Lúdica (LIBÂNEO, 2005; D’ÁVILA, 2007; ALMEIDA, 2016). Por conseguinte, elencamos três verbos e três substantivos de uso mais frequente e construímos duas diferentes propostas, a saber: Scrabble e Imagem e ação; com objetivo de explorar o ensino de competências por meio de dados de corpora.

Hu, Kaibao, Tao Li, and Lingzi Meng. Introducing Corpus-based Critical Translation Studies

Hu, Kaibao, Tao Li, and Lingzi Meng. Introducing Corpus-based Critical Translation Studies

Vocábulos fundantes de Clarice Lispector extraídos de duas obras da autora e características de normalização em suas respectivas traduções

A presente pesquisa tem como objetivo observar o comportamento de tradutores diferentes em face de fragmentos (re)aproveitados e semelhantes extraídos de duas obras de Clarice Lispector. Outro objetivo é verificar as escolhas desses tradutores frente a dois vocábulos recorrentes da autora: silêncio e olhos. Temos como arcabouço teórico os Estudos da Tradução baseados em corpus (BAKER, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2004; estudos sobre normalização (SCOTT, 1998) a Linguística de Corpus (BERBER SARDINHA, 2004) e a fortuna crítica da autora (NUNES, 1995; SÁ, 2000). Como procedimento metodológico, a pesquisa foi realizada por meio de uma combinação de investigações semimanuais e computadorizadas. Com base em Scott (1998), examinamos a tradução dos vocábulos selecionados em relação à normalização. Os resultados finais apontam para tendência à normalização por parte de ambos os tradutores em pauta.

The purification of violence and the translation of fairy tales: a corpus-based study

This study aims to investigate the translation of violence, to propose and to analyse the translation strategies of English Fairytales (EFT) to the Portuguese language. The theoretical framework of this study is based on the interface of Corpus-based Translation Studies (CTS) and Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). Klingberg (1986) purification concept adapted as translation strategies proposed by Chesterman (1997). For the alignment and corpus analysis, it is used COPA-TRAD – Parallel Corpus for translation research (Fernandes, L. & Silva, 2014). The analysis revealed that the target text had been translated under the moral and religious motivational factors of the source culture because the literature translated in Brazil still had to comply with the Portuguese requirements for translating for children (Coelho, 1987).

Optimising the Europarl corpus for translation studies with the EuroparlExtract toolkit

ABSTRACTThe freely available European Parliament Proceedings Parallel Corpus, or Europarl, is one of the largest multilingual corpora available to date. Surprisingly, bibliometric analyses show that it has hardly been used in translation studies. Its low impact in translation studies may partly be attributed to the fact that the Europarl corpus is distributed in a format that largely disregards the needs of translation research. In order to make the wealth of linguistic data from Europarl easily and readily available to the translation studies community, the toolkit ‘EuroparlExtract’ has been developed. With the toolkit, comparable and parallel corpora tailored to the requirements of translation research can be extracted from Europarl on demand. Both the toolkit and the extracted corpora are distributed under open licenses. The free availability is to avoid the duplication of effort in corpus-based translation studies and to ensure the sustainability of data reuse. Thus, EuroparlExtract is a contribution to satisfy the growing demand for translation-oriented corpora.

An English Corpus Query Model based on Pattern Recognition Technology

Corpus has become an indispensable basic resource for linguistic research and language engineering. It has started early in the study of English corpus, and has formed a perfect corpus research standard. According to the situation of our country and the English learning in China on the basis of foreign experience of practical English corpus construction, corpus linguistics, corpus based translation studies has carried out extensive research and achieved fruitful results. The domestic and foreign research present situation and trend of the construction of English corpus based, we should highlight the interdisciplinary of a higher level in the construction of English Corpus in the future, pay more attention to the construction of corpus standardization, multi modal and intelligent. Bilingual teaching is not only the demand of higher education in China and international standards, but also the inevitable trend of training international professionals. It is also the focus and focus of the current educational reform in higher education. In this paper, using pattern recognition technology, we analyze the choice of textbook and lectures in the bilingual teaching organization, teaching language, teaching forms, which has some reference for the undergraduate bilingual teaching reform and research.