Lexical Level Research Articles

Service Awareness in Translation: A Case Study of English and Portuguese Translation of Mo Yan’s Fengru Feitun

“Service awareness” refers to translators’ clear understanding of who they are serving, how they are supposed to serve, and what they are serving for during the translation process. This paper, based on first-hand examples, examines Goldblatt’s English translation and Martins’ Portuguese translation of Mo Yan’s masterpiece Fengru feitun [Big Breasts and Wide Hips] from the perspective of “service awareness in translation”. The present paper finds that both the English translator and the Portuguese translator have good “service awareness” in their translations. Their “service awareness” is mainly reflected in the abridgments and rewritings of the source text at the structural, cultural, and lexical levels. These modifications have improved the readability of the translations. In other words, the translators have offered good “services” to their readers. This study analyzes the reasons behind the abridgements and rewrites.

A Consecutive Interpreting Study of the Keynote Speech on the Opening Ceremony of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations

As a real-time bilingual processing activity, consecutive interpreting consists of three stages:source language listening and identification, information memorization and target language production. This paper chooses the consecutive interpreting recording of keynote speech on the opening ceremony of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations as the study text. The author manage to analysis the target language text from lexical level, syntactic level and textual level.

Two different forms of devilry in short stories of N. V. Gogol Viy and The Portrait

In the article, the forms of the personification of impure forces are analyzed based on the materials of two N. V. Gogol’s short stories named Viy and The Portrait. The image of the devil in Gogol’s works is diverse, so we are making an attempt to identify the specifics of his image in these stories. The article examines in detail the spatial structure of the two plots, their dynamics, changes in values and the embodiment of evil spirits at the lexical level. A comparison of the two works in these aspects will help to better understand the evolution of the depiction of evil spirits in Gogol’s work.

Speech perception and language comprehension in primary progressive aphasia

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive loss of speech and language. Although speech perception and language comprehension deficits are observed in individuals with PPA, these deficits have been understudied relative to production deficits. Recent work has examined receptive language processing at sublexical, lexical, and semantic levels in PPA; however, systematic investigation of these levels of processing within a single PPA cohort is lacking. The current study sought to fill this gap. Individuals with logopenic, nonfluent, and semantic variants of PPA and healthy, age-matched controls completed minimal pairs syllable discrimination, auditory lexical decision, and picture-word verification tasks to assess sublexical, lexical, and semantic processing. Distinct profiles were observed across PPA variants. Individuals with logopenic variant PPA had impaired performance on auditory lexical decision and picture-word verification tasks, with a trend toward impaired performance on the syllable discrimination task. Individuals with nonfluent and semantic variant PPA had impaired performance only on auditory lexical decision and picture-word verification. Evaluation of the types of errors made on the picture-word verification task (phonological and semantic) provided further insight into levels of deficits across the variants. Overall, the results indicate deficits in receptive processing at the lexical-phonological, lexical-semantic, and semantic levels in logopenic variant PPA, with a trend toward impaired sublexical processing. Deficits were observed at the lexical-semantic and semantic levels in semantic variant PPA, and lexical-phonological deficits were observed in nonfluent PPA, likely reflecting changes both in lexical-phonological processing as well as changes in predictive coding during perception. This study provides a more precise characterization of the linguistic profile of each PPA subtype for speech perception and language comprehension. The constellation of deficits observed in each PPA subtype holds promise for differential diagnosis and for informing models of intervention.

A Study on the Translation of Instructions for Heat-Clearing and Detoxifying Traditional Chinese Medicines under the Functional Equivalence Theory

Heat-clearing and detoxifying traditional Chinese medicines are an important part and distinctive advantage of China’s medical and health undertakings. Traditional Chinese medicine is an outstanding traditional culture of the Chinese nation and a unique and significant health resource in our country. The rapidly growing international market has created excellent opportunities for the export of heat-clearing and detoxifying traditional Chinese medicines. Currently, the English translation of instructions for proprietary Chinese medicines lacks unified translation standards and the guidance of translation theories. The existing English translations of instructions for proprietary Chinese medicines in our country have problems such as confusion and non-standardization. Therefore, the research on the instructions of heat-clearing and detoxifying medicines under the functional equivalence theory is highly significant. This paper takes several common heat-clearing and detoxifying medicines available on the market as examples, analyzes the problems and their causes in the translation of the instructions from the perspective of the functional equivalence theory, and finds more reasonable and standardized translation methods. It helps foreign consumers understand the characteristics and functions of traditional Chinese medicine, thereby stimulating their consumption desires. This paper studies the translation process using the functional equivalence theory, investigates the structure and language features of the instructions for traditional Chinese medicine, and discusses the corresponding translation strategies for the instructions of heat-clearing and detoxifying traditional Chinese medicines at the lexical and syntactic levels respectively to achieve functional equivalence.

Средства выражения итеративной неоднократности с семантикой «цикличность» в произведении «Темные аллеи» И. А. Бунина

The aim of the research is to identify the specifics of the functioning of iterative repetition with the semantics of cyclicity in the individual style of I. A. Bunin. The article considers iterative repetition as a functional grammatical category that constitutes the functional-semantic field of aspectuality; details the ways of expressing iterative repetition in a literary text at the lexical, morphological and syntactic levels; creates a semantic model of iterative repetition with the meaning of cyclicity in the work ‘Dark Alleys’ by I. A. Bunin. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time the category of iteration is considered in I. A. Bunin’s work from the point of view of the functional approach. The iterative meaning is studied taking into account not only the paradigmatics, but also the syntagmatics of verb forms. As a result, it has been found that the category of iterative repetition in the work of I. A. Bunin is presented as a complex and branched system of multi-level linguistic means. It has been revealed that the category of iterative repetition as an expressive means is actively used in Bunin’s texts when describing everyday habits, lifestyle and activities of characters. It has also been determined that the semantic meaning of iterativity is combined with other components of the functional-semantic field of aspectuality: duration, phase and statality.

Das Frauenbild im Sozialismus. Eine exemplarische Untersuchung der Tageszeitung der rumäniendeutschen Minderheit Neuer Weg (1950)

Abstract This study focuses on the image of women in socialist society, as it appears in several articles on International Women’s Day in the Romanian-German newspaper Neuer Weg in the 1950s. The political authorities of the time would use Women’s Day to draw attention not only to problems specific to women, such as the protection of mother and child, women in the family and at work, but also to discuss political issues such as equal rights for women, universal, equal, secret and direct women’s suffrage and securing peace. The author takes the standpoint of sociolinguistics and pragmalinguistics in analysing and evaluating the linguistic data, whereby the language material points out particularities on a lexical, morpho-syntactic and pragmatic level.

Chunking in the Second Language: Implications for Language Learning and Teaching

Among the various challenges that adult and other late language learners face on their journey to achieving nativelike proficiency, chunking has been identified as one of the most difficult tasks to master. Language users are able to derive and utilize chunks during language processing—both in the first (L1) and the second language (L2)—yet the extent to which the L2 learners utilize and benefit from chunking is not on a par with L1 speakers. L2 learners are generally less sensitive to the statistical regularities in the linguistic input and possess a smaller repertoire of multiword expressions, leaving them susceptible to slower real-time language processing, hampered comprehension during conversation, and distinct production errors. Drawing on insights from Brian MacWhinney's Unified Competition Model of L1 and L2 acquisition, this review examines these unique challenges in L2 chunking as a function of differences between L1 and L2 learning. According to the Unified Competition Model, the existence of deeply entrenched L1 linguistic representations may hinder effective L2 chunking by encouraging over-segmentation in favor of L1 transference at the lexical level and diverting the necessary attention away from the grammatical elements in prefabricated multiword units. Based on these observations, we offer practical suggestions for educators to facilitate chunking in L2 learners and bring them closer to nativelike fluency.

What are the differences? A comparative study of generative artificial intelligence translation and human translation of scientific texts

Generative artificial intelligence translation (GenAIT) brings convenience yet also imposes severe challenges on the dissemination of knowledge. The respective (dis)advantages of GenAIT and human translation (HT), and the ways to promote their effective interaction have not been sufficiently explored yet. This study investigates the linguistic features of GenAIT and HT of scientific texts rendered from English to Chinese from lexical and syntactic levels. The GenAIT is generated by ChatGPT 3.5, a representative GenAI platform, while HTs are done by 19 Master-of-Translation-and-Interpreting students in China. Data shows that GenAIT and HTs present distinguished linguistic features in both levels. At the lexical level, HT exhibits lengthier texts with a lower average word diversity; GenAIT presents higher accuracy in translating terminology. At the syntactic level, the average sentence count in HT is greater, whereas its average sentence length measured in tokens is shorter. Moreover, human translators tend to transform sentences from passive voice into active voice more frequently than ChatGPT 3.5 does. Furthermore, human translators exhibit superior skills in deconstructing lengthy and complex sentences into shorter, more comprehensible clauses. This study reveals that ChatGPT 3.5 and human translators exhibit complementary capabilities in the translation of scientific texts, thereby suggesting an optimisation of the strengths inherent to both parties. Implications are provided for future translator training, language service providers and the ongoing development of GenAIT and HT.

Embodied cognition and L2 sentence comprehension: an eye-tracking study of motor representations.

Evidence from neuroscience and behavioral research has indicated that language meaning is grounded in our motor-perceptual experiences of the world. However, the question of whether motor embodiment occurs at the sentence level in L2 (second language) comprehension has been raised. Furthermore, existing studies on motor embodiment in L2 have primarily focused on the lexical and phrasal levels, often providing conflicting and indeterminate results. Therefore, to address this gap, the present eye-tracking study aimed to explore the embodied mental representations formed during the reading comprehension of L2 action sentences. Specifically, it sought to identify the types of motor representations formed during L2 action sentence comprehension and the extent to which these representations are motor embodied. A total of 56 advanced L2 learners participated in a Sentence-Picture Verification Task, during which their response times (RTs) and eye movements were recorded. Each sentence-picture pair depicted an action that either matched or mismatched the action implied by the sentence. Data analysis focused on areas of interest around the body effectors. RTs in the mismatch condition indicated an impeding effect. Furthermore, fixations on the body effector executing an action were longer in the mismatch condition, especially in late eye-movement measures.

Delegitimising Potential of the “Friend-Foe” Axiological Opposition (Exemplified by English-Language Political Internet Comments)

The article considers the axiological opposition “friend-foe” on the material of non-professional political discourse. English-language comments to the posts of Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York City, and Sadiq Aman Khan, Mayor of London, published in 2016–2021 in social networks are analyzed in the linguapersonological aspect. The speech techniques of expressing the “friend-foe” binary used in discrediting the current government by users of social networks are revealed. The authors of the comments use various means of verbal aggression to undermine the legitimacy of the authorities. At the lexical level, invective and pejorative units are used. At the grammatical level, the users have recourses to imperative constructions and the superlative degree of adjectives with negative evaluation. Internet users’ comments to politicians’ posts in social networks are shown to form the image of a political actor on the basis of the dominants ‘deviant behaviour’, ‘bad manager’, ‘foe, not their own’, which are determinants in discrediting the authorities. Delegitimising characteristics-determinants used in American and British non-professional political discourse are revealed to be similar due to the general unification and globalization trends. When writing a negative response, the universal institutional characteristics of a politician come to the fore. The unique individual and personal characteristics of mayors are also found to be important in creating a more voluminous image of an illegitimate leader.

UNDERSTANDING LITERATURE VIA LINGUISTIC LENSES: THE EXPLORATION OF LANGUAGE APPROPRIATION STRATEGIES IN TARIQ RAHMAN'S MAMOON JI

The research paper explores different appropriation strategies of English language in Pakistani English literature. The research examined various appropriating techniques and the reasons behind using these techniques in short story Mamoon Ji by Tariq Rahman. English has become the lingua franca in the world. So, the writers tend to appropriate language in their writings from all over the world. The same phenomenon has been observed by the researchers in Tariq Rahman’s writing. The researchers analyze the text and apply Ashcroft’s theory of appropriation (2002) to investigate five appropriation strategies like glossing, untranslated words, syntactic fusion, vernacular transcription as well as code-switching. Many Urdu words have been analyzed along with Arabic words and Punjabi phrases at lexical and sentence levels. The focus remains on how Rahman employs the language appropriation techniques to convey themes, represents cultural contexts, and construct characters. The study provides the significant information in examining the issues, extracting desired information & reaching outcomes. The outcome of current study has far-reaching implications from different viewpoints as it can be useful for pedagogy in teaching Pakistani English literature.

The relationship of speech perception and speech production: It's complicated.

A widely held belief is that speech perception and speech production are tightly linked, with each modality available to help with learning in the other modality. This positive relationship is often summarized as perception and production being "two sides of the same coin." There are, indeed, many situations that have shown this mutually supportive relationship. However, there is a growing body of research showing very different results, with the modalities operating independently, or even in opposition to each other. We review the now-sizeable literature demonstrating the negative effect that speech production can have on perceptual learning of speech, at multiple levels (particularly at the lexical and sublexical levels). By comparing the situations that show this pattern with ones in which more positive interactions occur, we provide an initial account of why the different outcomes are found, identifying factors that lead to either positive or negative effects of production on perception. The review clarifies the complex relationship that exists between the two modalities: They are indeed linked, but their relationship is more complicated than is suggested by the notion that they are two sides of the same coin.

Translator’s Visibility in Mediating Confrontational Responses of “Challenge” Strategy at China’s Diplomatic Press Conferences

The study aims to unveil how translators deal with confrontational responses through their visibility in translating the diplomatic discourse of China’s diplomatic press conferences. Distinct from past theoretical frameworks, this study is grounded in the impoliteness strategies model (Bousfield, 2008) and the concept of translator’s visibility. The corpus focuses on the English-translated responses using the “challenge” strategy, delivered by the spokesperson Hua Chunying throughout 2020. Findings show that the translator’s visibility is mainly presented at the syntactical and lexical levels, and the discursive level is hardly found. The translation strategy of modulation is used most in syntax and reduction most in lexicon. Additionally, the translator’s visibility by using translation strategies can mediate the degree of confrontation. In maintaining the confrontational tone, the main strategies involve modulation in syntax and reduction in lexicon. Linguistic compression and reduction are employed more commonly in weakening the confrontational implication in lexicon, and reduction in syntax. Linguistic amplification is observed more frequently in the lexicon and modulation is more often used in syntax in strengthening the confrontation. This research sheds light on the dynamic interplay between impoliteness strategies and the translator’s visibility, contributing to a deeper understanding of the translator’s engagement in institutional discourse.

Faithfulness Fails to Fix it All: A Corpus-Driven Investigation into English Translation Issues in Abstracts of Chinese Civil Engineering Research Articles

The primary concern in translating research article abstracts into English is to ensure accuracy and efficiency. This study established two corpora: CCEJAC (Chinese Civil Engineering Journal Abstract Corpus) and ICEJAC (International Civil Engineering Journal Abstract Corpus). The paper applied Hyland’s five-move model and established ten sub-corpora for comparative studies of equivalent moves in CCEJAC and ICEJAC. It was observed that CCEJAC and ICEJAC differ in both lexical and syntactic levels. Specifically, differences were found in the use of general academic vocabulary and bundles, as well as in sentence length and focus. It can be concluded that translation versions in CCEJAC prioritize preserving the literal meaning and the original sentence structures, which may end in undesirable outcomes. These contrasts are the main factors contributing to English translation issues. To address these, this study thoroughly investigated the English translation issues in each move in CCEJAC. The aim is to refine English versions of abstracts to be more concise and practical, in a bid to further facilitate academic communication between Chinese and international scholars in the field of civil engineering.

Investigating Dayue : An LFG-OT approach to its subcategorization and structure

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the subcategorization and structure of dayue , taking a Lexical Functional Grammar–Optimality Theory (LFG-OT) approach to account for the different uses of this word. It argues that dayue can be identified in the category of either an adverb or a preposition, depending on the function it takes and the structure it has. As an adverb, dayue modifies the clausal element or the quantifier phrase directly following it. As a preposition, dayue takes a noun phrase (NP) or an adpositional phrase as the complement, occurring in the adjunctive position. There may be ambiguities due to the subcategorization of, and the argument structure associated with, dayue , which result in the same linguistic form being generated as optimal outputs for different input meanings. However, each can be argued to correspond to a different c-structure. An LFG-OT approach is adopted in this paper to account for the structure of dayue . LFG proposes different levels of representation, and OT is involved in the theoretical model by evaluating linguistic forms according to the interaction and ranking of different kinds of linguistic constraints. Faithfulness constraints ensure faithful mappings among the lexical, functional, and syntactic levels of representation. Markedness constraints require linguistic structures to be well formed. Economy constraints pursue a concise, efficient way of expression. Alignment constraints map arguments with constituent structures. 摘要: 本文探讨了"大约"的子类别和结构，采用词汇功能语法–优选理论 (LFG-OT)方法来解释该词的不同用法。文章认为，"大约"可以归为副词或介词类别，取决于其作用于句式中之功能和结构。作为副词，"大约"直接修饰其后的从句成分或量化短语。作为介词，"大约"接受名词短语或介词短语作为补语，在附加位置出现。由于"大约"的子类别和相关的论元结构可能产生歧义，导致不同输入含义生成同样语言形式为最佳输出，而每个歧义对应不同的成分结构。本文采用词汇功能语法–优选理论方法来解释"大约"的结构。词汇功能语法使用不同语言层次表现语法，而优选理论根据不同种类的制约条件之间的相互作用和排名来评估语言形式。忠实性制约条件确保词汇、功能和句法层次之间的忠实映像。标记制约条件要求语言结构良好。经济制约条件追求简洁高效的表达方式。对齐制约条件将论元映像到成分结构中。

Обучение русскому языку как иностранному на продвинутом этапе (на примере темы «Демография»)

The paper describes the specificity of teaching the topic “Demography” at the advanced stage of Russian as a foreign language learning. The research aims to identify ways to effectively organize lessons using a variety of teaching methods. The scientific novelty lies in the proposed methodological solutions for studying the topic “Demography” at the advanced stage. As a result of the research, a number of exercises of different types have been created. These include lexical exercises aimed at memorizing new words on the studied topic; text-based exercises that help students assimilate ready-made text models and speech patterns, actualize the studied vocabulary, and reach a new lexical level; exercises for working with the public service announcement “Our Peculiarities Is Our Heritage”. The methodological value of the exercises proposed lies in their ability to influence the students’ emotional intelligence with the goal of strengthening positive emotions from language learning, forming humanistic values, creating a positive image of Russia, and demonstrating how the social problem in question is objectified in the consciousness of modern Russian society. The proposed methodological solutions will help increase student motivation and effectively organize lessons.

Idiosyncratic entrenchment: tracing change in constructional schematicity with nested random effects

Abstract Usage-based constructionist approaches see language as an inventory of constructions at different levels of schematicity learned from the input. If so, personal constructicons should vary as a function of usage. Repeated use and chunking/entrenchment of concrete instances should lead to reanalysis of their internal structure and change in the level of schematicity. This paper exploits the reduction probability of is in it is as a diagnostic of reanalysis in a 1.75-million-word diachronic corpus of a single blogger over 8 years. All instances of it is/it’s (n = 10,929) were annotated at the constructional and lexical levels. A multilevel logistic regression model showed significant fixed effects of constructional entropy and construction-to-word association on reduction probability. Importantly, there remained substantial variation across lexical types of constructions in the extent to which they associated or became associated with reduction over time, suggesting idiosyncratic entrenchment and potential reanalysis as a function of usage.

PMANet: Malicious URL detection via post-trained language model guided multi-level feature attention network

The expansion of the Internet has led to the widespread proliferation of malicious URLs, becoming a primary vector for cyber threats. Detecting malicious URLs is now essential for improving network security. The technological revolution spurred by pre-trained language models holds great promise for advancing the detection of malicious URLs. However, current research applying these models to URLs fails to address several crucial factors, including the lack of domain-specific adaptability, the omission of character-level information, and the neglect of both local detail extraction and low-order encoding information. In this paper, we propose PMANet, a pre-trained Language Model-Guided multi-level feature attention network, for addressing these issues. To facilitate a smooth transition of the pre-trained Transformer into the URL domain and to enable it to effectively capture information at both subword and character levels, we propose a post-training program that continues training the model on URLs using three self-supervised learning objectives: masked language model, noisy language model, and domain discrimination task. Subsequently, we develop a module to capture the output of each encoding layer, thus extracting hierarchical representations of URLs spanning from low-level to high-level. In addition, we propose a layer-wise attention mechanism that dynamically assigns weight coefficients to these feature layers based on their relevance. Finally, we apply spatial pyramid pooling to perform multi-scale down-sampling in order to obtain both local features and global context. PMANet achieves multifaceted integration in URL feature extraction, including capturing information at both the lexical and character levels, extracting features from low to high order, and discerning patterns at both global and local scales. We evaluate PMANet against challenging real-world scenarios, such as small-scale data, class imbalance, cross-dataset, adversarial attacks, and case studies on active malicious URLs. All experiments demonstrate that PMANet exhibits superiority over both the previous state-of-the-art pre-trained models and conventional deep learning models. Specifically, PMANet still achieves a 0.9941 AUC under adversarial attacks and correctly identifies all 20 actively malicious URLs in the case study. The code and data for our research are available at: https://github.com/Alixyvtte/Malicious-URL-Detection-PMANet.

Does Simplification Occur at Sentence Level in the English Translations of Chinese Academic Works? –A Comparable Corpus Analysis of Syntactic Complexity

ABSTRACT Scholars of translation studies have hypothesized that translated texts tend to show simplification at lexical and syntactic levels compared to non-translated native texts. The present study examined simplification at the sentence level between translated and native English texts from the perspective of syntactic complexity. The research finds that the English translations of Chinese academic works tend to be simpler than their non-translated counterparts on 8 of 14 widely accepted indices of syntactic complexity. The study reveals that simplification at the sentence level exists and tends to occur at indices related to linguistic structures or units with more complex semantic or syntactic relationships. In contrast, complexification tends to occur at indices related to linguistic structures or units with less complex relationships. We suggest future research focus on investigating the extent, ways, and indices at which syntactic simplification occurs in translation, along with its effects and implications, rather than debating its existence.