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What makes translations different?
A top-down approach to identifying distinctive lexis
Ana Frankenberg-GarciaInstituto Superior de Línguas e Administração
ISLA, Lisboa
Traditional view of translations
• Inferior
• Contaminated by source texts
• Translationesei.e. “odd, unnatural language which only appears
in translations”
Translation Studies: paradigm shift
• Translations are not automatically inferior• Constraints of source-text language
inevitable, but not necessarily negative • Frawley’s third code (1984)
– translations different from source texts– also different from non-translated texts– deserve being studied in their own right
• What makes translations different?– e.g. explicitation (see parallel session )
A less well-known third-code feature
• Distinctive distribution of lexis
• Shama’a (1978)– day & say in English translated from Arabic:
twice as frequent than in non-translated English
• Tirkkonnen-Condit (2004)– Finnish verbs of sufficiency: less frequent in
translations than in non-translated Finnish
Distinctive distribution of lexis
• Over-represented lexis– words markedly more frequent in translations
than in non-translated texts
• Under-represented lexis– words noticeably less frequent in translations
than in non-translated texts
How to identify distinctive lexis?Bottom-up approach
– Start with a lexical item– Frequency in translated and non-translated
text• Shama’a’s (1978) day & say• Tirkkonen-Condit’s (2004) Finnish verbs of
sufficiency
– But which lexical items are worthy of this comparison?
• Informed decisions needed at the outset• From bilinguals’, translators’ and foreign language
teachers’ intuitions
Intuitions regarding Portuguese translated from English
• Adverbs ending in mente (Bastos 2008)– simplesmente [simply]– exatamente [exactly]– perfeitamente [perfectly]– absolutamente [absolutely]
• Verbs (Tagnin 2008)– poder [can/may]
• Adjectives – diferente [different] – possível [possible]
Bottom-up approach can have limitations
• Focus on over-represented words • Under-represented words escaped perception
– No one could think of words that were less frequent!
• Could there be over-represented words that went unnoticed?
This study:
Exploratory, top-down approach • Confirm existing bottom-up intuitions• Find out about over- and under-represented
lexis not immediately visible to the naked eye
Method
• Bottom-up approach– start with a lexical item (informed decisions)– compare frequency in translated and non-
translated texts
• This top-down approach– start with comparable corpus of translated &
non-translated texts– identify over and under-represented words
MethodCorpus
– COMPARA 10.0 (Frankenberg-Garcia & Santos 2003)
– Parallel, bi-directional corpus of English and Portuguese literary texts (3 million words)
– www.linguateca.pt/COMPARA
EN-ST PT-TT
PT-ST EN-TT
Comparable corpus of original & translated Portuguese
Method
Corpus
• 39 Portuguese originals (635 K words)
• 32 Portuguese translations (733 K words)
• No distinction between different varieties of Portuguese– may have affected some of the results
Method
Portuguese part of COMPARA annotated with PALAVRAS parser (Bick 2000)
• Distribution of lemmas • Conjunctions, prepositions• Broader POS categories for
– Nouns (excluding proper nouns)– Adjectives– Verbs – Adverbs
Method
Thresholdover 10 hits per 100K words in at least one sub-corpus
482 nouns 113 adjectives 309 verbs 99 adverbs
Noun lemmas (excluding proper nouns)Adjective lemmasVerb lemmas Adverb lemmas
Translated-PT733K words
Original-PT635K words
Method
• Alternate spellings counted as onee.g. direção/direcção [direction]
• Loan words excludede.g. sir
• Lemmas with over 1/3 hits from single author excludede.g. cego [blind] occurred mostly in one single
text (Saramago’s Blindness)
482 nouns 113 adjectives 309 verbs 99 adverbs
Method
Criteria
At least 2X more frequent in translated-PT
= over-represented in translations
At least 2X more frequent in original-PT
= under-represented in translations
482 nouns 113 adjectives 309 verbs 99 adverbs
Distribution inTranslated-PT
DistributionOriginal-PT
Frequencies per 100 K words
compared
Distinctive nouns
482 nouns42
over-represented in translated-PT
49 under-represented
in tranlated-PT
+ abstractgênero, fato, problema, possibilidade, discussão, dificuldade, procura, oportunidade, questão
+ mannertom, modo, expressão, aspecto, atitude + groupsbocado, membro, grupo, lista, maioria
- humanssobrinho, moço, menino, velha, soldado, menina, velho, padre, senhora, dono, senhor, primo
- Portuguese psychesaudade, lembrança, alma, tristeza
type, fact, problem, possibility, discussion, search, opportunity, question
tone, manner, expression, aspect, atitude
bit, member, group, list, majority
nephew, young man, boy, old woman, soldier, girl, old man, priest, lady, owner, gentleman, cousin
nostalgia, souvenir, soul, sadness
Distinctive adjectives
113 adjectives12
over-representedin translated-PT
11 under-represented
in translated-PT
+ evaluative/abstractcalmo, maravilhoso, evidente, familiar, pessoal, especial, horrível, suficiente, principal
- visible/concretegordo, grosso, igual, nu, morto, rico
- feelingstriste, alegre
calm, wonderful, obvious, familiar, personal, special, horrible, enough, main
fat, thick, equal, naked, dead, rich
unhappy, happy
Distinctive verbs
309 verbs32 over-representedin translated-PT
19 under-represented
in translated-PT
+ link verbsencontrar-se, constituir, tornar-se, sentir-se, sentir-me, manter + reporting verbsrevelar, exclamar, lamentar, sugerir, comentar, replicar + movement verbsinclinar-se, regressar, dirigir-se, baixar, virar-se, apanhar, apoiar, acenar, abanar+ verbs preceding other verbstentar, conseguir, permitir
- dramatic, literary verbsvencer, fugir, beijar, cantar, quebrar, sonhar, amar, roubar, chorar, matar, morrer, nascer
find oneself/be, constitute, become, feel, keep
reveal, exclaim, regret, suggest, comment, reply
bend, return, turn to, lower, turn, pick up, lean, wave, shake
win, escape, kiss, sing, break, dream, love, steal, cry, kill, die, be born
try, manage, allow
Distinctive adverbs
99 adverbs13
over-representedin translated-PT
10 under-represented
in translated-PT
+ adverbs of manner(many ending in mente)demasiado, profundamente, bastante, claro, absolutamente, completamente, simplesmente, perfeitamente, imediatamente, exatamente
+ adverbs of time & frequencyenfim, logo, ora, ontem, jamais, amanhã, hoje
too, deeply, rather/quite, clearly, absolutely, completely, simply, perfectly, immediately, exactly
at last, soon, at times, yesterday, never, tomorrow, today
Near synomyms with contrastive distributionsTranslated-PT Original-PTrapariga menina [girl]recordação lembrança [souvenir]escola colégio [school]compreender entender [understand]apanhar recolher [gather/catch]completamente todo/toda [completely]------------------------------ 1.5 ------------------------------------------------------------edifício prédio [building]enorme imenso [huge]recordar lembrar [remember]reparar notar [notice]observar examinar [observe]decidir resolver [decide]obrigar mandar [force/order]manter guardar [keep]finalmente enfim/afinal [finally]
Were initial intuitions confirmed?
• Adverbs ending in mente (Bastos 2008)– simplesmente [simply] 2.9– exactamente [exactly] 2.3– perfeitamente [perfectly] 2.7– absolutamente [absolutely] 3.8
• Verbs (Tagnin 2008)– poder [can/may] 1.2– conseguir [manage] 2.2– permitir [allow] 2.1
• Adjectives – diferente [different] 1.7– possível [possible] 1.9
Beyond intuitionsPortuguese translations may read differently
because of too many
– Abstract nouns & abstract, evaluative adjectives
– Nouns depicting manner & adverbs of manner
– Nouns depicting groups or group membership
– Reporting verbs, movement verbs, link verbs & verbs preceding other verbs
Beyond intuitions
Portuguese translations may also read differently because of fewer
– Human nouns & concrete/visible adjectives
– Dramatic verbs & adjectives depicting feelings
– Words related to Portuguese psyche
– Adverbs of time & frequency
What else did I learn?
Portuguese translations may also read differently because of word choice
– In the case of synonyms and near synonyms,
preference for the more formal option
Caveats
• Analysis based on lemmas is very general– Word inflections?– Polysemous lemmas?
• Lemmas do not tell the whole storye.g. acenar [wave] → acenar a cabeça [nod]
ConclusionTop-down approach• generally confirmed existing bottom-up intuitions• disclosed novel, semantic & cultural contrasts
invisible to the naked eyeFindings • may have an impact on
– translator education– multilingual-text processing– machine translation– translation aids
I hope this will stimulate further research in the area