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Noelia Ramón University of León, Spain

CORPUS-BASED CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH ADJECTIVES IN SPANISH TRANSLATIONS: A TYPOLOGICAL ISSUE. Noelia Ramón University of León, Spain. INTRODUCTION. Germanic vs. Romance languages Unmarked adjective position in the NP: Pre- modifying position in English

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Noelia Ramón University of León, Spain

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  1. CORPUS-BASED CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH ADJECTIVES IN SPANISH TRANSLATIONS: A TYPOLOGICAL ISSUE Noelia RamónUniversity of León, Spain ICLC 6 - International ContrastiveLinguisticsConference Berlin, 30 Sept. – 2 Oct. 2010

  2. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference INTRODUCTION • Germanic vs. Romance languages • Unmarkedadjective position in the NP: • Pre-modifying position in English • Post-modifying position in Spanish • However, the pre-modifying position ispossibletoo in Spanish. • Consequence: more pre-modifyingadjectives in translations (Rabadán et al. 2009)

  3. CORPUS-BASED STUDY • Analysis of themostfrequentSpanishadjectives in original and translatedtexts • Monolingual corpus: CREA • Parallel corpus: P-ACTRES • Analysis & results: • Quantitativestudy • Qualitativestudy • Aim: improvetranslator training & translationqualityassessment

  4. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference TYPOLOGY • Word order as a majorissue. • Greenberg (1963): universal 17 • “Languages with a dominant VSO word order most often present the adjective after the noun.” • English vs. Spanish • Strictwordorder vs. richinflectionalmorphology • adjectivemorphology: invariable vs. variable in number (and gender) • pre-modifying position vs. post-modifying position • poormanvs. un hombre pobre / un pobre hombre • Descriptiveadjectivesonlyhavethedoubleoption • Classifyingadjectivesmayoccuronly in post-modifying positions.

  5. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference METHODOLOGY • Corpora: empirical data vs. intuition • Monolingual corpus: CREA (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual) • 18,500,104 words (Spain, from 2000, writtentextsonly, allregisters) • English-Spanishparallel corpus: P-ACTRES (Parallel-ContrastiveAnalysis and TranslationEnglish-Spanish) • 1,287,349 words (translationsfromEnglishoriginalsfrom 2000, writtentextsonly, allregisters)

  6. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference CREA INTERFACE

  7. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference P-ACTRES INTERFACE

  8. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference METHODOLOGY • Stages: • Quantitativeanalysis of themostfrequentSpanishadjectives in original and translatedtexts. • Qualitativeanalysis of representativenumbers of themostfrequentSpanishadjectives in original and translatedtexts.

  9. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference DATA • The 25 mostfrequentadjectives in Spanish: gran, general, mayor, nacional, mejor, nuevo, pasado, nueva, social, grandes, posible, importante,final, unidos, cierto, largo, claro, español, buena, internacional, igual, española, interior, buen, especial. • The 25 most frequent adjectives in English: new, good, old, long, little, great, high, best, big, national, small, full, young, free, public, important, white, local, black, able, early, political, real, hard, available.

  10. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference DATA • Adjectives not included in the qualitative section of the study: • Morphologically reduced forms for the pre-modifying position: • Gran (from grande) / buen (from bueno) • Classifying adjectives limited to the post-modifying position: • nacional, social, internacional

  11. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference DATA • Final selection: • grande, bueno, nuevo, importante, largo (with all their morphological forms) • Issues to be compared in the quantitative analysis: • a) overall frequency of use in original texts and in translations, • b) statistical significance of the differences identified using chi-square test

  12. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference RESULTS: STAGE 1 Fig. 1. Number of cases per millionwords. Statisticallysignificantoveruse

  13. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference Statisticallysignificantoveruse Statisticallysignificantoveruse Fig. 2. Number of cases per millionwords.

  14. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference Statisticallysignificantunderuse Statisticallysignificantunderuse Fig. 3. Number of cases per millionwords.

  15. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference Statisticallysignificantunderuse Fig. 4. Number of cases per millionwords.

  16. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference Statisticallysignificantoveruse Fig. 5. Number of cases per millionwords.

  17. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference RESULTS: STAGE 2 •  Statistical formula to ensure the analysis of a sufficiently representative number of instances: • n = N _ • (N-1) E2 + 1

  18. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference The case of nuevo

  19. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference The case of nuevo • Pre- & post-modification • other adjectives, especially of the classifying type (el nuevoplaneamientourbanísticoconsistiría en …) • participle clauses (un nuevocasoreveladoayer) • relative clauses (un nuevomovimiento, quesorteaba la censura) • Single pre-modification • el nuevo sistema debe compensar a los ayuntamientos, el nuevo servicio se ubicaría en el recinto …, Kurtz había encontrado un nuevo conductor, no le gusta nada mi nuevo trabajo.

  20. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference The case of nuevo

  21. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference The case of importante

  22. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference The case of importante • Single post-modification: • fueunadecisiónimportante, • poseíaunaexperienciaimportante • Predicative position: • le afectannumerososfactores y esimportanteanalizarlos • Multiple post-modification: • informaciónestadísticaimportante • un saltocualitativoimportante.

  23. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference The case of importante

  24. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference The case of largo

  25. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference The case of largo • Fixed expression a lo largo de … • a lo largo de la historia • Single pre-modification: • su largo cuerpo, recogió un largo aplauso, el largo verano • Pre- & post-modification: • el largo enfrentamientoquemantienenambasadministraciones, • iniciar un largo procesoevolutivo • un largo caminoquedesciendehacia el río • Noun (in expressions of measure): • tienemás de 4.500 kilómetros de largo • Single post-modification: • memorizar un poema largo • tenían el morro largo

  26. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference The case of largo

  27. ICLC 6 - International ContrastiveLinguisticsConference CONCLUSIONS • Initialhypothesis: generalizedoveruse of the pre-modifying position. • Notproven in the case of the 3 adjectivesanalyzed, as they are alreadyfrequent in the pre-modifying position in original Spanish. • Furtherstudies are neededfocusingonother (perhapslessfrequent) adjectives.

  28. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference CONCLUSIONS • However, otherinteresting data havebeenrevealed: • Fromthequantitativeperspective: • Severaladjectivespresentedoveruse in translations (bueno, grande, largo), butotherswereactuallyunderused (nuevo & importante) • Fromthequalitativeperspective: • Some of themostcommonadjectivespresentdifferentusagepatterns in originals and translations: • Fewerfixedexpressions (de nuevo, a lo largo de) (lowerdegree of typicality of translatedlanguage). • More predicative uses than in original texts

  29. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference REFERENCES • Baker, M. 1993: “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies.” In Baker et al. (eds.) Text and Technology. In Honour of John Sinclair. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 233-250. • Comrie, B. 1981: Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Chicago: Chicago University Press. • Croft, W. 1990: Typology and Universals. Cambridge: CUP. • Greenberg, J.H. 1963: Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In: Greenberg, J.H. (ed.) Universals of Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 73-113. • Laviosa, S. 1996: “Comparable corpora: Towards a corpus linguistic methodology for the empirical study of translation.” In Thelen, M. and Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. (eds.) Translation and Meaning, Part 3. Maastricht: Hogeschool Maastricht. 153-163. • Mallinson, G. & Blake, B.J. 1981: Language Typology. Amsterdam: North Holland. • Rabadán, R., B. Labrador & N. Ramón. 2009: Corpus-based contrastive analysis and translation universals: a tool for translation quality assessment English-Spanish? Babel 55: 4, 303-328. • Ramón, N. 2009: Translating Epistemic Adverbs from English into Spanish: Evidence from a Parallel Corpus. Meta 54: 1, 73-96. • Ramón, N. & B. Labrador. 2009: Translations of –ly Adverbs of Degree in an English-Spanish Parallel Corpus. Target 20: 2, 275-296. • Toury, G. 1995: Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

  30. ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference Thankyouverymuchforyourattention!Time forquestionsnow!

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