160 likes | 377 Views
Cultural and Scientific Transfer through Translation – a Corpus-Based Study of Term Formation in the Period 1848-1919. Špela Vintar University of Ljubljana, Dept. of Translation spela.vintar@guest.arnes.si. background and motivation. based on two parallel national projects:
E N D
Cultural and Scientific Transfer through Translation – a Corpus-Based Study of Term Formation in the Period 1848-1919 Špela Vintar University of Ljubljana, Dept. of Translation spela.vintar@guest.arnes.si InFuture2007
background and motivation • based on two parallel national projects: • the Austrian Government funded 2004-2006 project “German-Slovene/Croatian translation 1848-1918 (FWF P17465)”, coordinated by Graz Academy of Sciences • 2004-2007 project “Slovene Translations of German Texts in the period 1848-1919 - Cultural and Linguistic Impacts (J6-6078)”, coordinated by University of Maribor • aims: • creation of a Digital Library for the exploration of interlingual and intercultural contacts within the AHE • detailed study of translation phenomena InFuture2007
background and motivation • “feeder” and “receiver” cultures • texts are powerful carriers of technical innovation • translation considered inferior to original production • evolution of terminologies through translation InFuture2007
the AHlib Digital Library • TraDok – bibliographical database of Slovene, Croatian & other translations from German with over 6,000 units (https://buedo22.uni-graz.at/pub/tradok) • digitised and processed texts constituing AHlib; each text scanned, OCRd, manually corrected, tagged and lemmatised (cf. Erjavec, this conference) InFuture2007
hypotheses and methods • hypothesis 1: (technical) vocabulary expands over time – more recent works will show a richer vocabulary than older ones • hypothesis 2: the influences of translation will be apparent in certain term formation strategies (German loan words, direct translations) • hypothesis 3: orthographical variation decreases with time – more recent works will show less variation in the spelling of words InFuture2007
hypotheses and methods • corpus-based analysis using WordSmith Tools 4.0 (http://www.lexically.net) • measuring lexical density via Type/Token Ratio • using frequency counts of words and lemmata for intertextual comparison • qualitative analysis on the basis of word lists and keyword lists InFuture2007
hypotheses and methods • two subcorpora: Tech (7), Lit (5) InFuture2007
hypotheses and methods • two subcorpora: Tech (7), Lit (5) InFuture2007
Hypothesis 1: TTRs of technical texts InFuture2007
TTRs of literary texts InFuture2007
borrowings from German as a sign of term pre-formation 13. ,, Pasja kuga ali mor (Staupe) 207 14. Poglavje. Ploščnatna glista (Bandwurm) 208 15. Poglavje. Gliste v želodcu in črevah 209 (Živinozdravstvo) Tako n. pr. zaznamavamo narazje nebeskih teles z zvezdno daljavo, z zemeljskimi poloméri; zemeljsko površje merimo z miljo, s protom (Ruthe), s sežnjem, z metrom, in reči manjše raztege s čevljem, s palcem in črto. (Astronomija) Tudi ne sme konj imeti kraka (Spath), ne podplatnih otisk (Steingallen), ne nadkosti na zadnji strani skoknega člena (Hasenhacke), ne pipe (Piphacke), ne lupine (Schale). Obedva jajca se morata dobro viditi. (Živinozdravstvo) InFuture2007
relative number of foreign (German) wordforms InFuture2007
term variation • systematic: serce -srce, smert - smrt; rudeč - rdeč, rujav – rjav; kteri – kateri, kedar – kadar • phoneme boundary variation: salmiak - salmijak - salmjak, operacija – operacia – operacja • proper instances of synonymous terminology: polutnik - ravnik - aequator - ekvator InFuture2007
lemma/wordform ratio InFuture2007
loan translations • Brennpunkt - gorišče, ognjišče • Hundstage - pasji dnevi • Kegelschnitt - kegeljosečnica • Nachtbogen - ponočni lok • ...not a predominant term formation strategy InFuture2007
conclusions • vocabulary expansion not empirically confirmed ...balanced by orthographic standardisation and term stability? • term-formation strategies clearly show a preference for Slovene neologisms, borrowings used as additional reference points • translated works show high creativity in departing from original • ... potential of Digital Libraries of tomorrow InFuture2007