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Translation corpora and the quest for Translation Universals UCCTS 29.07. 2010 Anna Mauranen

Translation corpora and the quest for Translation Universals UCCTS 29.07. 2010 Anna Mauranen. Search for Translation Universals. Characteristics that translations generally have began in the early / mid -1990s roots in translation studies and corpus linguistics

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Translation corpora and the quest for Translation Universals UCCTS 29.07. 2010 Anna Mauranen

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  1. Translation corpora and the quest for Translation Universals UCCTS 29.07. 2010 Anna Mauranen

  2. Search for Translation Universals Characteristics that translations generally have began in the early / mid -1990s roots in translation studies and corpus linguistics Toury, KlaudyBlum-Kulka Baker, LaviosaOlohan

  3. Why ”Universals”? Objections from Translation Studies ”Translations inextricably linked to their particular contexts” Any science seeks general laws, why not Translation Studies (Chesterman) ”Impossible to capture translations from all times and all languages” (e.g. Tymoczko) What discipline has such access?

  4. Not all translations are typical; Borderline cases of blends, shortened versions etc. (Paloposki) Translations can import new genres to cultures, thus precede spontaneous texts in the target language/culture • not all specimens are typical, let alone ’pure’, why not take on the reality rather than deplore the absence of purity? “Talk rather about ‘laws’ or ‘tendencies’ (Toury) Just a watered-down version of the same? Universals are absolute, translation is probabilistic” (Frawley) Are universals absolute?

  5. The difference? Cf. language universals: “Language universals are by their very nature summary statements about characteristics or tendencies shared by all human speakers.” (Greenberg et al. 1966) “...universal features of translation, that is features which typically occur in translated texts rather than original utterances and which are not the result of interference from specific linguistic systems.” (Baker 1993)

  6. Universalsnot just linguisticfeatures A variety of ‘universals’ suggestions in linguistics E.g. Bybee (2003):“...the true language universals are universals of change.” Most TU hypotheses phrased in process terms, as shifts; In translation, the processes involved may be the most interesting candidates, or, the nature of translation as a particular kind of language contact.

  7. Not an exclusivefocus • The quest for universals is not the only ’core’ issue in understandingtranslation. • Others:TypologyVariationChange

  8. So, why? • Theoreticalinterest: what is translation? • Descriptiveinterest: whataretranslationslike? • Appliedinterest: canweimprovetranslations and translatoreducationwith a deeperunderstanding of whattranslationstend to have in common?

  9. Data for universals research • From differently related languages: - typologically and genealogically distant - with closer typological fit • Differentkinds of corpora

  10. Corpus types Bi- /multilingual corpora Parallel corpus Comparable corpus Texts Matched texts in the and their translations same language: (one or multiple) translated and ‘original’/‘spontaneous’ Matched L1 and L2 texts (no translation)

  11. Hypotheses on Translation Universals Early hypotheses based on small-scale studies, more recent on large-scale corpus studies Most studied ‘explicitation’,‘simplification’,‘conventionalization/normalization’; ‘source language interference’ More recent‘underrepresentation of unique target language items’, ‘untypical collocations’

  12. Explicitation The most widely accepted hypothesis, much support, little counterevidence Translations more explicit than source texts, i.e. the translation process tends to add information and linguistic elements – verbalise more Observed at different levels(syntax, lexis, text)

  13. Finnish > English(Parallel corpus, FECCS) Puolueen johto oli sopinut Kekkosen miehenä tunnetun entisen ulko- ja pääministerin tohtori Ahti Karjalaisen ehdokkuudesta ja puolueen eduskuntaryhmän enemmistö tuki häntä. ’hadagreed on ... Karjalainen’scandidacy’ The partyleadershiphadalreadyagreedamongthemselvesthata known Kekkonen follower, formerforeignminister and primeminister Ahti Karjalainen, shouldbetheircandidate. Syntactic explicitness, e.g. degree of ‘sentence-likeness’ increases (non-finite>finite constructions) (cf. also Eskola 2004)

  14. Explicitationfound also in other kinds of language contact, e.g. lingua franca use

  15. Simplification Controversial; findings conflicting Simplification at one level may increase complexity at another. E.g. simple main clauses may cause complexity at text level, reducing coherent textual flow, making it fragmented and hard to follow.

  16. Studies on comparable corpora The first corpus study supported lexical simplification (Laviosa-Braithwaite 1996): Most frequent lexis even more frequent in translations, [But no less lexical variation (type/token ratio)] Studies on CTF (comparable Corpus of Translational Finnish, 10 million wds) Support Nevalainen (2005) (CTF) Tirkkonen-Condit (2005) (CTF) translationshavemorerepeatedn-grams: ihan niin kuin, aivan niin kuin; samalta kuin ennenkin… No support Jantunen (2004, 2005) - lexis (CTF) Eskola (2004) – syntax (CTF)

  17. Example: degree modifiers Jantunen (2004) : synonymousdegreemodifiers (hyvin, oikein, kovin) E.g. majorcollocates of hyvin (Comparable corpus, CTF) 1. OriginalFinnish adjectives: väsynyt, pieni adverbs:hiljaa, hyvin, hitaasti, pian, varovasti 2. Translated Finnish adjectives: erikoinen, hieno, kaunis, lyhyt, nuori, pieni, sairas, suuri, tyytyväinen, tärkeä, vaalea, vaarallinen, vaatimaton, vahva, vaikea, vakava, väsynyt, yksinkertainen, ylpeä adverbs: harvoin, hitaasti, hyvin, kauas, korkealla, lähellä, nopeasti, pian, pitkään, selvästi, vakavasti, varhain, varovasti more variation in translations

  18. Simultaneoussimplification of lexis as overall frequenciesproliferation of variety

  19. Example: verb frequencies Mauranen 2000 (CTF) e.g. FinnishverbHALUTA HALUTA, academictexts OriginalFinnish 46 /mio w TranslfromEnglish 101 / mio w Translfromotherlgs 110 / mio w HALUTA, popularnon-fiction OriginalFinnish 19 / mio w TranslfromEnglish 31 / mio w

  20. Example: verb collocations HALUTA OriginalFinnish: commonestcollocateKOROSTAA (‘emphasise’) nearly 40% of allcollocations ...moniaineksisuusei ole ainoaasia jota haluankorostaa, ‘heterogeneity is not the only thing I want to emphasise’ TranslatedFinnish: KOROSTAA lessthan 8% of allcollocations eventhoughHALUTAitselfwasmorethantwice as frequent

  21. Instead, strongestcollocate of HALUTA in translations: OSOITTAA (‘show, prove’), Tämän ainakin halusin tässä varsin luonnosmaisessa todistelussani osoittaa‘this at least I wanted to show in this very sketchy proof’.

  22. But OSOITTAAnever co-occurred with HALUTA in Finnish originals where OSOITTAA collocates with PYRKIÄ (’try’) Koko järjestelmä on turha, kuten olen pyrkinyt osoittamaan. ’the whole system is unnecessary, as I have tried to show’

  23. Are these findings incompatible with the “overrepresentation” of the most frequent words? Not necessarily: items participating in the collocations may be very frequent if considered individually • Simplification more complex than first meets the eye • Postulate untypical collocations as a hypothetical universal(also supported by Jantunen 2004 and Kemppanen 2008)

  24. Untypicalcollocations and unusuallyhigh proportion of very common wordsalsofound in learnerlanguage and linguafrancaspeech Simultaneoussimplification of lexis (as overall frequencies)and proliferation of variety also in lingua franca speech

  25. Transfer /Interference Baker’s definition excluded interference Earlier, Toury had formulated a “law of interference” : “in translation, phenomena pertaining to the make-up of the source text tend to be transferred to the target text.” (Toury 1995)

  26. More recently, transfer has resurfaced as a potential translation universal E.g. Eskola(2004) on the basis of syntactic research (comparable corpus, CTF) Mauranen(2004) on the basis of lexis (comparable corpus, CTF) Also Teich (2003) “shining-through” (?)

  27. English and Russian Translations compared to Mixed Source Languages and Original Finnish (Mauranen 2004) Frequency bands based on rank order (Comparable Corpus of Translational Finnish, 10 million wds) Difference from the reference database: Vs. Mixed-source Translationsvs. FinnishOriginals Freq. Eng Russ S Eng Russ S Band 1-30 63 71 134 75 96 171 50-79 190 115 305 87 178 265 100-129 104 51 155 167 77 244 S 357 237 594 329 351 680

  28. Translations from different source languages had different profiles but • Translations differed from originals more than from other translations • Transfer looks plausiblebut the remaining variation must have other explanations

  29. What Transfer? SLA research: transfer from L1 affects L2 Translation studies: transfer from L2 affects L1 RecentSLA research: L2 influences L1 (Cook 2003); L2 learners have better L1 skills than monolinguals (Kecskes & Papp 2000) Transfer ubiquitous (Jarvis & Pavlenko 2007) Translation studies: SL / ST influences TL /TT?

  30. Optional vs. obligatory: personal pronouns to and from Finnish In Finnish person reference either by verb inflection alone or by a combination of pronoun and inflected verb Verb inflection obligatory, pronoun optional.

  31. Translators often use inflected verb alone (i.e. ‘drop pronouns’) “ Iwas going to wait until another time we met, but I may as well tell you now. I've decided to marry you.” (EO) – Ajattelinsäästääsenjohonkinmyöhempäänkertaan, muttavoinyhtähyvinkertoasennytkin. Olenpäättänytmennänaimisiinsinunkanssasi. (FT) But even more often they opt for pronouns.

  32. Translations of I, ich and minä Two-way parallel corpus Finnish – English English – Finnish I →minä 10742 → 3763 (2.9 : 1) I←minä 5518 ← 1471 (4.1 : 1) Two-way parallel corpus Finnish – German German - Finnish ich→minä 2315 → 1393 (1.7 : 1) Ich←minä 3850 ← 942 (4.1 : 1) (Mauranen & Tiittula 2005)

  33. In sum, translations tend to translate pronouns in the source text • This would support text interference Translations also reduce or add pronouns depending on the target language • This would support working at the level of language

  34. Unique items Tirkkonen-Condit (2000, 2004): linguistic features unique to the target language (“untranslatables”) proportionally underrepresented in translations.

  35. Verbs of sufficiency Tirkkonen-Condit: Finnish verbs with the semantic feature ’sufficiency’ (Comparable corpus, CTF) EHTIÄ (‘have enough time’, ‘be early enough’), JAKSAA(‘be strong enough’), MALTTAA(‘be patient enough’), USKALTAA(‘have enough courage’), VIITSIÄ(‘have enough initiative or energy’) and pragmatic clitics(-kin/-kaan, -han/hän) All proportionally more frequent in Finnish originals than in translations.

  36. Generic person Similarly the Finnish ‘zero person’, i.e. 3.person verb with no pronoun and generic meaning: Eitarvitsesanoa. (FO) Youdon't have to say it. (ET) ‘there’s no need to say it’ For generic meaning, translators tend to use more pronouns where original Finnish employs the zero person (Mauranen & Tiittula 2005)

  37. Unique lexical items: keli, kinos and hanki Kujamäki (2004): text first translated into German and English, Then students translated into Finnish (experimental study) …lumimuuttuirännäksijakelivain paheni… tienviereenjäijomataliakinoksia. …pianlöysinitsenijaautonihangesta. …conditions… / ..die Strassenverhältnisse… …a low snowbank…/…ansehnlichenHäufchen… …in a snowdrift… / imSchnee…

  38. keli - die Strassenverhältnisse/ conditions 36 tie/ liikenne/ajo-olosuhteet, katujen/teidenkunto, tiet, sääolot… 25 keliolosuhteet, ajokeli,keli 11 kinos - den Schnee… Häufchen/ snowbank 36 (lunta)…kasoiksi/-hin, töyräiksi, penkoiksi, tienreunaan; lumikasat… 23 lumikinoksiksi; (lunta)…kinoksiksi, lumikinos, kinostilunta 13 hanki - ...imSchnee/ …stuck in a snowdrift 36 lumen …keskellä, saartamana, ympäröimänä; keskellä …lumipenkkaa/-kasaa/-sohjoa/-kinosta;… 23 keskellälumihankea; lumihangessa13

  39. Underrepresentation of TL unique items – simplification or something else? • Would seem to suggest some sort of suppression of the TL – even though it’s the translator’s “best” language

  40. Conclusion Three important things: • Data • Languagecontact • Cross-linguistic influence

  41. Data Different kinds of corpora and a broad range of languages (also non-IE) bring out regularity and variation in translation

  42. LanguageContact Translationuniversalsdeepenourunderstanding of languagecontact Sharedfeatures: Translation, L2 learning and L2 use - untypicalcollocations - veryhigh proportion of commonestwords Translation and lingua franca communication - enhanced explicitness - simultaneoussimplification and increased variety in lexis Languagecontactleads to cross-linguisticinfluence

  43. Cross-linguistic influence • Translation is bilingual processing; It seems to suppress some processes and activate others compared to monolingual processing • activates rare collocates and rare syntactic structures • suppresses TL-specific phenomena (‘unique items’)

  44. Transfer /interference /shining-through highly plausible even if not the whole story • Cross-linguistic influence takes many forms and is omnipresent (Jarvis & Pavlenko 2007) • Translation studies: SL / ST influences TL /TT?

  45. In all: • Translations share many typical features,but they are neither simple nor pure • Much remains to be discovered about the product and the processes

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