La tendencia hacia la simplificación en el discurso especializado y no-especializado: ampliando el alcance de los estudios de traducción basados en corpus al análisis multidiscursivo

Virginia Mattioli

doi:10.24310/TRANS.2022.v26i1.13759

Authors

Virginia Mattioli Independent Researcher Italy https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9895-4416

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24310/TRANS.2022.v26i1.13759

Keywords:

corpus-based translation studies, translation universals, simplification, academic discourse, multi-discourse analysis

Abstract

This paper intends to contribute to research on the simplification hypothesis by incorporating a multi-discourse analysis. The study compares non-specialized and academic specialized discourse with the aim of describing their similarities and difference in terms of syntactic and stylistic simplification. Considering two variables (non-specialized/specialized discourse and original/translated texts) allows for examination of which has a greater influence on the tendency towards simplification. According to the adopted corpus-based methodology, four corpora are compiled, including original and translated English texts representing non-specialized and academic discourse. Then, simplification-related features (lexical variety, lexical density, mean sentence length, use of subordination and non-finite sentences) are determined and identified in each corpus. The comparison of the results across different corpora shows signs of simplification in both types of discourse. However, each presents different linguistic features, suggesting that simplification is more related to the type of discourse than to the original or translated nature of the analyzed texts.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

References

Anthony, L. (2014). AntConc (Version 3.4.1) (Computer Software). Waseda University. http://www.laurenceanthony.net/

Baker, M. (1993). Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications. In M. Baker, G. Francis, & E. Tognini-Bonelli (Eds.). Text and technology: In Honour of John Sinclair (pp. 233-250). John Benjamins.

Baker, M. (1995). Corpora in translation studies: An overview and some suggestions for future research. Target 7(2), 223-243.

Baker, M. (2004). A corpus-based view of similarity and difference in translation. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 9(2), 167-193.

Bennet, K. (2007). Epistemicide! The tale of a predatory discourse. The Translator 13(2), 151-169.

Biber, D., and Gray, B. (2010). Challenging stereotypes about academic writing: Complexity, elaboration, explicitness. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9(1), 2-20.

Biber, D., and Gray, B. (2019). Are law reports an ‘agile’ or an ‘uptight’ register?: Tracking patterns of historical change in the use of colloquial and complexity features. In T. Fanego, and P. Rodríguez-Puente (Eds.). Corpus-based Research on Variation in English Legal Discourse (pp. 149-169). John Benjamins.

Blum, S., and Levenston, E. A. (1978). Universals of lexical simplification. Language learning, 28(2), 399-415.

Bunton, D. (1999). The use of higher level metatext in PhD theses. English for Specific Purposes, 18(Supplement 1), S41-S56

Cabré, M. T. (2002). Textos especializados y unidades de conocimiento: metodología y tipologización. In J. García Palacios, and M. T. Fuentes (Eds.). Texto, terminología y traducción (pp. 15-36). Almar.

Cabré, M. T., Da Cunha, I., Sanjuan, E., Torres-Moreno, J. M., and Vivaldi, J. (2010). Automatic specialized vs. non-specialized texts differentiation: a first approach. Technological innovation in the teaching and processing of LSP, hal-02556652. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02556652

Chen, X., Yan, Y., and Hu, J. (2019). A corpus-based study of Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s linguistic styles. International Journal of English Linguistics, 9(3), 13-22 https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v9n3p13

Chesterman, A. (2004). Beyond the particular. In A. Mauranen, and P. Kujamäki (Eds.). Translation universals: Do they exist? (pp. 33-49). John Benjamins.

Corpas Pastor, G., Mitkov, R., Afzal, N., and Pekar, V. (2008). Translation universals: do they exist? A corpus-based NLP study of convergence and simplification. In MT at Work. Proceedings of the Eighth Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (pp. 75-81). Association for Machine Translation in the Americas.

Da Cunha, I., and Montané, M.A. (2020). A corpus-based analysis of textual genres in the administration domain. Discourse Studies, 22(1), 3-31. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445619887538

Dang, T.N.Y. (2022). A corpus-based study of vocabulary in conference presentations. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 59. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1475158522000649

Del Rey Quesada, S. (2015). Universales de la traducción e historia de la lengua: algunas reflexiones a propósito de las versiones castellanas de los Colloquia de Erasmo. Iberoromania, 81(1), 83-102.

De Sutter, G., and Lefer, M.A. (2019). On the need for a new research agenda for corpus-based translation studies: a multi-methodological, multifactorial and interdisciplinary approach. Perspectives, 28(1), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2019.1611891

Dirección General de Educación Básica (1979). El lenguaje en la educación preescolar y ciclo preparatorio. Vasco-castellano. Centro de Publicaciones. Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia.

Durán-Muñoz, I. (2019). Adjectives and their keyness: a corpus-based analysis of tourism discourse in English. Corpora, 14(3), 351-378.

Even-Zohar, I. (1990). Introduction to Polysystem Studies. Poetics Today, 11(1), 1-6.

Flower, L. (1990). Negotiating Academic Discourse. In L. Flower, V. Stein, J. Ackerman, M. Kantz, K. McCormick, and W. C. Peck (Eds.). Reading-to-write: Exploring a cognitive and social process (pp. 222-252). Oxford University Press.

Gandin, S. (2009). Linguistica dei corpora e traduzione: definizioni, criteri di compilazione e implicazioni di ricerca dei corpora paralleli. AnnalSS, 5, 133-152.

Gotti, M. (2008). Investigating specialized discourse. Peter Lang.

Hernández García, V. (2021). Retos de traducción de las terms and conditions de las redes sociales: análisis jurídico y terminológico contrastivo inglés-español basado en corpus. Hikma 20(1), 125-156.

Huddleston, R., and Pullum, J. K. (2005). A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar. Cambridge University Press.

Kenny, D. (2001). Lexis and creativity in translation: A corpus-based approach. St. Jerome.

Kruger, H., and Rooy, B. (2012). Register and the features of translated language. Across Languages and Cultures, 13(1), 33-65.

Laviosa, S. (1997). How comparable can comparable corpora be? Target, 9(2), 289-319.

Laviosa, S. (1998a). Core Patterns of Lexical Use in a Comparable Corpus of English Narrative Prose. META: Translators’ Journal, 43(4), 557-570.

Laviosa, S. (1998b). Universals of Translation. In M. Baker, K. Malmkjaer, and G. Saldanha (Eds.). Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies (pp. 288-291). Routledge.

Laviosa, S. (2002). Corpus-based translation studies: Theory, findings, applications. Rodopi.

Malmkjaer, K. (1997). Punctuation in Hans Christian Andersen’s stories and in their translations into English. In F. Poyato (Ed.). Nonverbal communication and translation: New perspectives and challenges in literature, interpretation and the media (pp. 151-162). John Benjamins.

Malmkjaer, K. (1998). Love thy neighbour: Will parallel corpora endear linguists to translators? Meta: Translators’ Journal, 43(4), 534-541.

Mattioli, V. (2014). Identificación y clasificación de culturemas y procedimientos traductores en el archivo de textos literarios LIT_ENIT_ES: un estudio de corpus (Master thesis). Universitat Jaume I. http://repositori.uji.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10234/112279/TFM_Mattioli_Virginia.pdf?sequence=4

Mattioli, V. (2018). Los extranjerismos como referentes culturales en la literatura traducida y la literatura de viajes: propuesta metodológica y análisis traductológico basado en corpus (PhD thesis). Universitat Jaume I. https://www.tdx.cat/bitstream/handle/10803/587106/2019_Tesis_Mattioli_Virginia.pdf?sequence=1

Mauranen, A. (2004). Corpora, universals, and interference. In A. Mauranen and P. Kujamäki (Eds.). Translation universals: Do they exist? (pp. 65-82). John Benjamins.

Mauranen, A., and Ventola, E. (1996). Academic writing: Intercultural and textual issues. John Benjamins.

Olohan, M. (2002). Corpus linguistics and translation studies: Interaction and reaction. Linguistica Antverpiensia, 1, 419-429.

Ortego Antón, M. T. (2019). La terminología del sector agroalimentario (español-inglés) en los estudios contrastivos y de traducción especializada basados en corpus: los embutidos. Peter Lang.

Paltridge, B. (2002). Thesis and dissertation writing: an examination of published advice and actual practice. English for Specific Purposes, 21(2), 125-143.

Pápai, V. (2004). Explicitation: A universal of translated text? In A. Mauranen & P. Kujamäki (eds) Translation universals: Do they exist? (pp. 143-164). John Benjamins.

Paré A. (2017). Re-thinking the dissertation and doctoral supervision/Reflexiones sobre la tesis doctoral y su supervisión. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 40(3), 407-428.

Pramoolsook, I. (2009). Three fundamental concepts for genre transfer studies: A case of postgraduate dissertation to research article. Suranaree J. Soc. Sci., 3(1), 113-130.

Puurtinen, T. (2003). Genre-specific features of Translationese? Linguistic differences between translated and non-translated Finnish children’s literature. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 18(4), 389-406.

Redelinghuys, K., and Kruger, H. (2015). Using the features of translated language to investigate translation expertise: A corpus-based study. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 20(3), 293-325.

Rojo, G. (2002). Sobre la Lingüística basada en el análisis de corpus. UZEI Hizkuntza-corpusak. Oraina eta geroa (2002-10-24/25). http://uzei.com/Modulos/UsuariosFtp/Conexion/archivos54A.pdf.

Sánchez Pérez, A. (1995). Definición e historia de los corpus. In A. Sánchez, R. Sarmiento, P. Cantos, and J. Simón (Eds.). Cumbre: corpus lingüístico del español contemporáneo: fundamentos, metodología y aplicaciones. SGEL.

Sánchez Ramos, M. M. (2019). Corpus paralelos y traducción especializada: ejemplificación de diseño, compilación y alineación de un corpus paralelo bilingüe (inglés-español) para la traducción jurídica. Lebende Sprachen, 64(2), 269-285. https://doi.org/10.1515/les-2019-0015.

Scott, M. (2017). WordSmith Tools version 7. Stroud: Lexical Analysis Software. http://lexically.net/wordsmith/

Seghiri, M., and Arce Romeral, L. (2021). La traducción de contratos de compraventa inmobiliaria: un estudio basado en corpus aplicado a España e Irlanda. Peter Lang.

Several Authors (Cambridge University Press). (2020). English Grammar of Cambridge Dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/.

Several Authors (St Mt San Jacinto College) (2020). Prepositions and conjunctions. https://www.msjc.edu/learningresourcecenter/mvc/mvcwritingcenter/documents/handouts/Prepositions-and-Conjunctions.pdf.

Stubbs, M. (1986). Lexical density: A computational technique and somefindings. In M. Coulthard (Ed.). Talking about text (pp. 27-48). University of Birmingham.

Tognini-Bonelli, E. (2001). Corpus linguistics at work. John Benjamins.

Toury, G. (1991). What are descriptive studies in translation likely to yield apart from isolated description? In K. Leuven-Zwart, T. Naaijkens, A. Bernardus, M. Naaijkens (Eds.). Translation Studies: The State of the Art. Proceedings from the First James S. Holmes Symposium on Translation Studies (pp. 179-192). Rodopi.

Un-udom, S., and Un-udom, N. (2020). A corpus-based study on the use of reporting verbs in applied linguistics articles. English Language Teaching 13(4), 162-169.

Venuti, L. (1995). The Translator’s Invisibility. Routledge.

Xiao, R. (2010). How different is translated Chinese from native Chinese? A corpus-based study of translation universals. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 15(1), 5-35.

Xiao, R., and Yue, M. (2009). Using corpora in translation studies: The state of the art. In P. Baker (Ed.). Contemporary Corpus Linguistics (pp. 237-262). Continuum.

Yang, X. (2018). A corpus-based study of modal verbs in Chinese learners’ academic writing. English Language Teaching, 11(2), 122-130.

Zanettin, F. (2013). Corpus methods for descriptive translation studies. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, 95, 20-32.