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