Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies

2013 ◽  
pp. 36-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Vandepitte ◽  
Gert De Sutter
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Contrastive Linguistics

scholarly journals Translating English Existential 'there' Sentences into Arabic: A Text-based Analysis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ-tls for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Irfan Said
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Alternative Construction ◽  
Contrastive Linguistics ◽  
Syntactic Restrictions

English existential 'there' lacks equivalent in many languages, yet it has attracted the attention of linguists working within contrastive linguistics and translation studies. The aim of the present paper is to investigate how translators deal with English 'there' sentences in two translated Arabic texts. The method adopted in the study is a descriptive-analytic one. In Arabic the words 'hunaaka' and 'tammata' are usually used to render English 'there' ; however, the data of the study show that in many cases translators avoid using these two words. The flexibility of word order in Arabic , in addition to the use of full lexical verbs , more frequently than English does in 'there' sentences , help to translate these sentences adequately into Arabic. It is also found that syntactic restrictions are not the only reason for the fact that many 'there' sentences are not translated using 'hunaaka' and ' tammata'; the discourse and stylistic levels, play a role in the translator's decision to use other means. In some cases, the use of 'hunaaka /tammata' is shown to be optional and in other cases to be obligatory, unless an alternative construction is produced. Major translational changes affecting the information structure of the texts, are not found in the target language.

Cross-linguistic register studies

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stella Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Register Studies ◽  
Contrastive Linguistics

This paper discusses register as a meaningful unit of contrastive linguistics and translation studies. Drawing on systemic functional register theory, it categorizes different approaches to register-oriented cross-linguistic studies emphasizing either the comparison of contrasted features organized by register or that of registers using features as operationalizations. The approach is exemplified with the help of sample analyses of the English-German CroCo Corpus, a corpus containing originals and translations from eight different registers. In order to account for the systematic contrastive differences in frequencies of compared features, the magnitude of difference between register-specific and register-neutral frequencies is contrasted. The paper finally discusses complex register-specific combinations of indicators and shows how these help to identify translation properties.

scholarly journals Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies Interconnected: The Corpus-based Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noelia Ramón García
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Contrastive Linguistics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Tertium Comparationis

The relationship between contrastive linguistics (CL) and translation studies (TS) as two disciplines within the field of applied linguistics has been explored in depth by several authors, especially in the 1970s and early 1980s. From the mid-nineties on both these disciplines have experienced a great boom due to the use of computerised language corpora in linguistic analysis. We will argue in this paper that this new corpus-based approach to CL and TS makes it necessary to revise the relationship between them, and look for a new common ground to work on. Our hypothesis is that the use of translation equivalence as a tertium comparationis for a corpus-based contrastive analysis provides essential data for TS in a wide range of aspects. On the other hand, the corpus approach of TS has shed a new light on numerous aspects of CL.

scholarly journals Translator behaviour and language usage: some constraints on contrastive studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (26) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Ian Mason
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
The Status ◽  
Contrastive Linguistics ◽  
Machine Readable

This article concerns the phenomenon of junction, a cohesive device for signalling inter-clausal or inter-sentential relations, and its translation. The predominant finding of recent French-English contrastive studies on the topic of junction has been that, whereas there is a trend to junction-less juxtaposition in French, explicit co-ordination is preferred in English. Doubts concerning the universal validity of such a norm constitute the motivation for this study, which aims to consider:(1) the status of translator behaviour as evidence of norms of language behaviour;(2) the status of contrastive linguistics within translation studies.Examples of translations of writings by Albert Camus are then discussed in an attempt to show that translators’ decisions are sensitive to a number of contextual factors including genre, discourse and text type. My conclusions lead me to suggest some limitations on the use of quantitative studies within translation studies, including those based on analysis of machine-readable corpora.

System-oriented and text-oriented comparative linguistic research

1999 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elke Teich
Keyword(s):  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Language Typology ◽  
System View ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Contrastive Linguistics ◽  
Multilingual Text

The main concern of this paper is to develop a model of cross-linguistic variation that is applicable to various kinds of comparative linguistic research. The motivation for this lies in the observation that there is little interaction among the major areas of comparative linguistic investigation — language typology, contrastive linguistics, translation studies, and the computational modeling of multilingual processes as implemented in machine translation or multilingual text generation. The divide between them can be characterized by a general orientation towards describing the relation between language systems (as in language typology) vs. describing the relation between texts (as in translation studies). It will be suggested that with a model of cross-linguistic comparison that accommodates both the system view and the text view on cross-linguistic variation, language typology, contrastive linguistics, translation studies and multilingual computational linguistics can be shown to have mutually compatible concerns rather than being entirely disjunct endeavors. The model proposed is based on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), using the representational categories SFL sets up as parameters along which cross-linguistic variation can be described. The fundamental assumption brought forward by SFL that acts as a unifier of concerns is that texts are ultimately instantiations of the language system under certain specifiable contexts of use. A model of cross-linguistic variation based on SFL thus bears the promise of opening up the text view for the system-oriented branch of cross-linguistic study, and the system view for the text-oriented branch. I illustrate the model with data from several European languages, concentrating on the register of instructional text.

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