scholarly journals Translating Foreign Languages and Non-Native Varieties of English in Animated Films

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenza Minutella
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Personal Communication ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
British English ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Language Variety ◽  
Animated Films ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Accented English

The aim of this paper is to explore how foreign languages (i.e., languages other than English) and non-native varieties of English are used in Anglo-American animated films and to investigate the strategies adopted in Italian dubbing to deal with such multilingual features. The paper combines insights into professional practice with a close examination of a specific case study. The film Despicable Me 2 (dir. Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud, Illumination Entertainment, 2013) has been chosen for analysis since it displays more than one language and several language varieties (British English, American English and foreign-accented English). The film also exploits visual and verbal stereotypes which enhance the comedic elements of the film. This multiplicity of voices and identities through language variety represents a challenge for audiovisual translators. By analysing the representation of characters and drawing on personal communication with Italian dubbing practitioners, the article aims to unveil how linguistic variation, multilingualism and diversity are dealt with in dubbing. The article will show that, although general trends may be identified as far as foreign languages and non-native varieties are concerned, the solutions offered by dubbing professionals often depend on a variety of factors and agents.

Perceptions of Standard and Nonstandard Language Varieties: The Influence of Ethnicity and Heritage Language Experience

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-79
Author(s):  
Maria Elena Gutiérrez ◽  
Mark Amengual
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Standard American English ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Language Variety ◽  
Accented English ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Chicano English

The present study examines perceptions of standard and nonstandard varieties of English and the roles of perceived speaker ethnicity and heritage language experience. In this study, 24 English monolinguals and 24 English-Spanish heritage language bilinguals were asked to evaluate three speech samples representing native Standard American English, Chicano English, and non-native Spanish-accented English, each paired with one of three photographs of an individual reflecting idealized “Hispanic” or “non-Hispanic” ethnic identities. Both the language variety heard and the ethnic identity visually associated with a given speaker were found to influence listeners’ perceptions of the individual. While this study supports previous findings that visual cues lead to discrimination in language perception, it also indicates that language experience may mitigate this effect.

scholarly journals Variation in the input: a case study of manner class frequencies

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 1091-1122 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT DALAND
Keyword(s):  
Frequency Variation ◽  
Natural Background ◽  
Frequency Distributions ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Ergodic Processes ◽  
Language Variety ◽  
Sources Of Variation ◽  
Manner Of Articulation ◽  
Discourse Topic

ABSTRACTWhat are the sources of variation in the input, and how much do they matter for language acquisition? This study examines frequency variation in manner-of-articulation classes in child and adult input. The null hypothesis is that segmental frequency distributions of language varieties are unigram (modelable by stationary, ergodic processes), and that languages are unitary (modelable as a single language variety). Experiment I showed that English segments are not unigram; they exhibit a ‘bursty’ distribution in which the local frequency varies more than expected by chance alone. Experiment II showed the English segments are approximately unitary: the natural background variation in segmental frequencies that arises within a single language variety is much larger than numerical differences across varieties. Variation in segmental frequencies seems to be driven by variation in discourse topic; topic-associated words cause bursts/lulls in local segmental frequencies. The article concludes with some methodological recommendations for comparing language samples.

Watching English grammar change: a case study on complement selection in British and American English

2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUHANI RUDANKO
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American English ◽  
Major Change ◽  
British English ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Complement Selection

This article traces the complement selection properties of the adjective accustomed from the eighteenth century to the present. The adjective has frequently selected sentential complements, but the study illustrates a major change affecting the form of such complements. In the eighteenth century they were regularly of the to infinitive type, but today they are almost as regularly of the to -ing type. Both syntactic and semantic factors are identified in the article as having an impact on the change. The study also compares the pace of the change in British and American English, arguing that incipient change was discernible in both varieties as early as the nineteenth century. It is argued further that, at the present time, the change has been completed more fully in American English than in British English. This conclusion is reached by considering sentences with extraction or filler–gap dependencies. The data in the article come from large electronic corpora.

scholarly journals Attitudes Towards Exogenous and Endogenous Uses of English: Ugandan’s Judgements of English Structures in Varieties of English

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Christiane Meierkord
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Population ◽  
American English ◽  
The West ◽  
Indian English ◽  
British English ◽  
International Media ◽  
The North ◽  
Language Variety ◽  
Grammatical Structures ◽  
Over Time

Uganda is a former British protectorate, where English has contributed to the country’s linguistic ecology since 1894, when the British established a protectorate over the area of the Buganda kingdom. Over time, Ugandan English has developed as a nativised second language variety, spoken by Uganda’s indigenous population. At the same time, due to migrations, globalisation and the influence of international media and the Internet, its speakers have increasingly been in contact with varieties other than British English: American English, Indian English, Kenyan English, and Nigerian English may all influence Ugandan English. This paper looks at how Ugandan English can be conceptualised as a variety shaped by other varieties. It reports on the results of acceptability tests carried out with 184 informants in the North, the Central and the West of Uganda and discusses how speakers assess individual grammatical structures used in Ugandan English and in those varieties they are potentially in contact with.

“American vs. English” : US American and British English Speakers’ Attitudes toward Phonological and Lexical Features in Accent Tag Videos

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Judit Szitó
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
American English ◽  
Rich Source ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
British English ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Lay People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Linguistic Inquiry

The study examined two YouTube Accent Tag videos to reveal how pairs of British and American speakers reacted to each other’s and their own varieties as they pronounced words from a list and answered several questions by offering their lexical choices. Accent Tag videos represent a novel way for lay people to be involved in science by offering their language varieties and opinions, accumulating data in unprecedented numbers in the history of dialectology and also creating a rich source for various types of linguistic inquiry. The results showed a marked difference between the manners in which standard-accented British and American speakers evaluated both their own and their interlocutor’s speech. The two RP-accented British speakers were more prone to criticise the two mainstream accented American (General American) speakers’ speech but did not receive criticisms from their interlocutors. Further, neither of the British speakers disparaged their own speech, while one American speaker did. The study also identified some disfavoured features of American English, mainly phonetic differences in comparison with RP, including the lower unrounded LOT-vowel [ɑ], T-flapping, and the flat BATH-vowel [ᴂ] (Wells 1982). The findings of these case studies support the hypothesis that in the game of “American vs English”, RP-accented British English is generally rated higher than mainstream American (or GA) in both groups of speakers.

scholarly journals THE PREFERRED MODEL OF ENGLISH FOR PERSONAL, NATIONAL, AND GLOBAL COMMUNICATION IN ELF CONTEXT: A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN FILIPINOS AND INDIANS

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 549
Author(s):  
Olusiji Lasekan
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
American English ◽  
Personal Communication ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Global Communication ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Global Identity ◽  
British English ◽  
Future Research Directions

An experimental investigation was conducted to compare preferred models of English for personal, national, and global communication in ELF context between Filipinos and Indians. Drawing upon the data gathered through questionnaire and accent recognition survey from over 200 undergraduate students in these two nations, it was revealed that both nationals prefer British English for personal communication. But for national communication, Indians prefer their own standardized variety of English, i.e. Indian English, while the majority of Filipinos chose American English. British English and American English are considered to be the most ideal English varieties to express global identity by Indians and Filipinos, respectively. Finally, the degree of familiarity with the native English varieties which was higher among Filipinos than Indians is inversely proportional to level of awareness of their standard local English variety. Implications of the results and future research directions were also presented.

scholarly journals Shhh… I Need Quiet! Children’s Understanding of American, British, and Japanese-accented English Speakers

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa Bent ◽  
Rachael Frush Holt
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
English Speaker ◽  
Moderate Amount ◽  
British English ◽  
Nonnative Speaker ◽  
Noisy Conditions ◽  
Accented English ◽  
The Impact

Children’s ability to understand speakers with a wide range of dialects and accents is essential for efficient language development and communication in a global society. Here, the impact of regional dialect and foreign-accent variability on children’s speech understanding was evaluated in both quiet and noisy conditions. Five- to seven-year-old children ( n = 90) and adults ( n = 96) repeated sentences produced by three speakers with different accents—American English, British English, and Japanese-accented English—in quiet or noisy conditions. Adults had no difficulty understanding any speaker in quiet conditions. Their performance declined for the nonnative speaker with a moderate amount of noise; their performance only substantially declined for the British English speaker (i.e., below 93% correct) when their understanding of the American English speaker was also impeded. In contrast, although children showed accurate word recognition for the American and British English speakers in quiet conditions, they had difficulty understanding the nonnative speaker even under ideal listening conditions. With a moderate amount of noise, their perception of British English speech declined substantially and their ability to understand the nonnative speaker was particularly poor. These results suggest that although school-aged children can understand unfamiliar native dialects under ideal listening conditions, their ability to recognize words in these dialects may be highly susceptible to the influence of environmental degradation. Fully adult-like word identification for speakers with unfamiliar accents and dialects may exhibit a protracted developmental trajectory.

Recent change in non-present perfect constructions in British and American English

Corpora ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinyue Yao ◽  
Peter Collins
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Recent Change ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
British English ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Modal Auxiliaries

A number of recent studies of grammatical categories in English have identified regional and diachronic variation in the use of the present perfect, suggesting that it has been losing ground to the simple past tense from the eighteenth century onwards ( Elsness, 1997 , 2009 ; Hundt and Smith, 2009 ; and Yao and Collins, 2012 ). Only a limited amount of research has been conducted on non-present perfects. More recently, Bowie and Aarts’ (2012) study using the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English has found that certain non-present perfects underwent a considerable decline in spoken British English (BrE) during the second half of the twentieth century. However, comparison with American English (AmE) and across various genres has not been made. This study focusses on the changes in the distribution of four types of non-present perfects (past, modal, to-infinitival and ing-participial) in standard written BrE and AmE during the thirty-year period from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Using a tagged and post-edited version of the Brown family of corpora, it shows that contemporary BrE has a stronger preference for non-present perfects than AmE. Comparison of four written genres of the same period reveals that, for BrE, only the change in the overall frequency of past perfects was statistically significant. AmE showed, comparatively, a more dramatic decrease, particularly in the frequencies of past and modal perfects. It is suggested that the decline of past perfects is attributable to a growing disfavour for past-time reference in various genres, which is related to long-term historical shifts associated with the underlying communicative functions of the genres. The decline of modal perfects, on the other hand, is more likely to be occurring under the influence of the general decline of modal auxiliaries in English.

Catching an Atom Spy: MI5 and the Investigation of Klaus Fuchs

2010 ◽  
pp. 554-567
Author(s):  
Timothy Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Klaus Fuchs ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Successful Approach ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Atomic Espionage ◽  
Signals Intelligence

This article focuses on M15 organization and Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist and Soviet “Atom Spy” who was arrested in 1950 and served fourteen years for offences related to atomic espionage. It examines how Fuchs was identified as an “Atom Spy” in 1949 and describes the MI5's investigation, which ended in the early 1950 with the successful arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of this highly significant Cold War figure. Key issues discussed in this article include the difficulties encountered by MI5 and the budding British atomic program in the sphere of security. It also discusses the role of Signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the investigation of Fuchs, and the high-risk but ultimately successful approach taken by MI5's key interrogator, William Skardon. This case study highlights both the unparalleled level of international intelligence cooperation between the British agencies and their American counterparts, which made the resolution of this case possible, and some of the frailties in the Anglo-American alliance that were brought to the fore by the exposure of Fuchs as an Atom Spy.

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