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

Author(s):  
Noelia Ramón García

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.

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 816-826 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilad Feldman ◽  
Huiwen Lian ◽  
Michal Kosinski ◽  
David Stillwell

There are two conflicting perspectives regarding the relationship between profanity and dishonesty. These two forms of norm-violating behavior share common causes and are often considered to be positively related. On the other hand, however, profanity is often used to express one’s genuine feelings and could therefore be negatively related to dishonesty. In three studies, we explored the relationship between profanity and honesty. We examined profanity and honesty first with profanity behavior and lying on a scale in the lab (Study 1; N = 276), then with a linguistic analysis of real-life social interactions on Facebook (Study 2; N = 73,789), and finally with profanity and integrity indexes for the aggregate level of U.S. states (Study 3; N = 50 states). We found a consistent positive relationship between profanity and honesty; profanity was associated with less lying and deception at the individual level and with higher integrity at the society level.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Stavrakakis

This article carries out a theoretical analysis of the relationship between democracy and polarization. It utilizes examples from a variety of premodern and modern societies to argue that difference and division are inherent to a vibrant democratic life and to representation itself. At the same time, a stable and pluralist democratic culture presupposes the establishment of a common ground required for reflexive democratic decision making. To take into account both requirements, this must be a special type of common ground: an agonistic common ground. Agonism, as opposed to both the politics of raw antagonism and the postpolitics of consensus, values the existence of real alternatives and even ideological distance but aims at sublimating their pernicious effects. However, an agonistic outcome is always the result of a delicate balancing act between oligarchic and populist tendencies. In modernity, it predominantly took the form of a paradoxical blend of the democratic and the liberal tradition. The current crisis of liberal democracy and its postdemocratic mutation obliges one to ask whether democratic crisis may cause polarization, rather than the other way around, and puts in doubt the ability of the “moderate center” to deal with it in ways consolidating democracy. The article illustrates its theoretical rationale with examples from populism/antipopulism polarization in contemporary Greece, where elite-driven antipopulist discourse has consistently employed dehumanizing repertoires enhancing pernicious polarization.


2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 4.1-4.32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Baldauf ◽  
Robert B. Kaplan

Applied Linguistics is a diverse field, comprising a substantial number of sub-fields, sub-specialisations and related fields. To see that this is the case one need only examine the various hand- books and encyclopaedic references that have been published in the last ten years to see the wide range of topics that have been covered. As with many professional areas in academia, Applied Linguistics is organised around national organisations, with its international structure being a loose confederation known as the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA). Given these diverse academic and structural arrangements, it should not be surprising if academics within different national associations were to cluster around different interests within the field. This study explores the question of what emphases are found in various parts of the world in Applied Linguistics, and in particular, the relationship of Australian Applied Linguistics to international trends using a structural text analysis of abstracts related to Applied Linguistics as well as an historical review of the trends involved.


2002 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 374-386
Author(s):  
Probal Dasgupta

Abstract This article explores some topics at the boundary between linguistics theory and the applied linguistic foundations of the practice of translation. Section 1, The irrelevance of the avant-garde , considers the relation between such academic adventures as semiotics and poststructuralism on the one hand and the theory of language and the practice of translation on the other, and argues that radical antiscientism does not bear on the foundations of translation. Section 2, The irrelevance of the technical , looks at formal syntax and semantics in relation to the concepts of applied linguistics and shows that careful contemporary linguistics cannot underpin an applied enterprise that includes translation studies. Section 3, The substantive hase of translation , indicates (in some detail for translation and at a general level for other applied linguistic activities) the direction that the contemporary integration of various lines of linguistic research is taking vis-à-vis the needs of such applied enterprises as translation, literary studies, language planning, lexicography, and language teaching. Section 3 invokes a concept of substance as opposed to form and thus sets the scene for the concluding section 4, Pragmatics, applied studies, and scientific progress , which argues that it is necessary to take help from linguistics in order to construct the field of translation studies in such a way that practitioners can truly benefit freely from all relevant branches of knowledge, in view of the fact that chaos is an obstacle to genuine freedom.


Author(s):  
Hans-Jörg Schwenk

The present paper deals with the relationship between contrastive linguistics on the one hand and foreign language teaching on the other hand, more precisely, with the influence exerted by the first on the latter. It goes without saying that a teacher who teaches his mother tongue is expected to teach it as completely and correctly as possible. Yet the complete and correct teaching of any language depends on the teacher’s complete and correct knowledge of the given language and, comes to that, his awareness of this knowledge. It could be shown and proven on various examples that this aim can only be reached by the way of analyzing an other / a foreign language and comparing it with the language / the mother tongue to be teached, that, as much as paradoxical this may sound, self-understanding quite often needs the understanding of the other.


2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 4.1-4.32
Author(s):  
Richard B. Baldauf ◽  
Robert B. Kaplan

Applied Linguistics is a diverse field, comprising a substantial number of sub-fields, sub-specialisations and related fields. To see that this is the case one need only examine the various hand- books and encyclopaedic references that have been published in the last ten years to see the wide range of topics that have been covered. As with many professional areas in academia, Applied Linguistics is organised around national organisations, with its international structure being a loose confederation known as the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA). Given these diverse academic and structural arrangements, it should not be surprising if academics within different national associations were to cluster around different interests within the field. This study explores the question of what emphases are found in various parts of the world in Applied Linguistics, and in particular, the relationship of Australian Applied Linguistics to international trends using a structural text analysis of abstracts related to Applied Linguistics as well as an historical review of the trends involved.


Babel ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riyadh Khalil Ibrahim

The paper aims at studying the relationship between contrastive linguistics (CL) and translation as branches of applied linguistics, on one hand, and the use of computer corpora (C.C) on the other. It also stresses the fact that the boundaries of CL have been redrawn to incorporate the output of C.C in performing various tasks in translation, that goes beyond the traditional methods of CL carried out exclusively on solving problems in foreign language teaching (FLT). The paper supports the call for the manipulation of data obtained from CC in contrastive linguistic projects for the betterment of translation quality. Previously, CL was concerned with linguistic systems rather than language use, but with the introduction of corpora, language use become more easily accessible and the field of CL has expanded. The access to huge amounts of original texts and their translation in electronic format is of great benefit to professional translators, since a wide range of translation solutions for any particular source language are available by a gentle hit on the required tagging key. As for translation-oriented corpus based CL it becomes obvious that the actual contrastive study will be carried out in order to obtain data for explaining the various phenomena in translation. Hence, translation as a communicative event can assume a fully-fledged descriptive discipline if it manages to develop its own descriptive tools of study. Computer corpora can play a decisive role in turning translation into a well-established academic discipline.


Author(s):  
Gyde Hansen

Reference with noun phrases can only be described by drawing on different branches of linguistics such as pragmatics, semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology and stylistics. In a contrastive analysis of the use of articles in pairs of languages such as Danish and German, it has been shown to be expedient to deal first of all with the material in terms of a common prag-matic and text-semantic tertium comparationis (i. e. comparative framework) and subsequently to include constraints from other levels of description. Although Danish and German are in fact closely related languages, they differ considerably with respect to reference and the use of articles, and these – at times quite complicated – differences lead to a great deal of interference in translation. In a series of experiments in which translation processes were studied using the computer program Translog (developed by Arnt Lykke Jakobsen of the Copenhagen Business School), it has been shown that an effective means of combatting reference-related interference relating to reference in translation processes is to give individual consultation, through which the information obtained from observations made during the transla-tion process and the individual strengths and weaknesses of translators can be combined with the insights of contrastive linguistics.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-220
Author(s):  
Luis Escoriza Morera

Despite the enormous usefulness of variationist studies on a lexical plane, until the present day there has been little research in comparison with the attention paid by sociolinguistics to other levels of linguistic analysis such as phonetic –phonological analysis. This is due, we believe, to the theoretical and methodological problems that may occur at a lexical level. In this paper we present the results of research carried out on fifty lexical variants in Spanish. The results obtained show, on one hand, the possibility and necessity of designing tests which may help us to study the relationship between sociocultural factors and lexical elements and, on the other, the influence of the factor which we have called the degree of formality (based on the existence of different texts and communicative situations on a scale going from the most formal to the most spontaneous) in the choice of lexicon.


2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 609-633
Author(s):  
Marko Valenta ◽  
Zan Strabac

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between religiosity and support for democracy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Using data from the last World Values Survey, we examine levels of religiosity among Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats, and their support for democracy. The influence of religiosity on support for democracy is also explored. The results indicate that religiosity has a negative influence on support for democracy, and it is particularly true for individuals who do not support the separation of the religious from the political sphere and who exhibit lower support for democracy. The article also examines different levels of religiosity among the three groups, controlling for a wide range of variables. We conclude that there is basically no difference in support for democracy between Croats and Bosniaks, while Serbs exhibit somewhat lesser support for democracy than members of the other two ethnic groups. Serbs also seem to be somewhat less religious than Bosniaks and Croats. Opposition to separation of the religious from the political sphere is a major source of lack of support for democracy among Croats and Bosniaks, but not among Serbs.


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