scholarly journals Asymmetric representations of languages in contact: uses and translations of French and Spanish in Frasier

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto A. Valdeón
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Societal Implications ◽  
Situation Comedy ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
Target Languages ◽  
Translational Strategies ◽  
S Model

In recent years, several authors have underlined the need for a critical approach to Translation Studies in order to explore power struggles in both source and target languages and cultures. Norman Fairclough ’s model of discourse analysis offers textual and interpretative procedures for the analy-sis of linguistic features of texts and their societal implications that can be successfully applied for this purpose. In this article we shall study the representations of languages and cultures in contact in the American situation comedy Frasier, one of the world’s greatest television successes of the 1990s. We shall cover two distinct uses of languages in contact. In our first section, we shall examine the use of other languages in the primary English discourse of the protagonists, notably French and Spanish, and their different representational and ideational implications, before proceeding to analyse the Spanish and French target versions to ascertain whether the ideological components are maintained or transformed. In the second sec-tion, we shall analyse the scenes where two or more languages are involved and the transformative acts performed by the characters. As in the first sec-tion, the target versions in French and Spanish will then be examined in order to identify the translational strategies used to maintain or tone down the ideological components. The final section will discuss the last dimension of Fairclough’s model, that is, sociocultural practice or explanation.

Anomalous news translation

Babel ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 299-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto A. Valdeón
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Target Languages ◽  
Translational Strategies ◽  
Editorial Procedures ◽  
Insight Into

In recent years, several authors have underlined the need to enforce a critical approach to translation studies in order to explore ideologies in both source and target languages and cultures (Hermans 1999; Baker 2006). In this article we shall study BBCMundo’s news web texts and their source English BBCWorld reports from a critical approach. The article is divided into three sections. Firstly, we analyse two series of news texts. We shall discuss the use of headlines in the STs and TTs and proceed to study the strategies used in the main bodies of the reports, notably omissions, additions and permutations. Secondly, we shall concentrate on a case study in an attempt to gain further insight into the interplay of translational and editorial procedures within the Spanish service of the BBC. In a final section, we shall carry out the discussion about the ideological implications of the translational strategies identified in the previous sections.

The Role of Emergent Bilingualism in the Development of Morphological Awareness in Arabic and Hebrew

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 797-809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mila Schwartz ◽  
Haitham Taha ◽  
Hanan Assad ◽  
Ferdos Khamaisi ◽  
Zohar Eviatar
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Initial Exposure ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Semitic Language ◽  
Target Languages ◽  
Linguistic Transfer

Purpose The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of dual language development and cross-linguistic influence on morphological awareness in young bilinguals' first language (L1) and second language (L2). We examined whether (a) the bilingual children (L1/L2 Arabic and L1/L2 Hebrew) precede their monolingual Hebrew- or Arabic-speaking peers in L1 and L2 morphological awareness, and (b) 1 Semitic language (Arabic) has cross-linguistic influence on another Semitic language (Hebrew) in morphological awareness. Method The study sample comprised 93 six-year-old children. The bilinguals had attended bilingual Hebrew−Arabic kindergartens for 1 academic year and were divided into 2 groups: home language Hebrew (L1) and home language Arabic (L1). These groups were compared to age-matched monolingual Hebrew speakers and monolingual Arabic speakers. We used nonwords similar in structure to familiar words in both target languages, representing 6 inflectional morphological categories. Results L1 Arabic and L1 Hebrew bilinguals performed significantly better than Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking monolinguals in the respective languages. Differences were not found between the bilingual groups. We found evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from Arabic to Hebrew in 2 categories−bound possessives and dual number−probably because these categories are more salient in Palestinian Spoken Arabic than in Hebrew. Conclusions We conclude that children with even an initial exposure to L2 reveal acceleration of sensitivity to word structure in both of their languages. We suggest that this is due to the fact that two Semitic languages, Arabic and Hebrew, share a common core of linguistic features, together with favorable contextual factors and instructional factors.

CONVERGENCE AND THE FORMATION OF AFRIKAANS

2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul T. Roberge
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Important Case ◽  
General Idea ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
History Of

As a phenomenon to be explained, convergence in historical linguistics is substantively no different than in creolistics. The general idea is that accommodation by speakers of “established” languages in contact and the formation of new language varieties both involve a process of leveling of different structures that achieve the same referential and nonreferential effects. The relatively short and well-documented history of Afrikaans presents an important case study in the competition and selection of linguistic features during intensive language contact.

Corpus Statistics for Empirical Translation Studies

2020 ◽  
pp. 541-559
Author(s):  
Michael Oakes
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Tests ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Hierarchical Cluster ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Honestly Significant Difference ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Chi Squared ◽  
Visualization Techniques

In recent years a number of authors have made good use of statistical texts in empirical translation studies. These tests are well established in the scientific literature but have only recently been applied to the comparison of original and translated texts for the identification of the characteristics of “translationese.” There has also been interest in the comparison between professional and student translations and between machine and human translation. In this chapter, various statistical tests are examined in the context of real-world empirical studies in translation: analysis of variance and Tukey’s “honestly significant difference” test, the chi-squared test and the G-statistic, and the visualization techniques of hierarchical cluster analysis and principal component analysis. The chapter finishes with a discussion of the linguistic features chosen or found to characterize the original and translated texts.

The subtitling of offensive and taboo language into Spanish of Inglourious Basterds

Babel ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Javier Ávila-Cabrera
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Colloquial Language ◽  
Descriptive Translation Studies ◽  
Translational Strategies ◽  
Strategy Design ◽  
The Way

The transfer of offensive and taboo language in subtitling may position translators’ choices in a challenging and controversial situation, given the effect that such terms can cause on the audience (Díaz Cintas 2001a). Nowadays, it seems that dealing with this type of language starts to gain more attention in academic circles, as it belongs to colloquial language within a low register, and as such we do speak in diverse manners depending on the context we are in. This paper delves into the way offensive and taboo language has been subtitled into European Spanish. In order to conduct this study, the subtitling of the DVD version of Quentin Tarantino’s multilingual film Inglourious Basterds (2009) has been described and analyzed, resorting to a multi-strategy design (Robson 2011) which combines quantitative with qualitative data, under the umbrella of the descriptive translation studies paradigm. Accordingly, the main purpose of this analysis is to determine any regularities in the way in which offensive and taboo language has been dealt with in this particular case study, considering the technological restrictions of subtitling as well as the translational strategies employed. Thus, this study aims to shed some light on the way this type of language has been transferred on the screen.

Language and dialect in China

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norbert Francis
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Instructional Programs ◽  
Sharp Line ◽  
Second Language Development ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
Linguistic Family

In the study of language learning, researchers sometimes ask how languages in contact are related. They compare the linguistic features of the languages, how the mental grammars of each language sub-system are represented, put to use in performance, and how they interact. Within a linguistic family, languages can be closely related or distantly related, an interesting factor, for example, in understanding bilingualism and second language development. Dialects, on the other hand, are considered to be variants of the same language. While there is no way to always draw a sharp line between the categories of language and dialect, it is necessary to distinguish between the two kinds of language variation by the application of uniform criteria. The distinction between dialect and language is important for designing bilingual instructional programs, both for students who already speak two languages and for beginning second language learners.

A multifactorial analysis of explicitation in translation

Target ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandrine Zufferey ◽  
Bruno Cartoni
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Multifactorial Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Discourse Relations ◽  
Target Languages

The search for translation universals has been an important topic in translation studies over the past decades. In this paper, we focus on the notion of explicitation through a multifaceted study of causal connectives, integrating four different variables: the role of the source and the target languages, the influence of specific connectives and the role of the discourse relation they convey. Our results indicate that while source and target languages do not globally influence explicitation, specific connectives have a significant impact on this phenomenon. We also show that in English and French, the most frequently used connectives for explicitation share a similar semantic profile. Finally, we demonstrate that explicitation also varies across different discourse relations, even when they are conveyed by a single connective.

scholarly journals Linguistic Areas

Linguistics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rik van Gijn ◽  
Pieter Muysken
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Patterns ◽  
Areal Linguistics ◽  
Theoretical Issues

“Linguistic areas” are defined as social spaces (regions, countries, (sub-)continents) in which languages from different families have influenced each other significantly, leading to striking or remarkable structural resemblances across genealogical boundaries. Since the early work of Trubetskoj and his contemporaries, work on other parts of the world, for example the Indian subcontinent, has unveiled a number of other regions where contact between languages has led to convergence, and thus the general field of areal linguistics has developed. This article surveys the different proposals for linguistic areas roughly continent by continent, and then lists a number of general overviews and contributions in textbooks and handbooks. As the notion of “linguistic area” was further developed, a number of definitional and theoretical issues came up. During most of the past century, linguistic areas were thought of as something special, out of the ordinary. In addition, the view arose that there were regions which qualified as linguistic areas and others which did not. At the beginning of the 1990s awareness grew that many linguistic patterns and features, both typological and historical, could and should be studied in an areal perspective. This areal turn led to a reconceptualization of many of the issues involved in areal linguistic studies, many of them involving problems of scale and operationalization. Even though the notion of “linguistic area” has been much criticized in the strict sense, the areal perspective keeps gaining ground in the study of the distribution of linguistic features. A final section of this survey will be devoted to psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic mechanisms and scenarios leading to linguistic areas. While earlier approaches had been mostly structural and historical, recent work in areal linguistics tries to bridge the gap with meso-level language contact studies: how do languages actually converge and what are the mechanisms promoting or blocking this type of convergence? Languages do not converge by themselves; rather, it is the agency or unconscious behavior of speakers that has this effect.

scholarly journals A Corpus-based Proposal for Teaching a Translational Habitus: Initial dialogues with Bourdieu’s sociological approaches

2021 ◽  
pp. 507-525
Author(s):  
Talita Serpa ◽  
Paula Tavares Pinto ◽  
Diva Cardoso De Camargo
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Professional Behaviour ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Sociological Approaches ◽  
Translational Strategies

There is a growing body of literature that recognises the importance of Social Sciences in Translation Studies, such as the discussions surrounding the translational habitus, developed by Simeoni, Wolf, Inghilleri and Sela-Sheffy. In our research, we associate these ideas to corpora methodologies to analyse terminological usages as part of a professional behaviour. We hypothesise that when translation students previously face the most frequent terms extracted from a parallel corpus as well as their keyness and contexts, they replicate the same translational strategies in their texts, which can indicate their competencies eligible by their habitus.

scholarly journals Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology of Resistance: Counter-Memory, Epistemic Friction, and Guerrilla Pluralism

2011 ◽  
pp. 9-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Medina
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Standpoint Theory ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dominant Ideologies ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Resisting Oppression

In this paper I argue that Foucaultian genealogy offers a critical approach to practices of remembering and forgetting which is crucial for resisting oppression and dominant ideologies. For this argument I focus on the concepts of counter-history and counter-memory that Foucault developed in the 1970’s. In the first section I analyze how the Foucaultian approach puts practices of remembering and forgetting in the context of power relations, focusing not only on what is remembered and forgotten, but how, by whom, and with what effects. I highlight the critical possibilities for resistance that this approach opens up, and I illustrate them with Ladelle McWhorter’s genealogy of racism in Anglo-America. In the second section I put the Foucaultian approach in conversation with contemporary work in pragmatism and critical theory on the social epistemology of memory. In the third and final section, I explore some of the implications of the Foucaultian notion of resistance and what I term guerrilla pluralism for contemporary epistemological discussions of ignorance in standpoint theory and race theory

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