scholarly journals Punctuation in English & Portuguese Translations: When Every Point Counts

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 720-731
Author(s):  
Cecil L. de Ataide Melo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Direct Application ◽  
Composition And Rhetoric ◽  
Point Counts ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
English Translations

Abstract This is an investigate study on the frequency of punctuation use in Brazilian Portuguese and American English translations. Six textual pairs were selected, each representing a particular genre of translation. Punctuation was divided into two contrasting categories. Under terminal punctuation were placed marks which came at the end of sentences and caused the next word to be capitalized. Under internal punctuation were included marks which appeared within the sentence limits. 1692 marks in 622 sentences were carefully tabulated and constituted the corpus of this project. Results indicated that Portuguese texts were considerably more populated by various punctuation marks than their English counterparts. Frequent rhetorical pauses, tolerance towards longer and more complex sentences, and occasional use of double punctuation invited a higher ratio of marks per sentece in the Portuguese texts. In the last part of the paper, a number of conventions governing punctuation usage in the two languages are discussed, providing a direct application to the training of translators and students of foreign language composition and rhetoric.

The role of cross-linguistic stress pattern frequency and word similarity on the acquisition of English stress pattern by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Post Silveira
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
American English ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Stress Pattern ◽  
Target Language ◽  
English As Second Language ◽  
Word Similarity ◽  
L1 Transfer

This is a preliminary study in which we investigate the acquisition of English as second language (L2[1]) word stress by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP, L1[2]). In this paper, we show results of a multiple choice forced choice perception test in which native speakers of American English and native speakers of Dutch judged the production of English words bearing pre-final stress that were both cognates and non-cognates with BP words. The tokens were produced by native speakers of American English and by Brazilians that speak English as a second language. The results have shown that American and Dutch listeners were consistent in their judgments on native and non-native stress productions and both speakers' groups produced variation in stress in relation to the canonical pattern. However, the variability found in American English points to the prosodic patterns of English and the variability found in Brazilian English points to the stress patterns of Portuguese. It occurs especially in words whose forms activate neighboring similar words in the L1. Transfer from the L1 appears both at segmental and prosodic levels in BP English. [1] L2 stands for second language, foreign language, target language. [2] L1 stands for first language, mother tongue, source language.

scholarly journals Exploring content selection strategies for Multilingual Multi-Document Summarization based on the Universal Network Language (UNL)

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matheus Rigobelo Chaud ◽  
Ariani Di Felippo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Statistical Measure ◽  
Document Summarization ◽  
Content Selection ◽  
Selection Strategies ◽  
Multilingual Corpus ◽  
Universal Network ◽  
Network Language

Multilingual Multi-Document Summarization aims at ranking the sentences of a cluster with (at least) 2 news texts (1 in the user’s language and 1 in a foreign language), and select the top-ranked sentences for a summary in the user’s language. We explored three concept-based statistics and one superficial strategy for sentence ranking. We used a bilingual corpus (Brazilian Portuguese-English) encoded in UNL (Universal Network Language) with source and summary sentences aligned based on content overlap. Our experiment shows that “concept frequency normalized by the number of concepts in the sentence” is the measure that best ranks the sentences selected by humans. However, it does not outperform the superficial strategy based on the position of the sentences in the texts. This indicates that the most frequent concepts are not always contained in first sentences, usually selected by humans to build the summaries because they convey the main information of the collection.Keywords: content selection; concept; statistical measure; multilingual corpus; multi-document summarization.

scholarly journals English and Portuguese consonant clusters: contrasts and challenges

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Madureira
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Learning Model ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Consonant Clusters ◽  
Front Vowel ◽  
Vowel Epenthesis ◽  
Speech Learning Model ◽  
Speech Learning

ABSTRACT Consonant clusters occur both in Portuguese and English. However, clusters are more productive in English than in Portuguese and there are sequences which are only found in English.This study focuses on the contrasts between American English and Brazilian Portuguese consonant clusters and on three strategies Brazilian learners tend to apply when producing them: adding the high front vowel (epenthesis) between the consonants in the clusters, discarding consonants, or introducing phonetic changes. The relevance of introducing English clusters to Brazilian learners of English is pointed out and discussed under the framework of the Speech Learning Model (SLM).

scholarly journals CREATIVITY AND TRANSLATOR TRAINING: INVESTIGATING WORDPLAYS IN AMERICAN SITCOM 2 BROKE GIRLS SUBTITLED INTO BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adauri Brezolin ◽  
Tatiane de Paula Bóvis Spinetti
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Free Association ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Linguistic Awareness ◽  
Translator Training ◽  
Pragmatic Aspects

Translating wordplays has been considered a challenging task and an appropriate exercise for building (meta)linguistic awareness in translation students. By comparing wordplays from American sitcom 2 Broke Girls translated from American English into Brazilian Portuguese, we discuss, in this article, the main mechanisms used to generate and translate wordplays. For solutions considered ineffective in the target language, suggestions are offered emphasizing the creative and pragmatic aspects surrounding this linguistic event. Our results show that it is possible to encourage creativity among translation students if suitable techniques, such as free association, are adopted in the classroom. Our discussion can be a useful didactic tool for reflecting on theoretical and practical aspects related to wordplays, (meta)linguistic awareness and creativity. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0847/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

scholarly journals Retrieving L2 word stress from orthography: Evidence from word naming and cross-modal priming

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 409-442
Author(s):  
Amanda Post da Silveira
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Mixed List ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Word Naming ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Moderate Frequency ◽  
Lexical Perception ◽  
Target Words

In this paper we investigated how L1 word stress affects L2 word naming for cognates and non-cognates in two lexical stress languages, Brazilian Portuguese (BP, L1) and American English (AE, L2). In Experiment 1,  BP-AE bilinguals named a mixed list of disyllabic moderate frequency words in L1 (Portuguese) and L2 (English). In Experiment 2, Portuguese-English bilinguals named English (L2) disyllabic target words presented simultaneously with auditory Portuguese (L1) disyllabic primes. It is concluded that word stress has a task-dependent role to play in bilingual word naming and must be incorporated in bilingual models of lexical production and lexical perception and reading aloud models.

Native Speakers Pronunciation of Foreign Names

Babel ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-259
Author(s):  
Judith Rosenhouse
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Phonetic Features ◽  
Language Environment

Due to various reasons, proper names (personal names) are often considered a separate group within the noun category of a language. Nowadays, foreign names are much more wide-spread, perhaps, than ever before. This fact causes pronunciation difficulties to speakers in the native-language environment. Moreover, the foreign origin of a name remains long after an individual’s immigration, and many foreign names are integrated into the absorbing language. Two problem areas arise for speakers of a certain language who have to pronounce foreign names: on the written modality level, letter-to-sound correspondence, and on the aural modality, the pronunciation of the foreign name (according to the speaker’s L1). These issues require decisions about phonological and phonetic features of the foreign language which are to be adopted or discarded in pronouncing a name. Based on our field study, various solutions of these problems are here described and discussed. It appears that native speakers of English (not only American English, as our study reveals) do not base their decisions only on the graphic form of the names (letter sequences); their experience with other languages affects their productions. In addition, not all letter sequences yield identical pronunciation decisions. Thus, solutions are not uniform. Examples are given from French surnames and personal names that occur in English in the USA.

Chinese aspect marker -le and its acquisition by American English speakers

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Bin Li ◽  
Hongli Fan ◽  
Po-Lun Peppina Lee
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Aspect Hypothesis ◽  
Patterns Of Distribution ◽  
Aspect Marker ◽  
Verb Categories ◽  
American English Speakers

Abstract This study investigates the functions of the perfective marker -le and its acquisition by native speakers of American English from the perspective of the Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen and Shirai, 1994). We set out to test the predicted order regarding four verb categories in terms of their frequencies of -le marking. Our results confirmed that -le was most frequently used with achievement verbs by learners, but revealed deviated patterns of distribution in other categories when they were compared with those of native speakers of Chinese. We discussed our data further from the perspective of prototypicality, and provide pedagogical implications to Chinese as a foreign language.

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