CATS: Customizable Abstractive Topic-based Summarization

Neural sequence-to-sequence models are the state-of-the-art approach used in abstractive summarization of textual documents, useful for producing condensed versions of source text narratives without being restricted to using only words from the original text. Despite the advances in abstractive summarization, custom generation of summaries (e.g., towards a user’s preference) remains unexplored. In this article, we present CATS, an abstractive neural summarization model that summarizes content in a sequence-to-sequence fashion while also introducing a new mechanism to control the underlying latent topic distribution of the produced summaries. We empirically illustrate the efficacy of our model in producing customized summaries and present findings that facilitate the design of such systems. We use the well-known CNN/DailyMail dataset to evaluate our model. Furthermore, we present a transfer-learning method and demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in a low resource setting, i.e., abstractive summarization of meetings minutes, where combining the main available meetings’ transcripts datasets, AMI and International Computer Science Institute(ICSI) , results in merely a few hundred training documents.

Analysing Linguistic Stylistic Devices in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and So Long a Letter: A Comparative Appraisal

This research work focuses on linguistic stylistic analysis of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter. It aims to identify the various translation procedures used in each novel in order to establish a comparison between the different translation procedures and style of each translator of modern and old English. A sampling method has been used to carry out this research work. Thus, one extract has been selected with its corresponding translation from the French and English versions of each novel. The results show that, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the translator has used predominantly adaptation for his translation representing 32.32% in both selected extracts whereas in So Long a Letter, the translator has adopted predominantly literal translation representing a proportion of 28.48% in order to preserve the sustained register of the source text. However, both translators have also used other translation procedures in lower proportions depending on the context orientation. It has been noted that translation methods such as calque has been used only once whereas borrowing is nonexistent in the selected extracts from both literary works.

TRANSLATION OF KOREAN-INDONESIAN SHORT STORIES: AN ANALYSIS OF CLASS AND SEMANTIC SHIFTS OF ADVERBS OF MODALITY

This study discusses class and semantic shifts of adverbs of modality in the Korean short story and its Bahasa Indonesia translation in the short story anthology of ‘Langit dan Kupu-Kupu. This study aims to identify how the adverbs of modality original text change into a different word class in the target text. The sources of data in this study were six Korean short stories entitled ‘Dua Generasi yang Teraniaya’, ‘Seoul Musim Dingin 1964’, ‘Jalan ke Sampho’, ‘Bung Kim di Kampung Kami’, ‘Dinihari ke Garis Depan’, dan ‘Betulkah? Saya Jerapah’ and its Indonesian translation. This study was conducted using a descriptive qualitative method, and the design of a linguistic corpus was used to collect analytical data. The analysis results found that from 46 adverbs of modality, four translated adverbs remained classified as adverbs. At the same time, the other ten words change their class into pronouns, nouns, particles, adjectives, and verbs. Additionally, the other 32 words have a combination of adverbs and other word classes. Furthermore, of the 290 adverb words in the source text, 143 words were accurately translated, 100 were deleted, and 47 changed their meaning in the TT. In the translation of Korean-Indonesian short stories, the shifting technique is used to adjust differences between Korean and Indonesian grammar systems. Translators also make a shift in the word's meaning of short stories as long as they do not deviate from the context and message in the ST to produce a natural translation that TL readers can easily understand.

On introducing free indirect speech in Russian translation despite the absence of corresponding structures in the English original

The article analyzes the most typical cases of introducing free indirect speech in the Russian translation where there are no corresponding structures in the English original. Typical non-free-indirectspeech structures and contexts in the source text are explored, such as may materialize as free indirect speech in the target text. The study employs qualitative methods including lexical-semantic, contextual and comparative analysis of the source text and the target text. As for the structure, this paper has been divided into two parts. First, a theoretical background for the problem is established, involving the theories by Ia. I. Retsker and D. V. Psurtsev. The paper then goes on to examine translators’ choices to generate new interference of the narrator’s text and the character’s text. The cases when free indirect speech may arise in the Russian translation are typically based on kindred forms of the character’s speech representation in the English original, long descriptions of a situation where the character acts, complex sentences with content clauses, containing the character’s thoughts and emotions. The analysis suggests that the decision to introduce free indirect speech patterns into translation can be based on the typological differences between the languages in question, or on logical and stylistic “inclinations” of a given fragment. Therefore, the decisions to introduce free indirect speech fall into two groups, obligatory and possible respectively. If such choices by Russian translators constitute a tendency, a certain correlation of syntactic patterns and contexts may be established. The results obtained in the study may be used by translators of literary texts.

A Corpus-Assisted Translation Study of Strategies Used in Rendering Culture-Bound Expressions in the Speeches of King Abdullah II

Translation is defined as transferring meaning and style from one language to another, taking the text producer's intended purpose and the audience culture into account. This paper uses a 256,000-word Arabic-English parallel corpus of the speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan from 1999 to 2015 to examine how some culture-bound expressions were translated from Arabic into English. To do so, two software packages were used, namely Wordsmith 6 and SketchEngine. Comparing the size of the Arabic corpus with its English counterpart using the wordlist tool of WS6, the researchers found that the number of words (tokens) in the English translation is more than the Arabic source text. However, the results showed that the Arabic language has more unique words, which means that it has more lexical density than its English counterpart. The researchers carried out a keyword analysis and compared the Arabic corpus with the ArTenTen corpus to identify the words that King Abdullah II saliently used in his speeches. Most of the keywords were culture-bound and related to the Jordanian context, which might be challenging to render. Using the parallel concordance tool and comparing the Arabic text with its English translation showed that the translator/s mainly resorted to the strategies of deletion, addition, substitution, and transliteration. The researchers recommend that further studies be conducted using the same approach but on larger corpora of other genres, such as legal, religious, press, and scientific texts.

„TRZECI JĘZYK” W PRZEKŁADZIE: SZCZEGÓLNY PRZYPADEK OBCOŚCI NIEOBCEJ

The aim of the paper is to discuss the strategies used when translating inserts in the “third language” (L3). I focus on the situation where the “third language” remains fully understandable for the recipient of the source text. I will present the strategies for translating the Ukrainian text with Russian incrustations into Polish against a comparative background of other language triads.

Mowa niezależna wprowadzana przez iże w staropolskich apokryfach. Perspektywa źródłowa

W polszczyźnie średniowiecznej widoczny jest pewien etap pośredni w procesie kształtowania się mowy zależnej. W tekstach pojawiają się konstrukcje mieszane, w których spójnik że (iż/iże) wyrażający relację podrzędną, typowy dla wprowadzania mowy zależnej, wprowadza mowę niezależną. W artykule analizuję relację tych konstrukcji do źródeł łacińskich na przykładzie staropolskich apokryfów. Pojawiają się często tam, gdzie w danym miejscu w tekście źródłowych obecne były konstrukcje obce językowi polskiemu, jak ACI, a także gdy przytoczenie w źródle było wprowadzone przez quia, które mogło wprowadzać mowę zależną i niezależną lub być częścią samego przytoczenia jako partykuła. Konstrukcje mieszane pojawiają się też tam, gdzie granica kompilacji przebiegała właśnie w miejscu wprowadzania przytoczenia. Problemem dla staropolskich autorów było też przenikanie się poziomów fabuły i rzeczywistości pozafabularnej. Direct speech introduced by iże in Old Polish apocrypha. A source perspective Summary: An intermediate stage of the formation of reported speech can be observed in the Old Polish period. Polish medieval texts include mixed constructions in which the conjunction że (iż/iże), expressing a subordinate relation and typically introducing reported speech, introduces direct speech. Using Old Polish ROBIŃSKAapocrypha as the source of data, the paper examines the relation between these constructions and Latin sources. The analysed constructions often appear in places where in the source text there were constructions unknown to the Polish language, such as Accusativus cum infinitivo, or where the quotation in the source text was introduced by a quia that could introduce indirect and indirect speech or be, as a particle, part of the quotation itself. Mixed constructs also appear in places where the compilation boundary coincides with the introduction of a quotation. Another problem for Old Polish authors was the overlapping of the levels of the plot and the nonfiction reality.

Wordplay “Loss” in Translation:

Wordplay can be described as the way of making or using words to create additional meaning for some purposes. Using a qualitative approach, this study discusses the wordplay translation in literary work especially in dystopian fiction using Delabastita’s translation techniques of wordplay. The data derived from a novel entitled The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood as the source text and its subsequent translation in Bahasa Indonesia entitled The Handmaid’s Tale – Kisah Sang Handmaid as the target text. From 50 data retrieved, the result shows that the most frequently applied technique in wordplay translation is Wordplay to Non-Wordplay that appears 25 times or 50%. The result of this study illustrates that the translation of wordplay in this literary work tends not to preserve the author’s style of writing but one of the author’s intended meanings.

Multilingual humour in audiovisual translation

This commentary aims to take up the gauntlet thrown down by Dore (2019) with her article about multilingual humour in the Italian dubbed version of the series Modern Family. She suggested that the scenes included in the article could be analysed in other languages, so it was an interesting proposal to carry out the analysis of the Spanish dubbed version, since the L2 in the source text coincides with the target text language. Thus, this fact makes the translation process an arduous activity in these language combinations. Multilingualism is therefore considered the central element in this study. It is a reflection of the current social movement and the increase of multi-ethnic communities worldwide. This fact leads to citizens who use their knowledge to assert their own identity; as a consequence, audiovisual producers are also aware of this situation and exploit this phenomenon. Modern Family is an example of this reality and introduces characters, like Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, as a role model to show an increasingly common tendency, the use of multilingual and multi-ethnic characters that reflect this new social situation. Thanks to the selected examples, we will see whether the use of multilingualism as a source of humour is also transmitted to the Spanish dubbed version, as it did in the Italian dubbed version studied by the abovementioned scholar.