Context, Contextualisation and (Multimodal) Text

Context and genres are relevant concepts in Translation Studies, but paradoxically there is no consensus about their definition and how they challenge text, especially after the 1990s when technology began to impact on translation practices. It is surprising since new writings and textualisation of the interactions have developed concomitant with the dematerialisation of the context. In this study, we will trace the conceptual polysemy of “context”, first in linguistics (taken in a broad meaning) and then in Translation Studies. We will consider to what extent context and contextualisation are related, when translation is defined as a context-dependent meaning-making process. What does re-contextualisation imply, and how does context apply to (multimodal) text in a digital environment?

Sintaksinio sudėtingumo analizė anotuotame lietuvių kalbos tekstyne priklausomybių nuotolio metodu

Sintaksinis sudėtingumas yra visoms kalboms būdinga ypatybė, labai bendrai apibūdinama kaip sakinio (ar teksto) ir jo elementų įmantrumą, detalumą, sąrangą bei jungimosi modelius sudėtingumo aspektu pateikiantis įvertis. Lietuvių kalboje sintaksinis sudėtingumas nėra plačiai analizuotas. Sintaksinio sudėtingumo tyrimus apsunkina nenusistovėjusi termino apibrėžtis ir skirtingų jo apskaičiavimo metodų gausa. Šiame straipsnyje pristatomas sintaksinio sudėtingumo tyrimas sintaksiškai anotuotame lietuvių kalbos tekstyne ALKSNIS, naudojant sintaksinės priklausomybės nuotolio metodą, paremtą Dependency Locality teorija. Straipsnyje aprašoma sintaksinio sudėtingumo samprata, pristatomi sintaksinio sudėtingumo tyrimų principai, jų aktualumas ir pritaikomumas, pristatomi ir aptariami sintaksinio sudėtingumo rezultatai tekstyne, analizuojami pasirinkto metodo privalumai ir trūkumai. Šiuo tyrimu siekiama papildyti lietuvių kalbos sintaksinio sudėtingumo analizės lauką. Sintaksinio sudėtingumo analizei naudojami du rodmenys – vidutinis priklausomybės nuotolis ir modifikuotas vidutinis priklausomybės nuotolis, sintaksiškai anotuotame tekstyne apskaičiuojant sintaksinių sakinio priklausomybės ryšių distanciją. Tyrime analizuojami visi tekstyno sakiniai, nustatomas atskirų tekstų ir tekstyno dalių sintaksinis sudėtingumas. Detaliau analizuojant paskirus sakinius, išryškėja tiek šių metodų trūkumai sintaksinio sudėtingumo analizei, tiek jų priklausomybė nuo tikslios ir nuoseklios anotavimo schemos. Analizuojant duomenis išryškėja poreikis į sintaksinio sudėtingumo sampratą bei formulę įtraukti sakinių tarpusavio sąsajų svertus. Nustatyta, kad modifikuoto vidutinio priklausomybės nuotolio formulėje įtraukta sakinio viršūnės pozicija galimai iškreipia rezultatus, todėl šią formulę reikėtų toliau tikslinti. Tyrimo metu nustatytos sakinių ir tekstų sudėtingumo ribos laikomos tik orientacinėmis, tiksliau joms apibrėžti siūlomi papildomi kokybiniai tyrimai ir eksperimentai.

Automatizuotas arbitraliųjų kolokacijų atpažinimas: būdvardžių ir daiktavardžių kolokacijos

Straipsnyje analizuojamas vienas kolokacijų tipas – arbitraliosios kolokacijos. Jos laikomos nemotyvuotomis (tuo skiriasi nuo kito kolokacijų tipo – trivialiųjų, arba motyvuotųjų, kolokacijų, pvz.: graži diena, naujas tyrimas), joms būdingas ribotas leksinis junglumas: pagal panašią reikšmę teoriškai galima rinktis daugiau negu vieną žodį, bet linkstama vartoti būtent kurį nors vieną, pvz., platus akiratis, bet ne didelis akiratis, stipri sveikata, bet ne galinga sveikata. Analizuotos iš „Lietuvių kalbos pastoviųjų žodžių junginių duomenų bazės“ atrinktos visos kolokacijos, sudarytos iš būdvardžių ir daiktavardžių (apie 5000 junginių). Nustatyta, kad iš jų apie 650 yra arbitraliosios kolokacijos. Atrenkant šias kolokacijas, taikytas sinonimų pakeičiamumo testas: jeigu kolokacijos būdvardiškasis dėmuo (būdvardis ir būdvardiškai vartojamas dalyvis) nėra pakeičiamas kitu artimos reikšmės sinonimu, tokia kolokacija laikoma arbitraliąja. Šis arbitraliųjų kolokacijų atrankos procesas buvo automatizuotas: automatiškai atrenkant artimus būdvardžių sinonimus junginiuose su daiktavardžiais, pritaikytas žodžių vektorių modelis. Automatiškai būdvardžiai ir dalyviai sugrupuoti į maždaug 800 vektorių eilučių. Straipsnyje aprašyta, kaip vyko duomenų analizė, vertinimas ir tikslinimas, kokios kolokacijos ir kiek jų pripažintos arbitraliosiomis naudojant šį metodą.

Methodological Framework for the Development of an English-Lithuanian Cybersecurity Termbase

The aim of the paper is to present a methodological framework for the development of an English-Lithuanian bilingual termbase in the cybersecurity domain, which can be applied as a model for other language pairs and other specialised domains. It is argued that the presented methodological approach can ensure creation of high-quality bilingual termbases even with limited available resources. The paper touches upon the methods and problems of dataset (corpora) compilation, terminology annotation, automatic bilingual term extraction (BiTE) and alignment, knowledge-rich context extraction, and linguistic linked open data (LLOD) technologies. The paper presents theoretical considerations as well as the arguments on the effectiveness of the described methods. The theoretical analysis and a pilot study allow arguing that: 1) a combination of parallel and comparable corpora enable to considerably expand the amount and variety of data sources that can be used for terminology extraction; this methodology is especially important for less-resourced languages which often lack parallel data; 2) deep learning systems trained by using manually annotated data (gold standard corpora) allow effective automatization of extraction of terminological data and metadata, which enables to regularly update termbases with minimised manual input; 3) LLOD technologies enable to integrate the terminological data into the global linguistic data ecosystem and make it reusable, searchable and discoverable across the Web.

Trois langues d’Asie du Sud-Est et leur première grammaire (vietnamien, thaï, cambodgien)

Cet article a pour but d’analyser et comparer les premières grammaires de trois langues d’Asie du Sud-Est : le vietnamien, le thaï et le cambodgien, qui furent publiées à des époques différentes, en 1651, 1828 et 1915 respectivement. Les auteurs de ces grammaires sont confrontés à l’analyse d’un certain nombre de phénomènes linguistiques radicalement « exotiques » par rapport aux langues européennes, tels que l’absence de flexion, le monosyllabisme, la présence de tons ou encore des systèmes de « pronoms » très complexes. Chacune des grammaires développe sa propre approche de ces points et propose une classification des mots singulière, dont il convient d’interroger le lien à la grammaire latine et au concept de « partie du discours ». Les trois textes qui nous occupent ont par ailleurs des buts qui ne sont pas identiques, puisque les deux premiers ont une visée didactique alors que le troisième est avant tout scientifique. Enfin, ces grammaires diffèrent dans leur rapport à la linguistique générale et à la comparaison typologique et historique.

On Cooperation and Im/politeness in French Interactions

In Culpeper’s (2009) extensive study of how impoliteness-related terms are used, especially in relation to people’s expectations in public-service contexts, the term “french” occurs twice, along with “doorman,” “bouncer,” “bartender,” “waitress,” “waiter,” “yorker,” “staff.” Based on this, could one suppose that, in daily interactions in French, the principles of cooperation (Grice, 1975) and politeness come into conflict, leading to the characterization of speakers as impolite? If this is the case, why? How does it occur? Is this characterization specific to public-service contexts, or does it extend to other domains of social life? Aiming to provide answers to these questions, this study draws on the framework of conversation analysis using a socio-pragmatic approach (from Austin, 1962, to Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 2010, and Culpeper, 2021). Guided by socio-cultural and historical factors (Bourdieu, 1984; La Bruyère, 1688), it explores the concept of linguistic im/politeness (Culpeper, 2009, 2021; Curtin, 1995; Meier, 1995) in its interaction with Grice’s (1975) principles of cooperation. To this end, we examine the ritual of greeting, in particular the exchange of “bonjour” in daily social interactions in a French-speaking context, using an authentic data corpus (Reddit, 2014). The results of our analysis show that, in certain situations, when the symmetry of this ritual is broken and the act fails, French speakers attribute to what is understood as politeness a rating higher than they do to cooperation, giving rise to the opposite phenomenon, impoliteness.

Culture-specific Items from Ukrainian and Russian Fairy Tales: A Daunting Challenge for Translators

Translation studies of children’s literature deserve meticulous attention today not only in the wake of active global publishing activity of books for children but due to the culture-specific information the latter may contain. Fairy tales are usually the first narratives children are introduced to and often these stories with a long-reproduction history reveal some features of national culture that form a child’s worldview. From this perspective, the research is set out to identify culture-specific items in fairy tales that originated from oral tradition and to determine what translation procedures should be used and what factors may influence the choice of the translation method. The corpus of the research includes the titles of East Slavic fairy tales limited by culture-specific items and their translations into English and German. Despite the period when translations were made and gender of translators, findings of our research show that in both languages source language-oriented translation procedures prevail in rendering proper names with denotative meaning, and target language-oriented translation methods are dominant for culture-specific common expressions and descriptive elements of proper names. The current research has allowed us to distinguish the factors that may influence the choice of a translation procedure. To this end, a scale of source language- and target language-oriented translation strategies of culture-specific items from fairy tales with the account of target reader’s age and genre has been provided for the translators to reveal the efficiency of certain translation procedures. Given the above, the study of culture-specific items in fairy tales requires a greater focus and thus further lines of inquiry are suggested in this paper.

Stoic Logic Allows Understanding a Priori Falsity in the Conditional

An issue to explain in cognitive science is nowadays the case of certain conditionals that people seem to deem as a priori false. Those conditionals appear to be false by virtue of semantics: the meanings of their antecedents and their consequents seem not to admit any link between them. This is a problem because, from the point of view of classical logic, they are not always false; there can be situations in which they are true (as classical logic provides, whenever their antecedents are false, those conditionals in entirety are true). There are contemporary frameworks explaining this phenomenon (e.g., the theory of mental models). However, this paper tries to make the point that the solution might be already in ancient philosophy: in particular, in Chrysippus’ logic. Thus, the paper describes in details (1) why those conditionals are controversial in classical logic and (2) the account that can be given for them from Chrysippus’ philosophy. That account is based mainly on the Stoic idea that the negation of the second clause of a conditional should not be compatible with its first clause.

Grammatical Approaches to Prepositions, Adverbs, Conjunctions, and Particles in Late Modern English

Current shift of linguistic paradigms and loss of interest in previously mainstream ‘parts of speech theory’ do not imply that all ambiguity and outstanding issues have been challenged and successfully solved. On the contrary, these issues have been put on pause, as linguists, coming to naught and being unable to set forward a univocal, straightforward solution, started refocusing their scientific pursuits. Nevertheless, the problem of parts of speech overlapping has remained of vital importance, even if it is in the background of linguistic research. This issue must be addressed from the theoretical and practical perspectives. The present study attempts to give a theoretical overview of grammatical approaches to prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions, and particles which were prevailing in the Late Modern English grammar. The analysis is based on 400 English grammar books, published over the period of Late Modern English, and is divided into three sections in conformity with certain historical periods, viz. 1700–1799, 1800–1849, 1850–1899, respectively. The research presents the major tendencies towards identification of the aforementioned categories, which characterize each historical period in English grammar and explain the current state of affairs in the parts of speech theory, providing theoretical background for further practical research on the parts of speech overlapping.

At the Top of the Tree? Surveying Conference Interpreters as an Elite

In spite of the crucial role that conference interpreters play in the world of international affairs and diplomacy, the concept of conference interpreters as an elite has not attracted significant academic interest to date. Building on the author’s previous work (Hoyte-West, 2021), which examined the historical and theoretical aspects of the intersection between conference interpreting and elite sociology, this article reports on the findings of an empirical study with practising conference interpreters. Given increasing interest in sociological aspects of the translational professions, this study is both necessary and timely. In terms of data gathering, snowball sampling was used to disseminate an internet-based survey among professional conference interpreters, with the aim of determining whether conference interpreters viewed themselves as members of an elite. The internet-based survey received 120 responses from freelance, staff, and retired conference interpreters. Using an overwhelmingly quantitative approach, the data was analysed and tabulated, before being subsequently discussed and compared with Khan’s (2012) framework of elite resource areas (political, economic, cultural, social network, and knowledge-based), which had previously been applied to the professional sphere of conference interpreting by the author. As such, it was noted that conference interpreters generally did not view themselves as members of an elite; however, further qualitative research in this area remains both desirable and necessary.