Chapter 5. Exploring near-synonyms through translation corpora
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Noelia Ramón García
Abstract
This chapter explores the Spanish translations of the English ingressive verbs ‘begin’ and ‘start’ in the parallel corpus PACTRES. ‘Begin’ and ‘start’ are considered near-synonyms and the aim of this paper is to trace any semantic differences between them through an analysis of their Spanish translations. I obtained the translational options in Spanish for ‘begin’ and ‘start’ and compared the divergences using statistical significance tests. The findings revealed that the verb ‘start’ presents a wider range of ingressive verbs as translational options in Spanish, thus pointing towards a larger number of associated sense relations than the verb ‘begin’. This study illustrates the usefulness of parallel corpora in highlighting semantic differences between near-synonyms in the source language, here English.
Abstract
This chapter explores the Spanish translations of the English ingressive verbs ‘begin’ and ‘start’ in the parallel corpus PACTRES. ‘Begin’ and ‘start’ are considered near-synonyms and the aim of this paper is to trace any semantic differences between them through an analysis of their Spanish translations. I obtained the translational options in Spanish for ‘begin’ and ‘start’ and compared the divergences using statistical significance tests. The findings revealed that the verb ‘start’ presents a wider range of ingressive verbs as translational options in Spanish, thus pointing towards a larger number of associated sense relations than the verb ‘begin’. This study illustrates the usefulness of parallel corpora in highlighting semantic differences between near-synonyms in the source language, here English.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Cross-linguistic research and corpora 1
- Chapter 1. Light Verb Constructions as a testing ground for the Gravitational Pull Hypothesis 12
- Chapter 2. Light Verb Constructions in English-Spanish translation 34
- Chapter 3. Reporting direct speech in Spanish and German 51
- Chapter 4. “Ich bekomme es erklärt” 67
- Chapter 5. Exploring near-synonyms through translation corpora 91
- Chapter 6. run away! 108
- Chapter 7. Film dialogue synchronization and statistical dubbese 124
- Chapter 8. Opera audio description in the spoken-written language continuum 142
- Chapter 9. Using a multilingual parallel corpus for Journalistic Translation Research 157
- Chapter 10. Domain-adapting and evaluating machine translation for institutional German in South Tyrol 179
- Chapter 11. Word alignment in the Russian-Chinese parallel corpus 195
- Chapter 12. Building corpus-based writing aids from Spanish into English 216
- Index 235
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Cross-linguistic research and corpora 1
- Chapter 1. Light Verb Constructions as a testing ground for the Gravitational Pull Hypothesis 12
- Chapter 2. Light Verb Constructions in English-Spanish translation 34
- Chapter 3. Reporting direct speech in Spanish and German 51
- Chapter 4. “Ich bekomme es erklärt” 67
- Chapter 5. Exploring near-synonyms through translation corpora 91
- Chapter 6. run away! 108
- Chapter 7. Film dialogue synchronization and statistical dubbese 124
- Chapter 8. Opera audio description in the spoken-written language continuum 142
- Chapter 9. Using a multilingual parallel corpus for Journalistic Translation Research 157
- Chapter 10. Domain-adapting and evaluating machine translation for institutional German in South Tyrol 179
- Chapter 11. Word alignment in the Russian-Chinese parallel corpus 195
- Chapter 12. Building corpus-based writing aids from Spanish into English 216
- Index 235
