Tracking the third code
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Sylviane Granger
Abstract
Corpus-driven methods are a powerful heuristic for identifying features of translated language, particularly phraseological features, which have been largely neglected in crosslinguistic studies. This chapter presents the results of an n-gram based study of metadiscursive markers in original and translated English. Automatic comparison of three- to four-word recurrent sequences in the two corpora reveals a series of markers that are significantly overused or underused in translated language. One category of overused bundles, i.e. markers of contrast, is analysed in the light of translation universals and source language effects. In a wider perspective, the study highlights the benefits of a multi-corpus empirical basis for corpus-based crosslinguistic studies and draws the preliminary contours of a methodological framework, ‘Contrastive Translation Analysis’, which integrates comparable, translation and learner corpus data.
Abstract
Corpus-driven methods are a powerful heuristic for identifying features of translated language, particularly phraseological features, which have been largely neglected in crosslinguistic studies. This chapter presents the results of an n-gram based study of metadiscursive markers in original and translated English. Automatic comparison of three- to four-word recurrent sequences in the two corpora reveals a series of markers that are significantly overused or underused in translated language. One category of overused bundles, i.e. markers of contrast, is analysed in the light of translation universals and source language effects. In a wider perspective, the study highlights the benefits of a multi-corpus empirical basis for corpus-based crosslinguistic studies and draws the preliminary contours of a methodological framework, ‘Contrastive Translation Analysis’, which integrates comparable, translation and learner corpus data.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The (very) long history of corpora, concordances, collocations and all that 9
- Modes of analysis 35
- Keywords 77
- Europhobes and Europhiles, Eurospats and Eurojibes 95
- We can do without these words 127
- The individual and the group from a corpus perspective 163
- Tracking the third code 185
- Epistemic must in an English-Swedish contrastive perspective 205
- Translating fictional characters – Alice and the Queen from the Wonderland in English and Czech 223
- Biographical notes 255
- Index 259
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The (very) long history of corpora, concordances, collocations and all that 9
- Modes of analysis 35
- Keywords 77
- Europhobes and Europhiles, Eurospats and Eurojibes 95
- We can do without these words 127
- The individual and the group from a corpus perspective 163
- Tracking the third code 185
- Epistemic must in an English-Swedish contrastive perspective 205
- Translating fictional characters – Alice and the Queen from the Wonderland in English and Czech 223
- Biographical notes 255
- Index 259
