Abstract
As some scholars view inter-and intra-lingual translation as a parallel activity, it is vital to establish to what extent the products of these processes are alike, and whether the processes themselves differ. This paper investigates stylistic simplification, a frequently hypothesised translation universal which involves, among others, breaking up long sentences in the process of translation (Laviosa 2002). One of the parameters commonly used in the investigations of simplification in translations is the average sentence length. In the present study we focus on sentence length to see if the tendency to incorporate stylistic simplification is equally present in the products of inter-and intralingual translation; what phases of the translation process are decisive for sentence length; whether the scope of consultation with the source text affects sentence length. Finally, we will try to verify if average sentence length is dependent on the level of translation experience.
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Appendix Mean sentence length across groups and tasks
| Professional Translators (PTs) | Translation Trainees (TTs) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interlingual Translation (INTER) | Intralingual Translation (INTRA) | Interlingual Translation (INTER) | Intralingual Translation (INTRA) | ||||
| Mean Sentence Length | Standard Deviation | Mean Sentence Length | Standard Deviation | Mean Sentence Length | Standard Deviation | Mean Sentence Length | Standard Deviation |
| 16.45 | 1.54 | 17.07 | 1.84 | 18.29 | 1.4 | 16.91 | 1.57 |
| PTs INTER vs. PTs INTRA | TTs INTER vs. TTs INTRA | ||||||
| W=50 for N=17, the difference does not reach the level of statistical significance at p ≤ 0.05 | W=16 for N=16, the difference is statisti-cally significant at p ≤ 0.05 | ||||||
| PTs INTER vs. TTs INTER | |||||||
| U=54, the difference is statistically significant at p ≤ 0.05 | |||||||
| PTs INTRA vs. TTs INTRA | |||||||
| U=125.5, the difference does not reach the level of statistical significance at p ≤ 0.05 | |||||||
© 2016 Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
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- Guest editor's note
- Guest editor's note
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- Are gaze shifts a key to a translator’s text segmentation?
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Guest editor's note
- Guest editor's note
- Research Article
- Are gaze shifts a key to a translator’s text segmentation?
- Research Article
- Similar and different: cognitive rhythm and effort in translation and paraphrasing
- Research Article
- Cognitive load in intralingual and interlingual respeaking – a preliminary study
- Research Article
- Simplification in inter- and intralingual translation – combining corpus linguistics, key logging and eye-tracking
- Research Article
- Directionality and context effects in word translation tasks performed by conference interpreters
- Research Article
- Interpreting as a stressful activity: physiological measures of stress in simultaneous interpreting
- Research Article
- Does personality matter in translation? interdisciplinary research into the translation process and product
- Research Article
- Of minds and men – computers and translators