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The games translators play

Lexical choice in vedic translation
  • Alexandre Sotov
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Quantitative Methods in Corpus-Based Translation Studies
This chapter is in the book Quantitative Methods in Corpus-Based Translation Studies

Abstract

This chapter applies tools of corpus linguistics and game theory to an aligned parallel corpus of ancient Indian cultic poetry, the Ṛgveda, and its translations in German and Russian (ca. 690,000 tokens in total). The research analyses the relationship between translators’ choice preferences in rendering ambiguous Vedic terms, using such techniques as transcription and explicitation, and the source text content. The latter is represented as two translation constraints, one dealing with content uniqueness (measured by the number of hapaxes) and another with context (text location). Translators apply lexical adjustment if the amount of information available to them is low and there is a perceived necessity to explain the meaning of a key word. When the degree of ambiguity of the source text cannot be estimated, often the case with uniquely attested lexis, individual translation choices aggregate to a coherent strategy, which results in complementarity between the translations.

Abstract

This chapter applies tools of corpus linguistics and game theory to an aligned parallel corpus of ancient Indian cultic poetry, the Ṛgveda, and its translations in German and Russian (ca. 690,000 tokens in total). The research analyses the relationship between translators’ choice preferences in rendering ambiguous Vedic terms, using such techniques as transcription and explicitation, and the source text content. The latter is represented as two translation constraints, one dealing with content uniqueness (measured by the number of hapaxes) and another with context (text location). Translators apply lexical adjustment if the amount of information available to them is low and there is a perceived necessity to explain the meaning of a key word. When the degree of ambiguity of the source text cannot be estimated, often the case with uniquely attested lexis, individual translation choices aggregate to a coherent strategy, which results in complementarity between the translations.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface vii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Part I. Theoretical exploration
  6. Explicit and tacit 3
  7. Regression analysis in translation studies 35
  8. Hypothesis testing in corpus-based literary translation studies 53
  9. Part II. Essential corpus statistics
  10. Compiling a Norwegian-Spanish parallel corpus 75
  11. Describing a translational corpus 115
  12. Clustering a translational corpus 149
  13. Part III. Quantitative exploration of literary translation
  14. A Corpus study of early English translations of Cao Xueqin’s Hongloumeng 177
  15. Determining translation invariant characteristics of James Joyce’s Dubliners 209
  16. The great mystery of the (almost) invisible translator 231
  17. Part IV. Quantitative exploration of translation lexis
  18. Translation and scientific terminology 251
  19. The games translators play 275
  20. Multivariate analyses of affix productivity in translated English 301
  21. Lexical lectometry in corpus-based translation studies 325
  22. Appendices 347
  23. Index 357
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.51.11sot

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface vii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Part I. Theoretical exploration
  6. Explicit and tacit 3
  7. Regression analysis in translation studies 35
  8. Hypothesis testing in corpus-based literary translation studies 53
  9. Part II. Essential corpus statistics
  10. Compiling a Norwegian-Spanish parallel corpus 75
  11. Describing a translational corpus 115
  12. Clustering a translational corpus 149
  13. Part III. Quantitative exploration of literary translation
  14. A Corpus study of early English translations of Cao Xueqin’s Hongloumeng 177
  15. Determining translation invariant characteristics of James Joyce’s Dubliners 209
  16. The great mystery of the (almost) invisible translator 231
  17. Part IV. Quantitative exploration of translation lexis
  18. Translation and scientific terminology 251
  19. The games translators play 275
  20. Multivariate analyses of affix productivity in translated English 301
  21. Lexical lectometry in corpus-based translation studies 325
  22. Appendices 347
  23. Index 357
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