Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

A significant strand of corpus-based research in translation studies has shown that even high quality translations differ from comparable original texts in a number of lexical and grammatical traits, due to the influence of the source language and/or the translation process as such (Borin and Prütz 2001, Baroni and Bernardini 2006, a.o.). In addition, several studies (Cardinaletti 2004, 2005, Giusti 2004) have argued that the “deviations” result from changes in the translators’ internal linguistic system – changes that gradually lead to first language attrition due to a prolonged contact with a second language. However, the latter, competence-based view is also founded on analyses of translated texts; data from experimental research looking at the translators’ linguistic system are still lacking.

This talk focuses on the development of a research paradigm for the linguistic study of translation based on both textual and experimental data. The textual component relies on existing work on comparable corpora of translated and non-translated texts, while the experimental segment relates research on translation to the fields of L2 acquisition and L1 attrition. A case study will be presented on a phenomenon that has repeatedly been identified as characteristic of translations, as well as L2 acquisition and L1 attrition, namely the overuse/overacceptance of overt subjects in null-subject languages. Two preliminary picture selection experiments (tasks adapted from Tsimpli et al. 2004) will be discussed. The experiments tested the interpretation of null and overt subjects in Italian and Serbian by trainee translators; the results will be compared to corpus data and it will be shown that while the overuse of overt subjects is a prominent feature of translated texts, experimental data do not provide evidence of overt subject overacceptance. The role of experience, metalinguistic knowledge and monitoring strategies will be discussed, as well as some implications for work on translation-based parallel corpora.

References

Baroni, M. and S. Bernardini (2006). A new approach to the study of translationese: Machine-learning the difference between original and translated text. Literary and Linguistic Computing 21(3): 259-274.

Borin, L. and K. Prütz (2001). Through a glass darkly: part of speech distribution in original and translated text. In W. Daelemans, K. Sima’an, J. Veenstra, and J. Zavrel (eds),Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands 2000. Rodopi, pp. 30–44.

Cardinaletti, A. (2004). La traduzione dei pronomi: interferenza sintattica e cambiamento linguistico. In G. Garzone and A. Cardinaletti (eds),Lingua, Mediazione Linguistica e Interferenza. FrancoAngeli, pp. 129–50.

Cardinaletti, A. (2005). La traduzione: un caso di attrito linguistico. In A. Cardinaletti and G. Garzone (eds),L’italiano delle traduzioni. FrancoAngeli, pp. 59–83.

Giusti G. (2004). Interferenza dell’inglese sulla posizione del soggetto in italiano: alcune considerazioni sulle traduzioni italiane di Harry Potter. In G. Garzone and A. Cardinaletti (eds), Lingua, mediazione linguistica e interferenza. Milano: FrancoAngeli, pp. 151-166.

Tsimpli I. M., A. Sorace, C. Heycock, and F. Filiaci (2004). First language attrition and syntactic subjects: A study of Greek and Italian near-native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism 8: 257–77.