Languages in Contrast - Volume 23, Issue 2, 2023

This paper is a contrastive corpus-based study of similative demonstratives, a major means of expressing similarity and ad-hoc categorization. It explores the divergence between the Czech demonstrative takový and its English dictionary equivalent such in their “atypical” – extended, or non-phoric – uses. Through the triangulation of comparable fiction texts, their translation (from a bidirectional translation corpus) and spoken language data (from comparable monolingual corpora of spoken English and Czech), converging evidence is found of the development of discourse functions of the Czech takový which shows an increase in its intersubjectivity, not attested with such, but common with the English type nouns sort, kind, and type. These cross-linguistic parallels are not only relevant for current discussions on intersubjectivity and intersubjectification, but they also call for further research on general patterns of ad-hoc categorization.

Differences between verbs of perception in English and French have often been a subject of theoretical conjecture, but seldom studied empirically. Four such verbs (En. hear, see, Fr. entendre, voir) were thus inventoried in a 13.5m-word bidirectional English/French translation corpus. A statistically significant difference between translators and authors was found for hear and entendre. Correlations between source and target texts were statistically significant for all verbs. Quantitative analysis of random samples revealed five regular alternatives to word-for-word translation. Qualitative data support the hypothesis that verbs of perception may follow different “evidential strategies” in English and French. An approach combining quantitative and qualitative analysis to identify translators closest to target language norms offers a new model for researchers and translators.

This paper is a corpus-based study of how translation affects the portrayal of emotion concepts. It aims to establish whether there are differences between translated texts and original texts in a given language as to how emotions are expressed and whether emotion conceptualization in the translated texts is closer to that of the source or the target language. To do so, the study focuses on one emotion in a specific language combination: the conceptual domain of anger in German and Spanish. In a first step, analysis of two large reference corpora provides a contrastive description of the concept anger as represented by prototypical emotion lexemes in both languages (Wut, Zorn and Ärger in German and ira, rabia, enojo in Spanish). Then, the parallel corpus COVALT is used to study three aspects of the expression of anger in Spanish translated texts: conceptual metaphor, physical effects and consequences of the emotion. Analysis of the use of conceptual metaphor shows that both source and target language preferences are present in the target texts. A more marked deviation from target language conventions can be observed in the translation of expressions referring to the physical effects or consequences of anger.

This article aims to test the Gravitational Pull Hypothesis on the imperfective/perfective aspect distinction in the language pairs English-Catalan and French-Catalan. It draws on the corresponding corpora in COVALT. The GPH posits three cognitive causes of translational effects: source or target language salience and connectivity. Different configurations of these causes, or factors, are expected to result in over- or under-representation of target language features. The imperfective/perfective aspect distinction was chosen as a testing ground for the GPH because it is morphologically marked in Catalan and French but not in English. That may give rise to different configurations of factors and, therefore, to different translational effects. It is predicted that the preterite, which conveys perfective aspect in Catalan, will be over-represented in Catalan translations from English as compared to translations from French and to Catalan non-translations. On the other hand, the imperfect, which conveys imperfective aspect, will be under-represented. Results confirm these predictions. For translations from French, both adherence to the patterns observed in Catalan non-translations and over-representation of the preterite are possible outcomes. Results lend support to the second alternative ― over-representation of the preterite. These results highlight the importance of relying on frequency and other sources of evidence when formulating hypotheses in the framework of the GPH. Research from the field of second language acquisition proved particularly significant in this respect.

The present study addresses a topic on the crossroads between contrastive linguistics and translation studies as we seek to investigate how the English verbal gerund is used in translated and non-translated English, as well as how it is translated into German and Dutch. Instead of merely analysing frequencies throughout a corpus, we aim to map out usage profiles and translation strategies through a multi-methodological and multifactorial approach, thereby offering a more contextualized approach to the English verbal gerund. On the basis of data from CroCo and DPC, two parallel and comparable corpora for the language pairs English-German and English-Dutch, a set of over 6,000 verbal gerunds was annotated. A hierarchical configural frequency analysis was conducted to uncover different usage profiles or ‘types’ of verbal gerunds. Second, a conditional inference tree and a random forest analysis were modelled to select the best predictors to help distinguish between a nominal or a clausal translation solution. In addition to providing more insight into the status of English verbal gerunds in translation, this paper offers new perspectives on two broader debates in contrastive linguistics and translation studies, viz. the ‘loose-fit’ or ‘tight-fit’ status of constructions and the treatment of unique items respectively.