1. University of Bologna, Italy Aston Corpus Symposium 2009
Strategies, norms or universals? Investigating variation in translation
Silvia Bernardini
University of Bologna, Italy
Aston Corpus Symposium 2009

2. Resuming…
Last year’s talk:

3. Theoretical background
Target-oriented approach to the study of translation (Toury 1995)
Focus on the TT within its context of fruition
Identification of norms and laws of translation, e.g.
Law of growing standardisation
More frequent target language options are preferred
Law of interference
Source text linguistic features are transferred onto the target text
Descriptive rather than prescriptive/pedagogic focus
Corpus-based approach to the study of translation (Baker 1993, Olohan 2004)

4. Theoretical background
“the most important task that awaits the application of corpus techniques in translation studies […] is the elucidation of the nature of translated text as a mediated communicative event. In order to do this, it will be necessary to develop tools that will enable us to identify universal features of translation, that is features which typically occur in translated text rather than original utterances and which are not the result of interference from specific linguistic systems”. (Baker 1993: 243)

5. Theoretical background
Tools
Monolingual comparable corpora
Originals in language A and translations into the same language from 1 or more other languages
Universal features (hypothesised)
e.g.: explicitness, simplification, disambiguation, preference for conventional grammar, avoidance of repetition, normalisation…
Types of observations
Lower % of content vs. grammatical words (Laviosa 1998)
Fewer contractions (Olohan 2003)
Fewer TL-specific “unique items” (Tirkkonen-Condit 2004) …

6. Summary of old study: corpora
2 small monolingual comparable corpora of fiction text samples
One in English (original and translated from It)
One in Italian (original and translated from En)
2 small parallel corpora
The translations from the corpora above, aligned to their source texts
+ Reference corpora of English and Italian

7. Summary of old study: method
Collect token frequencies from reference corpora for all candidate collocation types observed in monolingual comparable corpora
Rank (MI/Fq) and compare rankings (Mann-Whitney ranks test)
For significantly different rankings, analyse translation shifts at parallel level

8. Summary of old study: findings
MCC analysis:
Translated fiction texts (Italian and English) tend to be (overall) richer in collocations than original texts in the same language
Parallel analysis:
Confirms that differences due to translation shifts rather than unrelated variables
The data provide support for the law of growing standardisation

9. Moving on: technical translation
Are results re: translation norms and strategies observed in fiction corpora confirmed by analyses of technical translation corpora?
i.e., is there (more) evidence of
Growing standardisation or
Interference
In translations compared to (comparable) originals?

10. Choosing an LSP Perl documentation
Practical Extraction and Report Language
Popular programming language
Most communication happens in English
Efforts to produce documentation (original and translated) in Italian
Winning more people to the cause

11. Why perl?
Initial stimulus: technical translation course at SSLMIT (1 year of MA)
pod2it project
Very favourable authentic conditions, near-experimental
Neatly delimited topic/discourse community
Both originals and translations drafted by area experts (not linguists)

12. Originals (En) and translations (It) (e.g.) perl pods
NAME
perlboot - Beginner's Object-Oriented Tutorial
DESCRIPTION
If you're not familiar with objects from other languages, some of the other Perl object documentation may be a little daunting, such as perlobj, a basic reference in using objects, and perltoot, which introduces readers to the peculiarities of Perl's object system in a tutorial way.
NOME
perlboot - Introduzione alla tecnologia Orientata agli Oggetti (titolo originale: Beginner's Object-Oriented Tutorial)
DESCRIZIONE
Se non avete già una certa familiarità con la tecnologia ad oggetti degli altri linguaggi di programmazione, parte della documentazione sulla OOP in Perl potrebbe essere un po‘ intimidatoria: perlobj, una guida di riferimento sull'utilizzo degli oggetti e perltoot che introduce il lettore alle particolarità della tecnologia ad oggetti del Perl con un taglio introduttivo.

13. Italian originals (e.g.)

14. Method Corpus design Monolingual component Parallel component
Translated Italian texts (PERLTRIT)
Original Italian texts (PERLORIT)
Parallel component
(English Source texts of translated component) (PERLOREN)

15. Translated Italian (TTs of PERLOREN) Original Italian (comparable)
The perl corpus
Original English
(STs of PERLTRIT)
Translated Italian (TTs of PERLOREN)
Original Italian (comparable)
PERLOREN
PERLORIT
PERLTRIT
tokens
298,346
305,537
321,405
types
18,639
22,495
22,768
texts 43 89
authors
translators 16
--- 30 11

16. Corpus preparation Download texts (plain txt)
Record relevant meta-data (readme file)
url, author, author’s cv, notes
Tag and lemmatise (Tree Tagger)
Align parallel component (EasyAlign)
Index with the CWB

17. Assembling evidence Research question
Translated fiction texts (Italian and English) show evidence of growing standardisation (at the collocational level)
Universal or norm/law-governed?
What happens in technical translation?
Evidence of standardisation
support for the “universality” hypothesis
Evidence of interference
support for the “norm/law” hypothesis

18. Assembling evidence
Look for differences btwn originals and translations in Italian that:
could be interpreted as a consequence of either interference or standardisation
are not (likely to be) the result of unrelated variables
are sufficiently frequent in this technical field to allow confident judgement ?

19. Case study: borrowings and calques
English words
New Italian words based on English terms or new senses derived from English “false friends”
English morphosyntactic marks (plural)
More frequent in
originals or
translations?

20. Case study: borrowings and calques
if 1, than translators could be seen as conforming to TL “normal” use more than original authors of comparable texts
=> standardisation
If 2, than translators could be hypothesised to be more subject to interference from the SL than original authors of comparable texts
=> interference

21. Identifying foreign/calqued words in corpora
Keywords
each corpus is used in turn as a reference corpus
All words (to identify borrowings)
Verbs only (to identify calques)
Words ending in –s
To compare use of non-Italian morphological marks (unadapted borrowings)

22. 1a Keyword analysis: all words
Use one corpus as a reference corpus to highlight words that are significantly more frequent in the other
Define what counts as a keyword
Cut-off point: 5
Log-likelihood ordering
Top 100 types
Browse lists, select potential key-borrowings, check concordances

23. Problems Most “keywords” identify topics
that’s what keywords are meant to do after all
Some signal differences btwn English/Italian writing strategies or possibly slight genre differences
For instance…

24. PERLORIT
PERLTRIT

25. More borrowings in translated Italian than in original Italian…?
PERLTRIT
PERLTRIT (cont’d)
PERLORIT
178.4 package
65.6 local
131.0 script
148.2 match*
63.7 buffer
130.7 expression
94.6 char
54.9 point
123.2 regular
87.7 filehandle
54.4 record
118.7 array
83.7 locale
53.4 long
75.0 overloading
83.3 require
51.7 pack
54.1 print
72.3 unpack
50.5 thread
50.7 reference
66.9 socket
48.6 Encode
37.5 matching*
66.9 shift
46.5 pipe
34.1 Hello
More borrowings in translated Italian than in original Italian…?

26. Looking closer: PERLTRIT
Unrelated variables
Larger amount of code text
char, filehandle, shift, require, (un)pack
Different topics
locale, encode, (code) point, long
Morphological differences
match/matching
Dubious cases
socket, buffer, record, thread, pipe

27. Alternatives? Socket Buffer Record Thread Pipe
“…anche chiamato zoccolo, è una tipologia di connettore utilizzata in elettronica”
Zoccolo: 0 occurrences in corpus
Buffer
“…letteralmente tampone: in italiano, memoria tampone o anche intermediaria, di transito”
Tampone, intermediaria, di transito: 0 occ’s in corpus
Record
“In informatica il record è un oggetto di un database strutturato in dati che contiene un insieme di campi o elementi, ciascuno dei quali possiede nome e tipo propri.”
Thread
“Un thread o thread di esecuzione è una suddivisione di un programma in due o più task che vengono eseguiti in modo concorrente.”
Pipe
“Nei sistemi operativi una pipe è uno degli strumenti disponibili per far comunicare tra loro dei processi. “
Wikipedia

28. One candidate left: package pacchetto % package + pacchetto PERLTRIT
357
78.8 96
21.1
453
100
PERLORIT 81
84.3 15
15.6
In fact, if anything, translations would seem to show a slight preference for “pacchetto” compared to original texts

29. Looking closer: originals…
PERLORIT
131.0 script
130.7 expression
123.2 regular
118.7 array
75.0 overloading
54.1 print
50.7 reference
37.5 matching*
34.1 Hello

30. PERLORIT regular expression % espressione regolare
reg. expr. + espr. reg.
PERLORIT
109
50.9
105
49.0
214
100
PERLTRIT 10
5.9
157
94.0
167
Searches:
[word="regular" %cd] [word="expressions?" %cd];
[lem="espressione" %cd] [lem="regolare" %cd];

31. PERLORIT reference % riferimento reference + riferimento PERLORIT 88
38.2
142
61.7
230
100
PERLTRIT 19
3.9
464
96.0
483
Searches:
[word=“references?" %cd];
[lem=“riferimento" %cd];

32. PERLORIT hello ciao hello+ciao Hello world vs Ciao mondo % PERLORIT 3169
100
PERLTRIT 1
2.2 43
97.7 44
Hello world vs
Ciao mondo
Searches:
[word=“hello?" %cd];
[word=“ciao" %cd];

33. Looking closer: originals…
PERLORIT
131.0 script
130.7 expression
123.2 regular
118.7 array
75.0 overloading
54.1 print
50.7 reference
37.5 matching*
34.1 Hello

34. Summing up: 1a borrowings (all)
The translated corpus contains more key-borrowings than the original corpus
However, in most cases this is due to topic differences
In no cases could we identify English words found in the translated corpus with alternative Italian renderings favoured in the original corpus
On the other hand, at least 4 out of 8 key-borrowings found in the original corpus have alternative Italian renderings favoured in the translated corpus

35. 1b Calqued verbs
Verbs that are significantly more frequent in PERLORIT than in PERLTRIT and viceversa
Cut-off point: 2
Log-likelihood ordering
Top 100 types
Separate searches for:
Lemmas that are “unknown” to the tagger
To search for real calques
Lemmas that are “not unknown” to the tagger
To search for existing Italian verbs with calqued meanings

36. Results PERLORIT PERLTRIT known lemma ritornare fq: 90 LL: 35.9
uccidere fq: 6 LL: 8.3
processare fq: 26 LL: 15.6
unknown lemma
cicliamo fq: 2 LL: 3.3
cicla fq: 2 LL: 3.3
splittare fq: 3 LL: 4.9

37. PERLTRIT: uccidere (un processo) (kill (a process))
PERLTRIT> [lem="uccidere"];
<perlfaq8>: il segnale che ha <ucciso> il processo
-->perloren: the signal the process died from
<perlfork>: <Uccidere> il processo genitore
-->perloren: Killing the parent process
<perlfork>: genitore viene <ucciso>(usando la funzione kill( )
-->perloren: process is killed (either using Perl's kill( ) builtin
<perlipc>: {HUP} ad 'IGNORE' per evitare di <uccidere> sé stesso)
-->perloren: $ SIG{HUP} to IGNORE so it doesn't kill itself)
<perlipc>: "fork( )" e "exec( )", ed <uccidere> i processi figli
-->perloren: fork( ) and exec( ), and kill the errant child process.
<perlthrtut>: probabilmente si bloccherà finché non lo <uccidete>.
-->perloren: This program will probably hang until you kill it .
kill + inanimate object in ukWaC-01: game (14), process (2), security (2), NHS (2), soul (2), flu (2), time (2), …
uccidere + inanimate object in itWaC3-01: musica (5, music), speranza (5, hope), amore (4, love), concorrenza (3, competition), innocenza (3, innocence), percezione (3, perception), realtà (3, reality), …

38. PERLORIT: ritornare (selected) (return)
<corso>: testuale mentre exit <ritorna> solo un codice nume
<Dalla_shell_al_web>: ript; <ritornando> poi la struttura re
<frameperl>: Tale funzione <ritorna> 0 sei il comando è
<frameperl>: exec che però non <ritorna> alcun valore. La
<javaperl>: metodo / accept( )/ <ritorna> una istanza della
<javaperl>: la funzione <ritornerebbe> un valore vero per
<mb_corso_perl_5_print>: slash ( \ ) <ritorna> una reference
<mostraLezione.php_puglisi>: iavi e le <ritorna> assemblate
<Perl_Tutorial>: ) ; viene <ritornato> vero A dire il vero
Perl_Tutorial>: L' espressione $cibo[ 2 ] <ritorna> uva.
NB: [lem="ritornare"] [pos="N.*"]
Fq PERLTRIT 0
Fq PERLORIT 16
Alternatives: restituire, produrre, …
Fq PERLORIT 90
Fq PERLTRIT 28

39. PERLTRIT: ritornare (selected) (return)
<scopo_dello_scope>: il seme, e <ritorna> il risultato
<perlboot>: classe per <ritornare> a questo package.
<perlembed>: esaminare i valori <ritornati>, avrete
<perlfaq>: mai exec( ) non <ritorna>? Si possono fare
<perlfaq6>: di matching <ritorna> le coppie che ha tr
<perlfaq9>: he gli errori fatali <ritornino> al browser
<perlfork>: processo; il figlio <ritorna> dalla fork( )
<perlfunc>: di sistema e non <ritorna>, usate "system"
<perlfunc>: ESPR return <Ritorna> da una subroutine ,
<perlipc>: ostra FIFO. chdir; <ritorna> a casa $FIFO =
NB: [lem="ritornare"] [pos="N.*"]
Fq PERLTRIT 0
Fq PERLORIT 16
Alternatives: restituire, produrre, …
Fq PERLORIT 90
Fq PERLTRIT 28

40. PERLORIT: processare (selected) (process)
<coisson_puntata72>: nga adatta ad essere <processata> dalla shell dei
<eb_irc_check>: specificato , verrà <processato> dalla funzione on_l
<e_solo_fortuna_printable>: codice viene <processato> con un foglio
<introduzione_al_printable>: il software deve <processare> il testo
<mb_corso_perl_10_print>: truzioni, essa <processa> tutti gli elementi
<mb_corso_perl_10_print>: e di <processarlo> con il seguente cod
<mod_perl1tutorial_print>: infatti <processerà> tutte le direttive
<Perl_Tutorial>: che crei o comunque <processi> pagine html, sorge
<sostituire_ma_c_printable>: il nostro script <processa>, invece di
<tegels_usare_il_perl>: file di log viene <processata>. La variabile
Fq PERLORIT 26
Fq PERLTRIT 5
Alternatives: elaborare, manipolare…

41. PERLTRIT: processare (process)
PERLTRIT> [lem="processare"];
<perlfaq8>: poiché la shell <processa> le redirezioni
<perlfunc>: output vengono <processati> (consultate
<perlfunc>: a finire in $var <processa> la lista degl
<perlthrtut>: riato affinché venga <processato> . Una
<perlvar>: routine per <processare> gli avvertimenti
Fq PERLORIT 26
Fq PERLTRIT 5
Alternatives: elaborare, manipolare…

42. PERLORIT: ciclare (cicle)
PERLORIT> [word="cicl.*" & pos="V.*"];
<coisson_puntata71>: inviati); ora <cicliamo> sull' array
<garau_guida_perl> consente di <ciclare> un determinato blo
<perl_tutorial_sciabarra>: il foreach <cicla> su un array e
<sostituire_ma_c_printable>: Perl <cicla> linea per linea e
<tegels_usare_il_perl>: aperto, <cicliamo> attraverso le sue
Fq PERLORIT 5
Fq PERLTRIT 0
Alternatives: iterare

43. PERLORIT: splittare split
PERLORIT> [word="splitt.*"];
<perl_valsesia>: in cui <splittare> il pattern.
<perl_valsesia>: si può voler <splittare> una linea
<soltanto_un_alt_printable>: <splittato> e passato
<Split_in_perl>: "<splittare>" cioè dividere una str
Fq PERLORIT 4
Fq PERLTRIT 0
Alternatives: dividere, separare

44. Summing up: calques
The comparative analysis of key verbs in the original and in the translated subcorpora suggests that authors are more at ease with the use of English (technical) calques than translators.

45. 2. -s words
Search for words ending in –s in original Italian and translated Italian (fq >1)
Select from output only plurals (unadapted borrowings) used (rather than quoted) in Italian discourse in the two sub corpora
Which corpus displays greater use of unadapted borrowings ending in –s?

46. Words ending in –s Search: [word="[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]+-?[a-zA-Z]?s"];
95 types
711 tokens
warnings 69
Windows 56
unless 54
Mongers 38
Associates 31
keys 20
SomeClass 19
files 16
alias 15
Class 14 …
144 types
1000 tokens
unless 85
this 60
bless 46
alias 39
exists 38
threads 37
Windows 36
warnings 34
Class 24
vars 24 …
PERLORIT
PERLTRIT
Search:
[word="[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]+-?[a-zA-Z]?s"];

47. Results from the PERLIT corpus
PERLORIT
Word fq
files 16
subroutines 10
backquotes 6
scripts 4
forms 4
links 4
expressions 3
cookies 3
references 2
PERLTRIT
Word fq
backticks 2
closures 1

48. PERLORIT: “files”
perlorit
perltrit

49. PERLORIT: “forms”
perlorit
perltrit

50. PERLTRIT: closures and backticks
<perlmod>: riguardo alle chiusure [<closures>, N.d.T.].
<perlref>: come le <closures> [ letteralmente " chiusure
<perlfaq8>: system( ) con quello dei <backticks> (`).
<perlfaq8>: uscita). I <backticks> (``) lanciano il coma
<perlfaq8>: shell, con i <backticks> ciò non è possibile.

51. Summing up: unadapted borrowings
Despite superficial quantitative evidence (higher numbers of types and tokens for words ending in –s in translated than in original corpora), translators appear to disfavour unadapted borrowings ending in –s with respect to original authors

52. General conclusion
Results of study 2 lend support to conclusions of study 1:
In both fiction translation and technical translation,
Despite differences in translator profile, translation “commission”, topic, genre, readership etc.,
And regardless of differences in methodological design/object of corpus study…

53. General conclusions
The law of growing standardization seems to predominate over the law of interference (in present-day translation practice between English and Italian etc. etc.)
Two small steps toward the bottom-up identification of universal trends…

54. General conclusions The lessons to be learnt
Relying on superficial quantitative data in the search for translation universals can be very misleading
Insights and hypotheses should emerge from
the accumulation of results of (painstaking) analyses
conducted on closely comparable corpora,
checked against their parallel text component(s) and/or taking into account alternatives offered by the target language

55. Thank you

56. References
Pym, A “On Toury's laws of how translators translate”. In Pym, A., M. Schlesinger and D. Simeoni (eds.). Beyoond Descriptive Translation Studies. Benjamins
Toury, G Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Tirkkonen-Condit, S “Unique items — over- or under-represented in translated language?”. In Mauranen, A. and P. Kujamäki (eds.), Translation Universals. Benjamins. 177–184.
Baker, M “Corpus linguistics and translation studies. Implications and applications”. In Baker, M. G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds.). Text and Technology. Benjamins
Laviosa, S “Core patterns of lexical use in a comparable corpus of English narrative prose”. Meta 43(4)
Olohan, M “How frequent are the contractions? A study of contracted forms in the translational English corpus”, Target 15(1):59-89.
Olohan, M Introducing Corpora in Translation Studies. Routledge.

57. Recent critiques
“Baker (1995: 235), re-affirmed by Olohan (2004: 43), argues that translations can be studied by comparing them with non-translations in the same language, without focusing on source texts or source languages. This means we can describe translational English in opposition to non-translational English, doing all the research on English. The result is perhaps the major methodological advance associated with corpus studies. It has many economic advantages: it cuts out all the bother of learning foreign languages and cultures; it controls numerous tricky variables associated with suspicions of linguistic and cultural relativism. In the English-only research on optional that, there is thus strictly no way of knowing about any kind of foreign interference causing the frequencies of the linguistic variable, since in principle the source texts are not in the corpus”. [Pym 2008, p. 14 of pre-print version]