1. Hammouda Salhi University of Carthage, Tunisia
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

2. Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies (UCCTS 2010)
27th July th July Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

3. Translating ambiguous lexical items using a parallel corpus:
A case study of ‘good’ in the EAPCOUNT
Hammouda Salhi
University of Carthage, Tunisia
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

4. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
Polysemy in language and translation
“Constitution”
“Shall”
“Get”
‘Polysemy is ubiquitous in language and its investigation has a considerable potential for illuminating human cognition’
(Brown and Witkowski, 1983:83)
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

5. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

6. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
Significance of lexical meaning
“Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?”
The survey was a huge failure...
In Africa: “food” ???
In Eastern Europe: “honest” ???
In Western Europe: “shortage” ???
In China: “opinion” ???
In the Middle East: “solution” ???
In South America: “please” ???
And in the USA: “the rest of the world” ???
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

7. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
Aims:
To draw attention to the centrality of lexical ambiguity in the translation process
To propose a corpus approach for the investigation of CP in translation
To reveal the ambiguous behavior of ‘good’ in the EAPCOUNT
To show how to enhance translator training through insights into such an ambiguous behavior
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

8. Presentation structure
Translation literature and lexical ambiguity
The Generative Lexicon theory
The EAPCOUNT
Translating prototypical meanings of items
The ambiguous behavior of ‘good’ as revealed by the EAPCOUNT
Final message
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

9. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

10. Translation literature and lexical ambiguity
Lexical ambiguity is handled as part of :
Structural ambiguity
eg. Flying planes can be dangerous
Some translation universals such as simplification (Toury, 1995)
Problems of anaphoric reference, eg. Pronouns
Gender problem, (Baker, 1992: 90)
Taken :
mainly from a paradigmatic perspective
as a problem of vagueness and underspecification
As an accidental problem in language and translation: treated on a case-by-case basis
What is needed: an empirical investigation of
lexical ambiguity in translation
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

11. Developments NLP and MT
Importance of lexical ambiguity
Centrality of the disambiguation process: one of the greatest challenges for MT researchers (Ping, 2009)
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

12. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

13. The Generative Lexicon theory
One of the main assumptions of the theory
One of the main contributions
Contrastive polysemy
a. The bank of the river, b. The richest bank in the city (synchronically NOT related meanings)
Complementary polysemy
a. The school was built in 1932, b. What will you do when you finish school?, c. The Venetian school of painting, etc. (synchronically related meanings as they have a common core meaning and they complement each other in each context )
Prototypical meaning vs. word usage
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

14. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

15. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
The EAPCOUNT
The English-Arabic Parallel Corpus Of United Nations Texts
261 texts aligned on a paragraph basis, and 6.8 million tokens
Consists mainly, but not exclusively, of resolutions and annual reports issued by different UN organizations and institutions
Time-frame of about 14 years (1996 – 2009): 93.87% of the texts were produced over a period of 9 years, namely from 2001 to 2009
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

16. Compiling the EAPCOUNT
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

17. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

18. Translating prototypical meanings items
“bad offices do not yield good achievements”
Arabic: (مكاتب سيئة لم تسفر انجازات جيدة)
The offices of bad did not produce good achievements
Chinese : (坏办事处不产生良好成绩)
Office does not produce good results in bad
French : (mauvais offices ne donnent pas de bonnes réalisations)
Bad services do not give good realizations
German : (Bad Büros nicht erbringen gute Leistungen)
Good performances do not produce bath of office
Italian : (uffici cattivo non danno buoni risultati) :
offices I win doesn't give good results
Portuguese : (escritórios ruim não rendem bons resultados) :
offices bad not yield good results
Spanish : (oficinas mal no dan buenos resultados):
Offices badly do not give good results
Swahili  : (ofisi mbaya wala mavuno mafanikio mema):
bad office success and good harvest
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

19. The ambiguous behavior of ‘good’ in the EAPCOUNT
The concordancer AntConc 3.2.1w found 326 instances of ‘good’ in the EAPCOUNT, 2 instances are nouns
Total number of heads: 28
Number of Arabic equivalents: 22
324 instances of the adjective ‘good’ in the EAPCOUNT
22 different Arabic equivalents are found for ‘good’ in the corpus
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

20. Occurrences of ‘good’ in the EAPCOUNT 1
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

21. Occurrences of ‘good’ in the EAPCOUNT 2
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

22. Case of domain-specific collocations
Case of the equivalent رشيد (raʃīd)
رشيد (raʃīd) literally ‘right-guided’, ‘following the right path’, etc.) 91 occurrences
Good in this case collocates with only one head noun, namely Governance (2.77% of the heads)
It is specific to the diplomatic context
Case of the equivalent حميدة(ħamīda)
حميدة(ħamīda) literally ‘benign’, ‘benignant’, etc.) 72 occurrances,
Good in this case collocates with only one head noun, namely offices (masāʕin) (2.77% of the heads)
When a collocation is domain-specific is becomes harder for trainees to find appropriate equivalents for both the node and collocate as it requires specialized knowledge of, say, diplomatic language
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

23. Case of typical collocations
Case of the equivalent جيد (ʒajid)
جيد (ʒajid, literally ‘of good quality’, ‘well’, etc): 81 occurrences
Good collocates with 20 different heads: (55.55% of the heads): Practice, relationships, cooperation, roads, political instincts, effect, progress, examples, alternatives, education, coordination, data, institutional capacity, level of awareness, job, living, position, start, stead.
Trainees tend to attach to it more importance than it really merits
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

24. Case of non-typical collocations
Case of the equivalent عظيم(ʕadhīm)
عظيمʕadhīm, literally ‘magnificent’, ‘great’, etc): 2 occurrences
Good in this case collocates with only one head noun, namely Friday (2.77% of the heads)
Not a common collocation in the Arabic language, especially among the Muslim community
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

25. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
General findings
Ambiguity degree of good: 79%
Good is a very ambiguous item.
The number of heads modified by ‘good’ is 28
The number of existing equivalents is 22.
In the 79% of the instances, good requires a new equivalent whenever it combines with a new head noun.
The ambiguous behavior of this adjective and the establishment of equivalence at both word and collocation levels depend heavily on the head noun that it modifies.
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

26. Final Message آخر الكلام
Because the act of disambiguating items is part and parcel of the process of translation, lexical ambiguity should be handled as the norm rather than the exception in translation and the inner voice of professional translators should be heard now by trainee translators. Thank You
وشكرا Merci
ANY QUESTIONS ?
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

27. Final Message آخر الكلام
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK

28. http://translationinfo.webs.com http://www.freewebs.com/hsalhi
UCCTS 2010
Ormskirk, UK