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Article published In: Babel
Vol. 63:4 (2017) ► pp.523–555

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Translation and contact languages

The case of motion events

 | Indiana University |
Published online: 20 November 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.63.4.04rot
In this study we use a translation corpus of English novels translated into two closely related Celtic languages, Welsh and Breton, as one way of shedding light on the extent to which languages can influence each other over time: Welsh has a long history of contact with English, and Breton with French. Ever since the work of Leonard Talmy (1991, . 2000. Towards a Cognitive Semantics. Volume II: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar etc.), linguists have recognized that languages fall into a small number of types with respect to how they prefer to talk about motion events. English is a good exemplar of the satellite-framed type, whereas French exemplifies the verb-framed type. Translation scholars have observed that translating between languages of two different types raises interesting questions ( 2005. “Relating Events in Translation”. In Perspectives on Language and Language Development: Essays in Honor of Ruth A. Berman, ed. by D. Ravid and H. B. Shyldkrot, 115–129. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Cappelle, Bart. 2012. “English is Less Rich in Manner-of-motion Verbs When Translated from French”. Across Languages and Cultures 13 (2): 173–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), and the topic is also of interest from the perspective of language contact: is it possible for a language of one type, in a situation of prolonged and intense bilingualism with a language of another type, to be influenced or perhaps even to change its own rhetorical preferences? The translation corpus provides a body of data which holds constant the starting point – the cue in each case was an English motion event in the source text. We do indeed find that Welsh and Breton have diverged in important ways in terms of their preferences for encoding motion events: Breton is revealed to have moved significantly in the direction of French with respect to these preferences.
Résumé
Dans cette étude, nous utilisons un corpus de traduction de romans anglais traduits dans deux langues celtiques proches, le gallois et le breton, de manière à clarifier dans quelle mesure les langues peuvent s’influencer mutuellement au fil du temps : le gallois a une longue histoire de contacts avec l’anglais et le breton avec le français. Depuis les travaux de Leonard Talmy (1991, . 2000. Towards a Cognitive Semantics. Volume II: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, etc.), les linguistes reconnaissent que les langues relèvent d’un petit nombre de types en ce qui concerne la manière dont elles préfèrent parler des événements de déplacement. L’anglais est un bon exemple de type à cadrage satellitaire, alors que le français illustre le type à cadrage verbal. Les traductologues ont observé que la traduction entre des langues de deux types différents soulève des questions intéressantes ( 2005. “Relating Events in Translation”. In Perspectives on Language and Language Development: Essays in Honor of Ruth A. Berman, ed. by D. Ravid and H. B. Shyldkrot, 115–129. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Cappelle, Bart. 2012. “English is Less Rich in Manner-of-motion Verbs When Translated from French”. Across Languages and Cultures 13 (2): 173–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), et le thème présente également un intérêt du point de vue du contact linguistique. Est-il possible qu’une langue d’un type, dans une situation de bilinguisme intense et prolongé avec une langue d’un autre type, soit influencée, voire modifiée dans ses préférences rhétoriques ? Le corpus de traduction fournit un ensemble de données qui garde le même point de départ – l’indication dans chaque cas était un événement de déplacement anglais dans le texte source. Nous constatons effectivement que le gallois et le breton ont divergé de manière importante en ce qui concerne leurs préférences en matière d’encodage d’événements de déplacement : il s’avère que le breton s’est considérablement déplacé dans le sens du français en ce qui concerne ces préférences.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Background: Brythonic Celtic
  • 4.The study
    • 4.1Maintenance of the satellite-framed pattern of the English original
    • 4.2Simplification of a complex path
    • 4.3Elimination of the satellite
    • 4.4Ellipsis (using a Celtic idiom)
    • 4.5Manner of motion verb-replaced by path verb
    • 4.6Modulation: The event is repackaged in a different way
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Corpus
References (41)
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