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Article published In: Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 35:1 (2022) ► pp.1–29

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Functionally-defined recurrent multi-word units in English-to-Polish translation

A corpus-based study

ORCiD logo with link | University of Opole
ORCiD logo with link | University of Birmingham
Published online: 23 December 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.19037.gra
Abstract
This study uses both parallel and comparable reference corpora in the English-Polish language pair to explore how translators deal with recurrent multi-word items performing specific discoursal functions. We also consider whether the observed tendencies overlap with those found in native texts, and the extent to which the discoursal functions realised by the multi-word items under scrutiny are “preserved” in translation. Capitalizing on findings from earlier research (Granger, S. (2014). A lexical bundle approach to comparing languages. Stems in English and French. Languages in Contrast, 14(1), 58–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Grabar, N., & Lefer, M-A. (29 Jun–1 Jul 2015). Building a lexical bundle resource for CAT and MT. [PDF File] Workshop on Multi-word Units in Machine Translation and Translation Technology (MUMTTT2015) of EUROPHRAS 2015, Malaga, Spain. [URL]), we analyzed a pre-selected set of phrases signaling stance-taking and those functioning as textual, discourse-structuring devices originally found in the European Parliament proceedings corpus (Koehn, P. (2005). Europarl: A Parallel Corpus for Statistical Machine Translation. In Conference Proceedings: the tenth Machine Translation Summit, Phuket, Thailand: AAMT, 79–86.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and included in the English-Polish parallel corpus Paralela ( (2016). Exploring phraseological equivalence with Paralela. In E. Gruszczyńska & A. Leńko-Szymańska (Eds.), Polish-Language Parallel Corpora (pp. 67–81). Warszawa: Instytut Lingwistyki Stosowanej UW.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Since our goal was to explore whether and to what extent English functionally-defined phrases reflect the same level of formulaicity and regularity in both Polish translations and native Polish texts, the findings provided insights into the translation tendencies of such items, and revealed – using inter-rater agreement metrics – that the discoursal functions of recurrent n-grams may change in translation.
Resumen
Unidades multipalabra recurrentes y funcionalmente definidas en la traducción del inglés al polaco: Un estudio basado en corpus
El presente estudio utiliza corpus de referencia paralelos y comparables en el par de idiomas inglés-polaco a fin de explorar cómo tratan los traductores las secuencias de palabras recurrentes que realizan funciones discursivas específicas. También analizamos si las tendencias observadas se superponen con las encontradas en los textos nativos, y en qué medida las funciones discursivas realizadas por las unidades multipalabra halladas se conservan en la traducción. Valiéndonos de los resultados de investigaciones anteriores (Granger, S. (2014). A lexical bundle approach to comparing languages. Stems in English and French. Languages in Contrast, 14(1), 58–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Grabar, N., & Lefer, M-A. (29 Jun–1 Jul 2015). Building a lexical bundle resource for CAT and MT. [PDF File] Workshop on Multi-word Units in Machine Translation and Translation Technology (MUMTTT2015) of EUROPHRAS 2015, Malaga, Spain. [URL]), analizamos un conjunto preseleccionado de frases que señalan ya sea la toma de postura o aquellas que tienen una función textual en la estructuración del discurso, procedentes originalmente del corpus del Parlamento Europeo (Koehn, P. (2005). Europarl: A Parallel Corpus for Statistical Machine Translation. In Conference Proceedings: the tenth Machine Translation Summit, Phuket, Thailand: AAMT, 79–86.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) e incluidas en el Corpus paralelo inglés-polaco paralelo Paralela ( (2016). Exploring phraseological equivalence with Paralela. In E. Gruszczyńska & A. Leńko-Szymańska (Eds.), Polish-Language Parallel Corpora (pp. 67–81). Warszawa: Instytut Lingwistyki Stosowanej UW.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Dado que nuestro objetivo consiste en explorar si las frases definidas funcionalmente en inglés reflejan, o hasta qué punto lo hacen, el mismo nivel de formulaicidad y regularidad tanto en las traducciones polacas como en los textos nativos polacos, los resultados aportan conocimiento sobre las tendencias en la traducción de tales elementos, y revelan – utilizando métricas sobre acuerdo de inter-evaluadores – que las funciones discursivas de los n-gramas recurrentes pueden cambiar en la traducción.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Metadiscourse and corpus-based translation studies
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Research material
    • 3.2Units of analysis
    • 3.3Research questions and hypotheses
    • 3.4Procedures and study stages
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Recurrent n-grams in English-to-Polish translation in the EPP sub-corpus of Paralela
    • 4.2Polish equivalents in native-Polish texts
    • 4.3Discourse functions in English-to-Polish translation of functionally-defined n-grams
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Dictionaries (accessed online)
  • Corpora
References (71)
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