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Article published In: Target
Vol. 25:2 (2013) ► pp.252–275

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Is there interference of usage constraints?

A frequency study of existential there is and its French equivalent il y a in translated vs. non-translated texts

 | University of Lille, France
 | University of Lille, France
Published online: 17 May 2013
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.25.2.05cap
We examine the possible impact of frequency differences between a construction in L1 and its equivalent in L2 on translations. Our case is that of existential there in English and existential il y a in French. Using corpus evidence, we first confirm previous claims that existential there is used more freely in English than existential il y a is in French. Drawing on extensive counts conducted in available corpora and self-compiled samples of translated English and French, intra-language comparisons of translated and non-translated language use show that existential there is under-represented in English translated from French while existential il y a is over-represented in French translated from English. It is suggested that source-language interference is responsible for these differences. In addition, counts of existentials in individual novels and their translations show that inter-language frequency shifts systematically occur in the direction of target-language norms, most clearly so for translations into French, which suggests that the observed usage constraint on il y a still applies to a noticeable extent in translated French. Methodologically, we argue the need for a large corpus of translated French.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Design
    • 2.2Materials
      • 2.2.1Electronic corpora
      • 2.2.2Self-collected corpora
    • 2.3Procedure
  • 3.Results and discussion
    • 3.1Inter-language comparison: Non-translated English vs. non-translated French
    • 3.2Intra-language comparison: Non-translated vs. translated English and French
      • 3.2.1Non-translated vs. translated English
      • 3.2.2Non-translated vs. translated French
    • 3.3Comparison of electronic and self-collected corpora
    • 3.4Novel-by-novel comparison: original versus translation
  • 4.Conclusion and further prospects
  • Notes
  • References
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