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Article published In: Target
Vol. 26:3 (2014) ► pp.406–431

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Referential cohesion and news content

A case study of shifts of reference in Hungarian-English news translation

 | Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
Published online: 22 September 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.26.3.04kar
This study explores the (re)creation of referential cohesion in Hungarian-English translation and examines the extent to which shifts of reference are motivated by the differences between the languages, the characteristics of the translation type (news translation) and the genre (news story). As referential cohesion is hypothesized to be affected by certain universals of translation, the explicitation and the repetition avoidance hypotheses are also tested. Analyses show considerable shifts of reference in translations, but these are not statistically significant. The corpus also fails to provide evidence for the universals of translation investigated; however, the in-depth analysis of optional shifts suggests that they are conditioned by the discursive features of the genre and contribute to a more explicit presentation of news content.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Referential cohesion in translation
    • 2.1Systemic differences between English and Hungarian
    • 2.2Research on the translation of referential cohesion
    • 2.3The translation of news texts
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Research questions
    • 3.2The corpus
    • 3.3Procedures of analysis
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Shifts of referential cohesion
    • 4.2Optional shifts of reference
  • 5.Summary
  • Notes
  • References
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