This paper describes the compilation of the ACTRES Parallel Corpus, an English–Spanish translation corpus built at the Department of Modern Languages at the University of León (Spain) by the ACTRES research group. The computerisation of the corpus was carried out in collaboration with Knut Hofland and Øystein Reigem, from the Department of Culture, Language and Information Technology, Aksis, at the UNIFOB/University of Bergen (Norway). The corpus is conceived as a powerful tool for cross-linguistic research in the fields of Contrastive Analysis and Descriptive Translation Studies. It was the need to bridge the gap between these disciplines and to extend applications that encouraged the building of a parallel corpus as a suitable tool to achieve these goals. This paper focusses on the practical aspects of building the corpus. A brief account of the research which prompted this endeavour precedes the description of this process. 4 4 This paper is an account of the building of the ACTRES Parallel Corpus, so no empirical results from research done on the basis of the corpus are reported here. Concerning new insights drawn from the actual use of P-ACTRES in English–Spanish translation and contrastive projects, there is an extended bibliography at: http://actres.unileon.es/
This study, which examines the expression of approximate negation by means of scarcely, rarely, barely, hardly and seldom (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 815) and their translations into Spanish, sets out to identify the patterns of usage of these items by analysing their behaviour in co-text and to observe how these items are translated into Spanish, with special attention being paid to renderings of negative connotations that are based on assumed grammatical equivalence. The study will empirically demonstrate the usefulness and usability of the ACTRES Parallel Corpus (P-ACTRES). The experimentation sequence replicates Krzeszowski's contrastive model (1990), namely, selection, description, juxtaposition and contrast. Qualitative and quantitative analyses cover the meaning-form interface, co-text and frequency of usage. The mapping of cross-linguistic correspondences reveals the actual Spanish equivalents used to express the (very) elusive meanings these items convey, as well as possible differences in polarity and the scope of negation.
Informational-persuasive discourse may be encoded in promotional strategies through which a given product is
described in a positive way to persuade potential customers. For this, evaluation may appeal to reason or may tickle emotions
(Cook, 2001). This study compares the way in which advertising texts for herbal tea
engage with customers’ emotions in English and in Spanish. We examined the strategies of ‘enjoying the experience’ and ‘aesthetic
appeal’ from an Appraisal Theory approach (Martin and White, 2005). We categorised
these according to the attitude sub-systems of ‘affect’, ‘appreciation’, and ‘judgement’, determined how explicit the evaluation
was, and identified gradable resources. Results show that English texts display more ‘affect’-like resources that can awaken a
desire in the customer. By contrast, in the Spanish sample ‘appreciation’ resources that evaluate the composition of the product
play a greater role. ‘Enjoying the experience’ seems to engage with the customers’ emotions more overtly than ‘aesthetic
appeal’.
This paper reports on a descriptive study of English and Spanish progressive constructions to identify degrees of common functionality and, therefore, translatability. Here, the functionality of the resource under study is examined contrastively, in order to observe functional correspondences which can be considered translation equivalents. In addition, a descriptive study of actual translations provides a broader picture of the degree of translatability between the languages under investigation. To this end, a corpus-based approach has been adopted to account for language usage in a cross-linguistic setting. Two complementary types of corpora have been used, a comparable corpus made up of BoE and CREA, and the ACTRES Parallel Corpus. The result constitutes a comprehensive approach to language description oriented towards application.
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