Semantic prosody and specialised translation, or how a lexico-grammatical theory of language can help with specialised translation

Abstract

Corpus linguistics has invaded translation studies and practice over the last fifteen years, allowing researchers to analyse the language of translation or to use corpora as tools in the translation process. This study deals with the application of a theoretical and methodological corpus linguistics approach to pragmatic translation, more precisely with the analysis of semantic prosody in a contrastive study both between French and English, and between general and specialised language. The data confirm that semantic prosody does not present a univocal matching between two languages. Moreover, the study demonstrates the need for corpus data over intuition to understand the fluctuation of semantic prosody between general language and languages for specific purposes. Finally, the question of translation based on corpus data will be addressed.

Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V combinations

“…Semantic prosody is an integral part of the text and should not be left out of the bilingual scope: however subtle the semantic prosody component may be, in translation the evaluative part of the source text meaning is of crucial importance. The list of contributions to the field contains comparisons of English with Chinese (Xiao and McEnery 2006;Wei and Li 2014), Portuguese (Berber Sardinha 2000; Lopes 2011), Italian (Partington 1998;Tognini-Bonelli 2001), Danish (Dam-Jensen and Zethsen 2008), Spanish (Munday 2011), French (Kübler andVolanschi 2012) and Slovene (Gabrovšek 2007;Šorli 2012Jurko 2017).…”

Evaluative Meaning in Translation

“…The focus of the above studies covers a wide range, from establishing differences in prosodies across near-synonyms, to questioning translator awareness of the issue of semantic prosody. Two of these (Kübler and Volanschi 2012; bayón garcía 2013) deal with changes in semantic prosody not only across languages, but also changes that have been reported in LgP and LSP (language for general and special purposes, respectively). For instance, Kübler and Volanschi (2012) analyzed the English verb to commit in LgP and compared it to its French face-value translation equivalent commettre.…”

“…Two of these (Kübler and Volanschi 2012; bayón garcía 2013) deal with changes in semantic prosody not only across languages, but also changes that have been reported in LgP and LSP (language for general and special purposes, respectively). For instance, Kübler and Volanschi (2012) analyzed the English verb to commit in LgP and compared it to its French face-value translation equivalent commettre. In the LSP domain their objective was to test whether the well-documented negative semantic prosody of the English to cause and its French counterpart can also be detected in comparable LSP corpora.…”

Quand traduire, c’est décider : ce que l’interprétation des régularités statistiques d’un corpus peut apporter à la traduction spécialisée

“…L'exactitude terminologique, les choix phraséologiques et discursifs sont des facteurs essentiels pour la construction d'une cohérence qui reflète les valeurs du domaine de spécialité. Doivent notamment être pris en compte les phénomènes liés à la créativité langagière (Bordet, Kübler & Pecman 2009) et à la prosodie sémantique (Stewart 2009 ;Kübler & Volanschi 2012).…”