corpus-based contrastive analysis of english adjectives in spanish translations: a typological issue...

CORPUS-BASED CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH

ADJECTIVES IN SPANISH TRANSLATIONS:

A TYPOLOGICAL ISSUE

Noelia RamónUniversity of León, Spain

ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics ConferenceBerlin, 30 Sept. – 2 Oct. 2010

ICLC 6 - International Contrastive Linguistics Conference

INTRODUCTION• Germanic vs. Romance languages

• Unmarked adjective position in the NP:▫Pre-modifying position in English▫Post-modifying position in Spanish

• However, the pre-modifying position is possible too in Spanish.

• Consequence: more pre-modifying adjectives in translations (Rabadán et al. 2009)

CORPUS-BASED STUDY• Analysis of the most frequent Spanish

adjectives in original and translated texts▫Monolingual corpus: CREA▫Parallel corpus: P-ACTRES

• Analysis & results:1. Quantitative study2. Qualitative study

• Aim: improve translator training & translation quality assessment


TYPOLOGY• Word order as a major issue. • Greenberg (1963): universal 17

▫ “Languages with a dominant VSO word order most often present the adjective after the noun.”

• English vs. Spanish▫ Strict word order vs. rich inflectional morphology▫ adjective morphology: invariable vs. variable in number (and

gender)▫ pre-modifying position vs. post-modifying position ▫ poor man vs. un hombre pobre / un pobre hombre▫ Descriptive adjectives only have the double option▫ Classifying adjectives may occur only in post-modifying

positions.


METHODOLOGY• Corpora: empirical data vs. intuition

• Monolingual corpus: CREA (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual)▫18,500,104 words (Spain, from 2000, written texts

only, all registers)

• English-Spanish parallel corpus: P-ACTRES (Parallel-Contrastive Analysis and Translation English-Spanish)▫1,287,349 words (translations from English originals

from 2000, written texts only, all registers)


CREA INTERFACE


P-ACTRES INTERFACE


METHODOLOGY

•Stages:1. Quantitative analysis of the most frequent

Spanish adjectives in original and translated texts.

2. Qualitative analysis of representative numbers of the most frequent Spanish adjectives in original and translated texts.


DATA• The 25 most frequent adjectives in Spanish: gran,

general, mayor, nacional, mejor, nuevo, pasado, nueva, social, grandes, posible, importante,final, unidos, cierto, largo, claro, español, buena, internacional, igual, española, interior, buen, especial.

• The 25 most frequent adjectives in English: new, good, old, long, little, great, high, best, big, national, small, full, young, free, public, important, white, local, black, able, early, political, real, hard, available.


DATA• Adjectives not included in the qualitative

section of the study:

1. Morphologically reduced forms for the pre-modifying position:

▫ Gran (from grande) / buen (from bueno)

2. Classifying adjectives limited to the post-modifying position:

▫nacional, social, internacional


DATA

•Final selection:▫grande, bueno, nuevo, importante, largo

(with all their morphological forms)

•Issues to be compared in the quantitative analysis:▫a) overall frequency of use in original texts

and in translations,▫b) statistical significance of the differences

identified using chi-square test


RESULTS: STAGE 1

gran grande grandes mayor mayores0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

632.26

90.48

331.61

591.4

135.56

813.290000000001

146.03

370.52

553.07

125.84

GRAN - GRANDE/S - MAYOR/ES

Original Spanish Translated Spanish

Fig. 1. Number of cases per million words.Statistically significant overuse


buen bueno buena buenos buenas mejor mejores0

100

200

300

400

500

600

206.43

91.94

219.350000000001

60.37 51.99

494.1

104.81153.8

205.07 212.84

82.33 83.89

504.91

110.3

BUEN - BUENO/A/OS/AS - MEJOR/ES


Statistically significant overuse Statistically significant overuse

Fig. 2. Number of cases per million words.


nuevo nueva nuevos nuevas0

100

200

300

400

500

600

479.07

326.32

199.07 194.7

279.64312.26

137.49144.48

NUEVO/A - NUEVOS/AS


Statistically significant underuseStatistically significant underuse



importante importantes0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

339.02

137.83

285.85

131.27

IMPORTANTE - IMPORTANTES

Original SpanishTranslated Spanish

Statistically significant underuseFig. 4. Number of cases per million words.


largo larga largos largas0

50

100

150

200

250

300 280.75

77.62

27.35 25.51

249.34

97.87

37.28 38.06

LARGO/A - LARGOS/AS


Statistically significant overuse



RESULTS: STAGE 2

• Statistical formula to ensure the analysis of a sufficiently representative number of instances:

• n = N _

• (N-1) E2 + 1

CREA P-ACTRES

Total Selected Total selected

nuevo 8,863 383 360 190

importante 6,272 376 368 192

largo 5,194 371 321 178


Position in context Number of cases in

CREA

Number of cases in

P-ACTRES

Pre- + post-modification 170 – 44.3% 75 – 39.4%

Single pre-modifier 122 – 31.8% 65 – 34.2%

Fixed expression ‘de nuevo’ 63 – 16.4% 14 – 7.3%

Single post-modifier 21 – 5.4% 19 – 10%

Adjective used as noun 4 – 1.04% -

Predicative position 2 – 0.5% 5 – 2.6%

Multiple pre-modification 1 – 0.2% 5 – 2.6%

Multiple post-modification - 7 – 3.6%

Total 383 190

The case of nuevo


The case of nuevo• Pre- & post-modification

▫other adjectives, especially of the classifying type (el nuevo planeamiento urbanístico consistiría en …)

▫participle clauses (un nuevo caso revelado ayer)▫relative clauses (un nuevo movimiento, que sorteaba

la censura)

• Single pre-modification▫el nuevo sistema debe compensar a los

ayuntamientos, el nuevo servicio se ubicaría en el recinto …, Kurtz había encontrado un nuevo conductor, no le gusta nada mi nuevo trabajo.


The case of nuevo

pre & postmodif. single pre-modif. fixed expr. 'de nuevo'

single post-modif.0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45 44.3

31.8

16.4

5.4

39.4

34.2

7.310



The case of importantePosition in context Number of cases in

CREA

Number of cases in

PACTRES

Single post-modification 112 – 29.7% 59 – 30.7%

Predicative adjective 95 – 25.2% 78 – 40.6%

Multiple postmodification 94 – 25% 27 – 14.06%

Pre- + post-modification 50 – 13.2% 24 – 12.5%

Single pre-modification 24 – 6.3% 3 – 1.5%

Adjective used as noun 1 – 0.2% -

Multiple pre-modification - 1 – 0.5%

Total 376 192


The case of importante• Single post-modification:

▫ fue una decisión importante,▫poseía una experiencia importante

• Predicative position:• le afectan numerosos factores y es importante

analizarlos

• Multiple post-modification:▫ información estadística importante▫un salto cualitativo importante.


The case of importante

sing

le p

ost-m

odif.

pred

icat

ive

mul

tiple

pos

t-mod

if.

pre

& p

ost-m

odif.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

29.725.2 25

13.2

30.7

40.6

14.06 12.5



The case of largoPosition in context Number of cases

in CREA

Number of cases

In PACTRES

Fixed expression ‘a lo largo de …’ 195 – 52.5% 8 – 4.4%

Single pre-modification 85 – 22.9% 74 – 41.5%

Pre- & post-modification 35 – 9.4% 29 – 16.2%

Noun 26 – 7% 24 – 13.4%

Single post-modification 8 – 2.1% 21 – 11.7%

Predicative 8 – 2.1% 6 – 3.3%

Multiple post-modification 7 – 1.8% 14 – 7.8%

Multiple pre-modification 5 – 1.3% 2 – 1.1%

Numeral 2 – 0.5% -

TOTAL 371 178


The case of largo• Fixed expression a lo largo de …

• a lo largo de la historia

• Single pre-modification:▫ su largo cuerpo, recogió un largo aplauso, el largo verano

• Pre- & post-modification:▫ el largo enfrentamiento que mantienen ambas administraciones, ▫ iniciar un largo proceso evolutivo▫ un largo camino que desciende hacia el río

• Noun (in expressions of measure):• tiene más de 4.500 kilómetros de largo

• Single post-modification:▫ memorizar un poema largo▫ tenían el morro largo


The case of largo

-5

5

15

25

35

45

55 52.5

22.9

9.47

2.14.4

41.5

16.213.4

11.7


CONCLUSIONS

• Initial hypothesis: generalized overuse of the pre-modifying position.

•Not proven in the case of the 3 adjectives analyzed, as they are already frequent in the pre-modifying position in original Spanish.

•Further studies are needed focusing on other (perhaps less frequent) adjectives.



CONCLUSIONS• However, other interesting data have been revealed:

• From the quantitative perspective:▫Several adjectives presented overuse in translations

(bueno, grande, largo), but others were actually underused (nuevo & importante)

• From the qualitative perspective:▫Some of the most common adjectives present different

usage patterns in originals and translations: Fewer fixed expressions (de nuevo, a lo largo de) (lower degree

of typicality of translated language). More predicative uses than in original texts


REFERENCES• Baker, M. 1993: “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies.” In Baker et al. (eds.) Text and

Technology. In Honour of John Sinclair. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 233-250. • Comrie, B. 1981: Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Chicago: Chicago University

Press. • Croft, W. 1990: Typology and Universals. Cambridge: CUP.• Greenberg, J.H. 1963: Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of

meaningful elements. In: Greenberg, J.H. (ed.) Universals of Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 73-113.

• Laviosa, S. 1996: “Comparable corpora: Towards a corpus linguistic methodology for the empirical study of translation.” In Thelen, M. and Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. (eds.) Translation and Meaning, Part 3. Maastricht: Hogeschool Maastricht. 153-163.

• Mallinson, G. & Blake, B.J. 1981: Language Typology. Amsterdam: North Holland.• Rabadán, R., B. Labrador & N. Ramón. 2009: Corpus-based contrastive analysis and

translation universals: a tool for translation quality assessment English-Spanish? Babel 55: 4, 303-328.

• Ramón, N. 2009: Translating Epistemic Adverbs from English into Spanish: Evidence from a Parallel Corpus. Meta 54: 1, 73-96.

• Ramón, N. & B. Labrador. 2009: Translations of –ly Adverbs of Degree in an English-Spanish Parallel Corpus. Target 20: 2, 275-296.

• Toury, G. 1995: Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.


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corpus-based contrastive analysis of english adjectives in spanish translations: a typological issue...

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