Appraisal Emotional Adjectives in English/Arabic Translation :
A Corpus Linguistic Approach
Salma MansourLeeds University
Overview• Dictionaries: a serious problem• Powerful/less adjectives in English and
Arabic• Corpus analysis• Results
Dictionaries Vs. CorporaPrinted dictionaries
limited by space information is always partial interpreted (sometimes wrongly) internally inconsistent and contradict each
other out of date
“There are many facts about language that cannot be discovered by just thinking about it, or even reading and listening very intently” (Sinclair, 1995)
“ As language teachers and professionals, we often have strong intuitions about language use…corpus-based research, however, shows us that our intuitions are often completely wrong” (Biber, 2005)
Emotions: In/security (the boy was anxious/confident) Dis/satisfaction (the boy was fed up/
absorbed) Un/happiness (the boy was sad/happy)(Martin and White, 2005: 46-9; Bednarek
2008:15)
Powerful/less adjectives in English and Arabic Strong qawi قوي
Powerful jabar جبار
Tough qas قاس
Weak da‘if ضعيف
Powerless wahin واهن
Tender raqiq رقيق
Examples: weak AMMD 2007
EMD2008
LASD1994
COED2010
WCD2002
العقل ضعيفda‘if al‘aql(mentally weak)
غير – ضعيفقوي(weak, not strong)
Not strong in character
Lacking physical strength and energy
Lacking power or strength
BNC LLS I-EN LLS
physically weak
18.18 hand 13.80
heart 15.81 pulse 12.99
stomach 11.71 stomach 11.79
chest 8.97 muscle 11.70
muscle 8.90 leg 8.20
ankle 7.09 knee 7.39
chin 6.95 heart 7.30
Leg 4.40
body 3.02
eye 1.12
’da‘if/ ‘weak/ ضعيف I-AR LLS
’al-shakhsyah ‘the personality الشخصية 150
’al-qalb ‘the heart القلب 140
al-saqayn ‘the legs’ 75.35 الساقين
’al-basar ‘the eyesightالبصر 22.44
’al-‘aql ‘the mindالعقل 1.89
Top 10 collocates of weak in BNC and I-EN
BNC LLS I-EN LLS
syllable 87.51 spot 133.28
spot 86.21 link 107.04
link 80.91 point 99.54
point 57.05 economy 58.50
interaction 56.71 signal 47.15
position 39.28 tie 40.82
overlap 36.62 acid 33.38
smile 34.19 argument 30.72
nuclear 30.81 immune 23.11
form 28.07 position 18.65
Examples: strong AMMD 2007
EMD2008
LASD1994
COED2010
WCD2002
شديد – – قوي ضخم
شديد – – قوي متين
Having a degree of power, esp. of the body
Physically powerful
Physically or mentally powerful
Strong
LLS of mental, physical, behavioral collocates of strong
Appraised/Thing Appraised/Thing evaluatedevaluated
BNCBNC I-ENI-EN
Mind 3.10 0.47
Arm 93.66 55.75
Character 44.13 34.84
Personality 34.88 58.54
Collocation: a mode of expressing meaning
“You shall know a word by the company it keeps” (Firth, 1957: 12).
“Looking at lexicographic work on Arabic collocation, a rather bleak picture emerges. There is an extremely limited amount of information on collocation in both monolingual (Arabic) and bilingual (Arabic-English/English-Arabic dictionaries. Besides, no monolingual (Arabic) or bilingual (Arabic-English/English-Arabic) collocational dictionary has been compiled as yet” (Bahumaid, 2006:137).
Dictionaries and semantic prosodies
“Lexicographers in the past have not been fully aware of the extent of semantic prosody […]modern corpora provide new opportunities of studying the phenomenon” (Partington, 1998: 68).
Semantic prosodies• Positive Favorable (pleasant)
• Neutral Neutral (No evidence)
• Negative Unfavorable (unpleasant)
Strong smell
AMMD / I-AR BNC
Node: powerful BNC LLS I-EN LLS
tool 143.09 tool 814.27
influence 136.16 force 207.16
force 103.39 nation 186.20
man 90.58 weapon 136.33
weapon 83.64 man 86.53
argument 57.96 influence 77.79
body 55.52 incentive 76.15
position 45.45 message 63.50
voice 44.83 computer 57.08
personality 24.13 way 54.29
Node: strongBNC LLS I-EN LLS
wind 433.66 feeling 372.52
feeling 352:24 support 355.22
sense 326.05 sense 349.23
support 178.31 evidence 338.85
position 163.77 emphasis 305.34
emphasis 151.91 wind 266.76
evidence 129.73 leadership 258.30
link 125.36 commitment
241.05
opposition 122.81 supporter 230.46
argument 108.53 leader 215.36
Halliday (1976: 73):
• Strong (not powerful) tea
• Powerful (not strong) car
powerful vs. strong
Powerless vs. weak
Powerless collocates with:
helpless passive do nothing totally dependent hanging
Weak collocates with:
syllable spot link point economy smile
Collocation Joint Freq LL score powerless to 176 2466407 187.92
powerless against
12 54759 18.16
powerless . 63 4722093 16.85
powerless group
6 53516 7.10
Powerless in 10 185185 0.20
powerless position
4 27442 5.24
powerless people
6 115476 4.92
powerless and 22 2615080 2.43
powerless ; 5 203952 2.43
powerless as 7 521522 1.77
powerless when
4 207566 1.55
powerless by 4 504964 0.37
tender & tough(a) tender
Thing evaluated English Arabic
year inexperienced ناضج غير
people, behavior gentle, nice رقيق - لطيف
food easy to chew المضغ سهل
part of the body sensitive حساس
offer generous سخي
feeling, emotions, love
romantic رومانسي
(b) toughThing evaluated English Arabic
time hard عصيبة أوقات
people rough, stiff شكس – - جلف قاس
decision, choice, question, competition
difficult صعبة
opponent stubborn, obstinate عنيد
Same but different!
قوي .jabar ‘powerful’ vs جبارqawi ‘strong’ vs. قاس qas ‘tough’(1) Positive jabar (great)juhd /effort/, ’mal /work/, mashru’ /project/ …
God
(2) Negative jabar (stubborn, unfair/unjust)malik /king/, hakim /judge, commander, leader/
(3) Neutral jabar (No indication)
(1) Positive qawi (strong)fariq /team/, jaysh /army/, ’iqtisad /economy/e.g. ’iqtisad qawi /strong economy/ (not jabar/ not qas)
(2) Negative qawi (destructive)zilzal /earthquake/
(3) Neutral qawi ta’thir /influence/, shakl /form/
(1)Negative qas (difficult)rajul /man/, waqi‘ /reality/, shay’ /something/
(2) Positive qas (No indication)
(3) Neutral qas (No indication)
/raqiq /tender رقيق • Negative raqiq(weak)ghisha’ /membrane/, jild /skin/
• Positive raqiq (nice)uslub /style/, shakhs /person/, sawt /voice/, ihsas
/feelings/, thawb /garment/shakhs raqiq (nice person)shakhs da‘if/wahin (weak person)
Thank you for your attention