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Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings
Edited by Bertus van Rooy and Haidee Kotze
[Contact Language Library 60] 2024
► pp. 153–190

Chapter 6
The effect of directionality on lexico‑syntactic simplification in French><English student translation

| Université catholique de Louvain
| Université catholique de Louvain
| Université catholique de Louvain

This chapter reports on an exploratory case study designed to investigate lexico-syntactic simplification in French><English translations produced by students in two within-subjects language contact settings: Translation from the foreign language (FL) into the first language (L1) (FL>L1 translation) and translation from the L1 into the FL (L1>FL translation). The aim of the study is to determine whether directionality affects student translation production and, if so, how. Lexico-syntactic simplification is operationalised as mean sentence length, root lemma-token ratio, lexical density, and core vocabulary coverage. The results indicate that translation directionality exerts an effect on the distribution of lexical items (lemmas, lexical words, and high-frequency words) in the translations (as compared to their corresponding source texts), with there being more lexical simplification in L1>FL translation than in FL>L1 translation. They reveal, in addition, that student translation production is also impacted by constraints both at the macro level (translation experience) and at the micro level (students’ idiosyncrasies and individual source texts).

Keywords: lexico-syntactic simplification, simplicity, complexity, translation directionality, bilingual language production, constrained language, student translation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Translation directionality in CBTS
    • 2.2The construct of simplification in bilingual language production
      • 2.2.1Simplification/simplicity and translation: The CBTS perspective
      • 2.2.2Simplification/complexity and L2/FL production: The SLA/LCR perspective
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1Data description
    • 3.2Linguistic analyses
    • 3.3Statistical analyses
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Lexico-syntactic simplicity in translations into L1 French and FL English
    • 4.2Lexico-syntactic simplification in target texts
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 20 June 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/coll.60.06pen
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