Cover not available
Article published In:
Target
Vol. 30:1 (2018) ► pp.112–136

Translation description for assessment and post-editing

The case of personal pronouns in translated Spanish

ORCID logo | University of León
ORCID logo | University of León
This paper presents a corpus-based descriptive research procedure for the identification of significant divergences between original Spanish and Spanish translated from English. When considering the language pair English-Spanish, personal pronouns seem to be good markers of significant differences (anchor phenomena), since they must obligatorily occur in English, but not in Spanish. To test this hypothesis, empirical data have been extracted from a large reference corpus in Spanish (CREA) and from an English-Spanish parallel corpus (P-ACTRES), in both cases from the fiction subcorpora. Statistically significant differences have been found in some of the uses of personal pronouns, having textual and pragmatic implications in the target texts. The aim is to use the results obtained in the case of personal pronouns, together with results from other linguistic areas, to build a semi-automated tool for the post-editing of Spanish translations of texts written originally in English.
Keywords: translation post-editing, anchor phenomena, corpora, personal pronouns
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Object of study: Personal pronouns in English and Spanish
  • 3.Method and tools
    • 3.1 Tertium comparationis: Cross-linguistic labels
    • 3.2Corpora: CREA and P-ACTRES
    • 3.3Statistics
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Numerical results
    • 4.2First person singular pronoun: yo
    • 4.3Second person singular pronoun: tú
    • 4.4Third person singular pronoun masculine: él
    • 4.5Second person singular formal pronoun: usted
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Spanish personal pronouns as anchor phenomena
    • 5.2The translation assessment and post-editing tool PETRA
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 7 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.15098.ram
References (38)
References
Alarcos, Emilio. 1980. Estudios de gramática funcional. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Baker, Mona. 1993. “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications.” In Text and Technology. In Honour of John Sinclair, edited by Mona Baker, Gill Francis, and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, 233–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew. 1998. Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eldredge, Dee L., and Liesder Mayea Rodríguez. 2015. Introduction to Spanish/English Linguistics. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris.Google Scholar
Enríquez, Emilia Victoria. 1984. El pronombre personal sujeto en la lengua española hablada en Madrid. Madrid: CSIC.Google Scholar
Fernández Soriano, Olga M. 1989. Rección y ligamiento en español: aspectos del parámetro del sujeto nulo. PhD diss. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K., and Ruqaiya Hassan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
House, Juliane. 2001. “Translation Quality Assessment. Linguistic Description versus Social Evaluation.” Meta 46 (2): 243–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney, and Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Izquierdo, Marlén, Knut Hofland, and Øystein Reigem. 2008. “The ACTRES Parallel Corpus: An English-Spanish Translation Corpus.” Corpora 31: 31–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krings, Hans P. 2001. Repairing Texts: Empirical Investigations of Machine-Translation Post-Editing Processes. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press.Google Scholar
Krzeszowski, Tomasz P. 1990. Contrasting Languages. The Scope of Contrastive Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labrador, Belén. 2011. “A Corpus-Based Study of the Use of Spanish Demonstratives as Translation Equivalents of English Demonstratives.” Perspectives. Studies in Translatology 19 (1): 71–87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laviosa, Sara. 1998. “Core Patterns of Lexical Use in a Comparable Corpus of English Narrative Prose.” Meta 43 (4): 557–570. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
López Guix, Juan Gabriel, and Jacqueline Minett Wilkinson. 2009. Manual de traducción inglés-castellano: teoría y práctica. Barcelona: Gedisa.Google Scholar
Luján, Marta. 1999. “Expresión y omisión del pronombre personal.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, edited by Ignacio Bosque and Violeta Demonte, 1275–1315. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
Maia, Belinda. 1998. “Word Order and the First Person Singular in Portuguese and English.” Meta 43 (4): 589–601. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marcos Marín, Francisco. 1978. Estudios sobre el pronombre. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Martínez Vázquez, Montserrat. 1996. Gramática contrastiva inglés-español. Huelva: Universidad de Huelva.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Sharon, Laura Winther Balling, Michael Carl, Michel Simard, and Lucia Specia, eds. 2014. Post-editing of Machine Translation: Processes and Applications. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Rabadán, Rosa. 2005. “The Applicability of Description. Empirical Research and Translation Tools.” In Contemporary Problematics of Translation Studies, edited by Carmen Toledano, special issue of Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 511: 51–70.Google Scholar
. 2006. “Modality and Modal Verbs in Contrast. Mapping out a Translation(ally) Relevant Approach English-Spanish.” Languages in Contrast 6 (2): 261–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. “Refining the Idea of ‘Applied Extension’.” In Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies, edited by Anthony Pym, Miriam Shlesinger, and Daniel Simeoni, 103–117. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. “The Present Tenses in English and in Spanish: A Corpus-Based Approach to Cross-linguistic Meaning and Grammatical Transfer.” In Cognitive Approaches to Language and Linguistic Data, edited by Wiesław Oleksy and Piotr Stalmaszczyk, 461–478. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2010. “Applied Translation Studies.” In Handbook of Translation Studies. Volume 11, edited by Yves Gambier, and Luc van Doorslaer, 7–11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rabadán, Rosa, Belén Labrador, and Noelia Ramón. 2009. “Corpus-Based Contrastive Analysis and Translation Universals: A Tool for Translation Quality Assessment English®Spanish?” Babel 55 (4): 303–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rabadán, Rosa, and Marlén Izquierdo. 2013. “A Corpus-Based Study of English Approximate Negators and their Translations into Spanish.” BeLLs 3 (1): 43–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rabadán, Rosa, Camino Gutiérrez Lanza, Ana Belén García Gallego, and Hugo Sanjurjo González. 2014. “PETRA 1.0©: A Semi-automated Aid for the Evaluation of the Grammatical Quality of English-to-Spanish Translations.” Unpublished paper. Mediterranean Editors and Translators Meeting 2014. Innovation and Tradition: Mining the Human Resource. Euroforum, San Lorenzo de El Escorial. 30th October – 1st November 2014.Google Scholar
Ramón, Noelia, and Belén Labrador. 2008. “Translations of ‘-ly’ Adverbs of Degree in an English-Spanish Parallel Corpus.” Target 20 (2): 275–296. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Somers, Harold. 1997. “A Practical Approach to Using Machine Translation Software: ‘Post-editing the Source Text’.” The Translator 31: 193–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Unique Items: Over- or Under-Represented in Translated Language?” In Translation Universals: Do they Exist?, edited by Anna Mauranen and Pekka Kujamäki, 65–82. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toury, Gideon. (1995) 2012. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Revised edition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Probabilistic Explanations in Translation Studies: Universals – or a Challenge to the Very Concept?” In Claims, Changes and Challenges in Translation Studies, edited by Gyde Hansen, Kirsten Malmkjær, and Daniel Gile, 15–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vázquez Ayora, Gerardo. 1977. Introducción a la traductología. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Vieira, Lucas Nunes, and Lucia Specia. 2011. “A Review of Translation Tools from a Post-editing Perspective.” In Proceedings of the Third Joint EM+/CNGL Workshop Bringing MT to the User: Research Meets Translators (JEC 2011), 33–42. Luxemburg.Google Scholar
Whitley, M. Stanley. 2002. Spanish/English Contrasts. A Course in Spanish Linguistics. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Rodríguez-Castro, Mónica & Concepción B. Godev
2024. Implicit agent se-constructions. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 37:2 ► pp. 628 ff. DOI logo
Rabadán, Rosa
2023. Chapter 2. Light Verb Constructions in English-Spanish translation. In Corpus Use in Cross-linguistic Research [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 113], ► pp. 34 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.