Is there interference of usage constraints?
A frequency study of existential there is and its French equivalent il y a in translated vs. non-translated texts
Bert Cappelle | University of Lille, France
Rudy Loock | University of Lille, France
We examine the possible impact of frequency differences between a construction in L1 and its equivalent in L2 on translations. Our case is that of existential there in English and existential il y a in French. Using corpus evidence, we first confirm previous claims that existential there is used more freely in English than existential il y a is in French. Drawing on extensive counts conducted in available corpora and self-compiled samples of translated English and French, intra-language comparisons of translated and non-translated language use show that existential there is under-represented in English translated from French while existential il y a is over-represented in French translated from English. It is suggested that source-language interference is responsible for these differences. In addition, counts of existentials in individual novels and their translations show that inter-language frequency shifts systematically occur in the direction of target-language norms, most clearly so for translations into French, which suggests that the observed usage constraint on il y a still applies to a noticeable extent in translated French. Methodologically, we argue the need for a large corpus of translated French.
Keywords: corpus-based translation studies, usage constraint, source-language, interference, existential construction, English, French, frequency, targetlanguage norms, translation universals, methodology
Published online: 17 May 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.25.2.05cap
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.25.2.05cap
Cited by
Cited by 4 other publications
Defrancq, Bart & Gudrun Rawoens
Kruger, Haidee & Bertus van Rooy
Tao, Yuan & Zhanhao Jiang
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 november 2020. 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.
References
[ p. 272 ]References
Baker, Mona
Baker, Mona, and Maeve Olohan
Bergen, Benjamin K., and Madelaine C. Plauché
Birner, Betty J., and Gregory Ward
Cappelle, Bert
Chesterman, Andrew
Chuquet, Hélène, and Michel Paillard
Corpas Pastor, Gloria, Ruslan Mitkov, Naveed Afzal, and Viktor Pekar
Davies, Mark
De Sutter, Gert, and Marc Van de Velde
2010 “Do the Mechanisms that Govern Syntactic Choices Differ between Original and Translated Language? A Corpus-based Translation Study of PP Extraposition in Dutch and German.” In Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies, ed. by Richard Xiao, 144–163. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Frawley, William
Grevisse, Maurice, and André Goosse
Guillemin-Flescher, Jacqueline
House, Juliane
[ p. 273 ]
Jiménez-Crespo, Miguel A.
Lambrecht, Knud
Laviosa, Sara
Laviosa-Braithwaite, Sara
1997 “Investigating Simplification in an English Comparable Corpus of Newspaper Articles.” In Transferre Necesse Est. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Current Trends in Studies of Translation and Interpreting, 5–7 September 1996, Budapest, Hungary, ed. by Kinga Klaudy, and Janos Kohn, 531–540. Budapest: Scholastica.
Loock, Rudy
Mauranen, Anna, and Kujamäki Pekka (eds.)
Mauranen, Anna
Slobin, Dan I.
Talmy, Leonard
Teubert, Wolfgang
Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja
Vinay, Jean-Paul, and Jean Darbelnet
[ p. 274 ]