Table 1.2. Descriptive Features and Linguistic Operators

26 
Lexical density 
Speakability 
Explicitation 
Explicit signals 
of clausal 
relations 
Explicitation of 
optional 
syntactic choices 
Explicitating 
shifts in lexical 
cohesion 
Explicative 
reformulation 
Normalization
Lexical 
creativity 
Collocational 
creativity 
Formality degree 
Distribution of 
typical and 
atypical register 
features 
Range of terms 
used to represent 
a conceptual 
domain 
Much of the comparable corpus research carried out to date in translation studies has 
focused on syntactic or lexical features of translated and non-translated texts which might 
provide evidence of such processes of explicitation, simplification or normalization. It should be 
stressed that, while translators may at times consciously strive to produce translations which are 
more explicit or simplified or normalized in some way, the use of comparable corpora is also 
seen as a way of investigating aspects of translators’ use of language which are not the result of 
deliberate, controlled processes. Translators may not be aware of these processes but the 
translation product may provide indirect evidence of cognitive processing inherent to translation. 
An example of one such aspect is the use of the optional that with reporting verbs SAY and 
TELL, studied in Olohan and Baker (2000); the use of the optional that was found to be 
considerably higher in the Translational English Corpus than in a comparable corpus comprising 
texts from the British National Corpus. This was posited as being a reflection of explicitation, 
based on the hypothesis that explicitation will usually involve the use of a longer surface form in 
preference to a shorter one, leaving less room for ambiguity. This study drew on Günter 
Rohdenburg’s (1996) work on cognitive complexity and grammatical explicitness in English. He 

27 
examines formal contrasts involving the deletion or addition and the substitution of grammatical 
or closed-class elements, providing evidence for the complexity principle: “in the case of more 
or less explicit grammatical options the more explicit one(s) will tend to be favored in 
cognitively more complex environments” (ibid.:151). Thus, the higher incidence of reporting that 
in translated English could be considered to be part of a more general pattern of grammatical 
explicitness, and explanation for this explicitation may be linked to the cognitive complexity of 
the translation task. 

жүктеу/скачать 1,4 Mb.

Достарыңызбен бөлісу: