A corpus-based study of loan words in original and translated texts

1. A corpus-based study of loan words in original and translated texts Ana Frankenberg-Garcia ISLA - Lisbon ana.frankenberg@sapo.pt

2. Loan words in monolingual settings 1. When people fail to retrieve equivalent words in the language they are speaking language loss 2. To evoke meanings that go beyond the propositional meaning of the words used language enrichment

3. Loan words in translation 1. Culturally-bound concepts difficult to translate last resort for want of a better solution 2. Conveying source-text culture intentional translation strategy

4. Loan words in translation • Vinay & Darbelnet (1958): emprunts To fill in semantic gaps or add local colour Easy way out • Newmark (1988): transference To use with moderation Translator’s job is to translate, to explain • Venuti (1995) Option to domesticate or foreignize Translators should keep foreign texts foreign • Toury (1995) Relative status of source-text language and culture Affects the extent to which it interferes in the translation

5. Motivation • The use of loans is not a prerogative of translations • When looking at loan words in translation, it makes sense to look at how loans are used in texts that are not translations

6. Loan words in original and translated texts • Are there more loans in translations than in source texts? • Is the superimpostion of languages in source texts effaced by translation? • Does the relative status of the ST language and culture affect the use of loans in translation? Questions such as these are much easier to tackle with the help of corpora

7. Method COMPARA 6.0 www.linguateca.pt/COMPARA [Dec 2004 – Mar 2005] Bidirectional parallel corpus of English and Portuguese (published fiction) Original Portuguese Translated English Original English Translated Portuguese Focus on frequency and language distribution of loans

8. Methodsub-corpus COMPARA contains over 2 million words, with texts published between 1837 and 2000 Sub-corpus of texts published in the last 30 years: • 15 original Portuguese fiction extracts (277,243 words) • 13 original English fiction extracts (191,913 words) • 15 extracts of Portuguese fiction in English translation (312,322 words) • 15 extracts of English fiction in Portuguese translation (415,690 words) 1,197,168 words

9. Methodsub-corpus: note 1 • Not all stories set exclusively in English or Portuguese speaking worlds • Not all stories take place in the last thirty years May affect how loans are used, but typical of fiction! • What matters is: • Stories written by modern English and Portuguese-speaking writers • Stories read by English and Portuguese-speaking readers of today

10. Methodsub-corpus: note 2 English (28 texts) 5 authors David Lodge, Joanna Trollope, Julian Barnes, Nadine Gordimer, Richard Zimler 10 translators Alan Clarke, Cliff Landers, David Brookshaw, Ellen Watson, Giovanni Pontiero, Gregory Rabassa, John Byrne, John Parker, Mary Fitton, Richard Zenith Portuguese (30 texts) 12 authors Autran Dourado, Cardoso Pires, Chico Buarque, Jorge de Sena, José E. Agualusa, José Saramago, Marcos Rey, Mário de Carvalho, Mia Couto, Patrícia Melo, Paulo Coelho, Rubem Fonseca 10 translators Ana M. Amador, Carlos G. Babo, Geraldo G. Ferraz, Helena Cardoso, J. Teixeira Aguilar, José Lima, Lídia C-Luther, M. Carlota Pracana, M. Carmo Figueira, Paula Reis more individual author differences in Portuguese

11. Methodsub-corpus: note 3 Portuguese English Different varieties of English and Portuguese not taken into account

12. Method • What was considered a loan • How loans were counted • How loans were sorted by language

13. Defining loans Disagreement among individuals and within language communities Loans: words in a language other than the main language of the text that authors and translators (or publishers) chose to set off by highlighting - criterion used in COMPARA to mark foreign words - can be retrieved automatically Note 1 readers (and corpus makers & users) may have different perceptions Note 2 same word can be a loan in some texts but not in others

14. Defining loanssame word classified differently in different languages EBDL5 (262):`What d'you take me for, a robot?´ EBDL5 (262): -- O que é que você pensa que eu sou? Algum robot?

15. Defining loanssame word classified differently in same language PBRF1(318):Usava jeans apertados, suas pernas eram grossas e os braços finos. PBPC2(934):A única coisa que mantinha o sentido de reali-dade eram nossos trajes, jeanse camisetas com vieiras costuradas. EBDL3T1(1279): Boon tinha realmente chegado, provocante-mente vestido com camiseta e jeans e acompanhado duma bela e altiva Pantera Negra, que ia entrar no programa dessa noite. EBJT1(1962): Era um rapaz, um rapaz magro de jeanse com um blusão de cabedal. Instead of external parameters, definition reflects opinions of authors and translators (and editorial policies)

16. Defining loanstitles and named entities marked foreign not included EBJB1(64):Besides, I remember the end of L'Education Sentimentale. PBRF1(560): Até que o Fleming escolheu um bom título, Diamonds are Forever, pensei, mas o filme de Guy Hamilton era medíocre. PBAA2(603):It looks like a ship is arriving, and it's the Cruzeiro.´ EBDL3T2(1153): Teve uma lua-de-mel de curta duração com a Radio One, que se transformou numa espécie de casamento sadomasoquista.

17. Counting loanssingle words and multi-word expressions counted as one loan EBJB2 (500):…he was going to get the best quid pro quoout of God in the forthcoming negotiations. = 1 loan EBJT2 (241): `I shall bring tapasalso,´ José said, moving towards the door. = 1 loan

18. Counting loansquotations counted as one loan EURZ1 (1275): …a weedy boy with pale-green eyes yells at her in a prideful voice, «Vai-te foder, vaca!, fuck off, cow!» = 1 loan EBJB1(188):…he found himself constantly irritated by a parrot which screamed, `As-tu déjeuné, Jako? ´ and `Cocu, mon petit coco.´ = 2 loans

19. Counting loanslists and repetitions counted as separate loans PBPM1 (99): Urutus, jararacas, cascavéis, jararacuçus, surucutingas, cotiaras-- I saw these and many other serpents in the slides that Melissa projected during her talk. = 6 loans EBJT2 (368):`The little eggs of the codoniz, what is the codoniz?´ = 2 loans

20. Sorting loansco-text used to resolve ambiguity EBDL5(1802):`Can I take this thing off?´ he said, plucking at his lei. lei = Hawaiian, not Italian EBJT2(95): `You must look after yourself, querida.´ querida = Spanish, not Portuguese

21. Sorting loansloans classified according to their origins EBDL5(262): -- O que é que você pensa que eu sou? Algum robot? robot = Czech EBDL1T2(889): a plastic container of frozen moussakacould be concealed without much difficulty. moussaka = Greek

22. Results distribution of loans Original Portuguese Original English 9 (out of 15) texts had no loans at all Just 1 (out of 13) texts did not have any loans 1.5 loans/ 10 K words 16.9 loans/ 10 K words Original English fiction more permeable to loans than original Portuguese fiction

23. Results distribution of loans Translated Portuguese Translated English All texts contained loans One third of the texts contained no loans at all 4.1 loans/ 10 K words 24.3 loans/ 10 K words When reading translated fiction, Portuguese readers more exposed to loans than English readers

24. Results distribution of loans Original Portuguese Translated Portuguese More than half the texts contained no loans at all All texts contained loans 24.3 loans/ 10 K words 1.5 loans/ 10 K words Portuguese readers must notice a big difference….

25. Results distribution of loans Original English Translated English One third of the texts contained no loans at all All but one text contained loans 4.1 loans/ 10 K words 16.9 loans/ 10 K words The number of loans in present in text shouldn’t add a particularly foreign ring to English translations….

26. Results (so far) • Loan words seem to enter the Portuguese language more through fiction translated from English than through original fiction • The opposite seems to occur in English Do Portuguese translators tend to foreignize texts? Do English translators tend to domesticate texts? What happens to loans in the process of translation

27. Resultsnet difference in overall number of loans ST (English) TT (Portuguese) 3 X ST (Portuguese) TT (English) Both Portuguese and English translations tripled the total number of loans present in source texts English translators not really sheltering readers from loans Few loans in Portuguese source texts makes loans in translated English seem scant by comparison

28. ResultsLoans in common, loans added and loans removed ST (English) TT (Portuguese) ST (Portuguese) TT (English) Both PT and EN translators tend to: Preserve loans originally present in source texts Add more loans of their own Remove very few loans (except…)

29. Resultslanguage distribution of loans Original Portuguese Translated Portuguese Loans from just 4 languages: English (22 loans in 2 texts) Latin (15 loans in 2 texts) French (4 loans in 4 texts) German (1 loan in 1 text) None prevails Loans from 14 identified languages English prevails (475 loans in 13 texts) French noticeable (238 loans in 13 texts)

30. Resultslanguage distribution of loans Original English Translated English Loans from 12 identified languages French prevails (117 loans in 10 texts) Portuguese is rare (14 loans but all in 1 text) Loans from just 8 identified languages French prevails (43 loans in 6 texts) Portuguese is noticeable (35 loans in 7 texts)

31. Resultslanguage distribution of loans ST (English) TT (Portuguese) More loan languages: + 2 Lots of loans from source text language: + 475 More French: 117 → 238 (+121) More Latin: 21 → 34 (+15) More Italian: 11 → 20 (+9) Less Spanish: 25 → 22 (-3) Portuguese effaced: -14 (no compensation)

32. Resultslanguage distribution of loans ST (Portuguese) TT (English) More loan languages: + 4 Few loans from source text language: + 35 More French: 4 → 43 (+39) More Latin: 15 → 19 (+4) Spanish introduced: 0 → 4 (+4) Italian introduced: 0 → 7 (+7) English effaced: -22 (2 loans compensated by French)

33. Overall Results Original PT Translated EN PT Original EN Translated PT EN Toury (1995) Tolerance of interference is likely to be greater when translation is carried out from ‘major’ to ‘minor’ language/culture Both PT and EN translation tripled the number of loans Increased the number of loan languages Did not remove superimpostion of languages in ST (except when loans were from translation language) Loans from ST abound in translated Portuguese, but used very sparingly in translated English Difference between number of loans in English originals and translations not as conspicuous, but… Huge difference between Portuguese originals and translations More loans and more loan languages in original English fiction

34. Conclusion • Commentaries on use of loans often controversial and based on anectodal evidence • This study examined some hard data on use of loans in original and translated texts • Only possible thanks to a corpus and corpus techniques • Future: more research using more texts, different genres & other language pairs Obrigada!

35. A corpus-based study of loan words in original and translated texts Ana Frankenberg-Garcia ISLA - Lisbon ana.frankenberg@sapo.pt