On the Similarities Between Native, Non-native and Translated Texts

We present a computational analysis of three language varieties: native, advanced non-native, and translation. Our goal is to investigate the similarities and differences between non-native language productions and translations, contrasting both with native language. Using a collection of computational methods we establish three main results: (1) the three types of texts are easily distinguishable; (2) non-native language and translations are closer to each other than each of them is to native language; and (3) some of these characteristics depend on the source or native language, while others do not, reflecting, perhaps, unified principles that similarly affect translations and non-native language.Comment: ACL2016, 12 page

ELF and Translationese in Relation to Plain English on the Websites of Finnish Medium-Sized Export Companies

Englanninkielisillä kotisivuilla on suuri merkitys erityisesti suomalaisille vientiyrityksille, sillä niiden avulla yritykset pystyvät markkinoimaan itseään ja tuotteitaan potentiaalisille ulkomaisille asiakkaille. Nykyään yrityksen kotisivut toimivat usein ensimmäisenä kontaktina asiakkaan ja yrityksen välillä asiakkaan hankkiessa tietoa uudesta yrityksestä tai tuotteesta. Koska yritysten kotisivuilla on tärkeä rooli ensivaikutelman luomisessa, on tärkeää, että myös niillä käytettävä kieli on helppolukuista ja virheetöntä. Erilaiset kielelliset poikkeamat osoittautuivat kuitenkin varsin yleisiksi vientiyritysten englanninkielisillä kotisivuilla. Nämä kielelliset poikkeamat tunnistettiin Englanti lingua francana - ja translationese-kielimuodon piirteiksi. Englanti lingua francana (ELF) on kielimuoto, jota englantia vieraana kielenä puhuvat henkilöt käyttävät puhuessaan muiden vieraskielisten kanssa. Translationese on puolestaan kielimuoto, jota esiintyy käännetyssä kirjoitetussa kielessä ja jossa lähdekielen piirteet ovat selkeästi havaittavissa ja heikentävät käännöksen sujuvuutta. Internetissä kieli yhdistelee kirjoitetun ja puhutun kielen ominaisuuksia, mikä selittää molempien kielimuotojen esiintymisen kotisivuilla. Tutkimuksessa näitä kielellisiä piirteitä verrattiin lisäksi Plain English -kielimuotoon, jonka ensisijainen pyrkimys on tuottaa kielellisesti ja tyylillisesti mahdollisimman selkeää ja helppolukuista englantia väärinymmärrysten välttämiseksi. Tutkimus osoitti, että ELF-piirteet eivät johda vakaviin väärinymmärryksiin mutta saattavat vaikuttaa negatiivisesti tekstin luettavuuteen. Sanatasolla translationese johtaa selkeisiin poikkeamiin Plain English -kielimuodosta, mutta niiden vaikutus luettavuuteen jää kuitenkin vähäisemmäksi kuin lausetasolla ilmenevän translationesen, joka poikkeaa selkeästi Plain English -kielimuodoista ja johtaa helposti väärinymmärryksiin. ELF:n ja translationesen yleisyys yritysten kotisivuilla osoittaa, etteivät monet yritykset vielä tiedosta helppolukuisten ja kielellisesti virheettömien kotisivujen positiivista vaikutusta koko yrityksen imagoon, ja enemmän huomiota tulisikin tulevaisuudessa kiinnittää yritysten englanninkielisten kotisivujen kielelliseen laatuun.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

On the differences between human translations

Many studies have confirmed that translated texts exhibit different features than texts originally written in the given language. This work explores texts translated by different translators taking into account expertise and native language. A set of computational analyses was conducted on three language pairs, English-Croatian, German-French and English-Finnish, and the results show that each of the factors has certain influence on the features of the translated texts, especially on sentence length and lexical richness. The results also indicate that for translations used for machine translation evaluation, it is important to specify these factors, especially when comparing machine translation quality with human translation quality

New perspectives on cohesion and coherence: Implications for translation

The contributions to this volume investigate relations of cohesion and coherence as well as instantiations of discourse phenomena and their interaction with information structure in multilingual contexts. Some contributions concentrate on procedures to analyze cohesion and coherence from a corpus-linguistic perspective. Others have a particular focus on textual cohesion in parallel corpora that include both originals and translated texts. Additionally, the papers in the volume discuss the nature of cohesion and coherence with implications for human and machine translation.The contributors are experts on discourse phenomena and textuality who address these issues from an empirical perspective. The chapters in this volume are grounded in the latest research making this book useful to both experts of discourse studies and computational linguistics, as well as advanced students with an interest in these disciplines. We hope that this volume will serve as a catalyst to other researchers and will facilitate further advances in the development of cost-effective annotation procedures, the application of statistical techniques for the analysis of linguistic phenomena and the elaboration of new methods for data interpretation in multilingual corpus linguistics and machine translation

New perspectives on cohesion and coherence: Implications for translation

The contributions to this volume investigate relations of cohesion and coherence as well as instantiations of discourse phenomena and their interaction with information structure in multilingual contexts. Some contributions concentrate on procedures to analyze cohesion and coherence from a corpus-linguistic perspective. Others have a particular focus on textual cohesion in parallel corpora that include both originals and translated texts. Additionally, the papers in the volume discuss the nature of cohesion and coherence with implications for human and machine translation.The contributors are experts on discourse phenomena and textuality who address these issues from an empirical perspective. The chapters in this volume are grounded in the latest research making this book useful to both experts of discourse studies and computational linguistics, as well as advanced students with an interest in these disciplines. We hope that this volume will serve as a catalyst to other researchers and will facilitate further advances in the development of cost-effective annotation procedures, the application of statistical techniques for the analysis of linguistic phenomena and the elaboration of new methods for data interpretation in multilingual corpus linguistics and machine translation

New perspectives on cohesion and coherence: Implications for translation

The contributions to this volume investigate relations of cohesion and coherence as well as instantiations of discourse phenomena and their interaction with information structure in multilingual contexts. Some contributions concentrate on procedures to analyze cohesion and coherence from a corpus-linguistic perspective. Others have a particular focus on textual cohesion in parallel corpora that include both originals and translated texts. Additionally, the papers in the volume discuss the nature of cohesion and coherence with implications for human and machine translation.The contributors are experts on discourse phenomena and textuality who address these issues from an empirical perspective. The chapters in this volume are grounded in the latest research making this book useful to both experts of discourse studies and computational linguistics, as well as advanced students with an interest in these disciplines. We hope that this volume will serve as a catalyst to other researchers and will facilitate further advances in the development of cost-effective annotation procedures, the application of statistical techniques for the analysis of linguistic phenomena and the elaboration of new methods for data interpretation in multilingual corpus linguistics and machine translation

New perspectives on cohesion and coherence: Implications for translation

The contributions to this volume investigate relations of cohesion and coherence as well as instantiations of discourse phenomena and their interaction with information structure in multilingual contexts. Some contributions concentrate on procedures to analyze cohesion and coherence from a corpus-linguistic perspective. Others have a particular focus on textual cohesion in parallel corpora that include both originals and translated texts. Additionally, the papers in the volume discuss the nature of cohesion and coherence with implications for human and machine translation.The contributors are experts on discourse phenomena and textuality who address these issues from an empirical perspective. The chapters in this volume are grounded in the latest research making this book useful to both experts of discourse studies and computational linguistics, as well as advanced students with an interest in these disciplines. We hope that this volume will serve as a catalyst to other researchers and will facilitate further advances in the development of cost-effective annotation procedures, the application of statistical techniques for the analysis of linguistic phenomena and the elaboration of new methods for data interpretation in multilingual corpus linguistics and machine translation