Register-Specific Collocational Constructions in English and Spanish: A Usage-Based Approach

Constructions are usage-based, conventionalised pairings of form and function within a cline of complexity and schematisation. Most research within Construction Grammar has focused on the monolingual description of schematic constructions: Mainly in English, but to a lesser extent in other languages as well. By contrast, very little constructional analyses have been carried out across languages. In this study we will focus on a type of partially substantive construction from the point of view of contrastive analysis and translation which, to the best of our knowledge, is one of the first studies of this kind. The first half of the article lays down the theoretical foundations of the study and introduces Construction Grammar as well as other formalisms used in literature in order to provide a construal account of collocations, a pervasive phenomenon in language. The experimental part describes the case study of V NP collocations with disease/enfermedad in comparable corpora in English and Spanish, both in the general domain and in the specialised medical domain. It is provided a comparative analysis of these constructions across domains and languages in terms of token-type ratio (constructional restriction-rate), lexical function, type of determiner, frequency ranking of the verbal collocate and domain specificity of collocates, among others. New measures to assess construal bondness will be put forward (lexical filledness rate and individual productivity rate) and special attention will be paid to register-dependent equivalent semantic-functional counterparts in English and Spanish and mismatches.Published versio

Translating English verbal collocations into Spanish: On distribution and other relevant differences related to diatopic variation

Language varieties should be taken into account in order to enhance fluency and naturalness of translated texts. In this paper we will examine the collocational verbal range for prima-facie translation equivalents of words like decision and dilemma, which in both languages denote the act or process of reaching a resolution after consideration, resolving a question or deciding something. We will be mainly concerned with diatopic variation in Spanish. To this end, we set out to develop a giga-token corpus-based protocol which includes a detailed and reproducible methodology sufficient to detect collocational peculiarities of transnational languages. To our knowledge, this is one of the first observational studies of this kind. The paper is organised as follows. Section 1 introduces some basic issues about the translation of collocations against the background of languages’ anisomorphism. Section 2 provides a feature characterisation of collocations. Section 3 deals with the choice of corpora, corpus tools, nodes and patterns. Section 4 covers the automatic retrieval of the selected verb + noun (object) collocations in general Spanish and the co-existing national varieties. Special attention is paid to comparative results in terms of similarities and mismatches. Section 5 presents conclusions and outlines avenues of further research.Published versio

All that Glitters is not Gold when Translating Phraseological Units

Invited talk delivered at Machine Translation Summit XIV 2-6 September 2013, Nice, France.Phraseological unit is an umbrella term which covers a wide range of multi-word units (collocations, idioms, proverbs, routine formulae, etc.). Phraseological units (PUs) are pervasive in all languages and exhibit a peculiar combinatorial nature. PUs are usually frequent, cognitively salient, syntactically frozen and/or semantically opaque. Besides, their creative manipulations in discourse can be anything but predictable, straightforward or easy to process. And when it comes to translating, problems multiply exponentially. It goes without saying that cultural differences and linguistic anisomorphisms go hand in hand with issues arising from varying degrees of equivalence at the levels of system and text. No wonder PUs have been considered a pain in the neck within the NLP community. This presentation will focus on contrastive and translational features of phraseological units. It will consist of three parts. As a convenient background, the first part will contrast two similar concepts: multi-word unit (the preferred term within the NLP community) versus phraseological unit (the preferred term in phraseology). The second part will deal with phraseological systems in general, their structure and functioning. Finally, the third part will adopt a contrastive approach, with especial reference to translators’ strategies, procedures and choices. For good or for bad, when it comes to rendering phraseological units, human translation and computer-assisted translation appear to share the same garden path

The EHEA and the Technical Competence: The New Degrees in Translation

El presente trabajo toma como punto de partida la investigación que se describe en Muñoz Ramos (2012). En él haremos una breve síntesis del origen y evolución del EEES hasta llegar a nuestros días y su repercusión en los estudios de Traducción. Daremos cuenta de la imbricación existente entre los principios constitutivos del Proceso de Bolonia y las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación (TIC), que se posicionan como las compañeras idóneas para la consecución de los objetivos de la Declaración de Bolonia. Finalmente, podremos comprobar cómo estos dos puntos convergen en los nuevos grados en Traducción españoles, que se ajustan al EEES y encuentran en las materias de tecnologías de la traducción la piedra angular de su razón de ser.English version of abstract: The present paper takes Muñoz Ramos (2012) as its starting point. In first place, we will provide a brief summary of the EHEA since its beginning until nowadays, including its evolution and consequences within Translation Studies. We will show the connection between the principles of the Bologna Process and the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which are the perfect partner for the achievement of the Bologna Declaration targets. Finally, we will be able to observe the way in which these two points meet in the new Spanish degrees in Translation, according to the EHEA, which have found in translation technologies their cornerstone

Nuevos entornos formativos para la comunicación médico-paciente

El proyecto Tell-me tiene como meta la mejora del acceso a la sanidad en Europa. Para ello propone eliminar barreras multiculturales, como el idioma, con planes de formación lingüística para médicos que trabajen en el extranjero y pacientes que no hablen la lengua del país en el que son atendidos

Automatic speech recognition systems for interpreters: Spoken corpora exploitation by interpreter trainers and trainees

So far spoken corpora do not seem to have attracted enough attention as a documentation resource for interpreters. However, interpreters tend to rely on audiovisual material in the documentation phase to get familiarised with the speaker’s accent, the terminology and the phraseologies used in spoken discourse, and so on. Bendazzoli & Sandrelli (2009) point to the challenges posed by the transcription process itself as one of the main causes for the unbalanced advance between the translation and the interpretation corpus-based studies. In this context, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology appears as a suitable solution to fill in the existing gaps within the field, as well as a powerful resource to support practitioners. This study presents a novel approach which aims to meet the specific needs of both interpreting trainers and trainees by means of ASR technology (Gaber et al, 2020). On the one hand, the outcome of such approach would enable trainees to carry out the preparation and documentation phase relying on spoken speeches in order to create an ad hoc corpus, extract terms and acquire the subject knowledge. This is expected to contribute to reducing the cognitive load during the interpreting process. On the other hand, interpreter trainers could benefit from this approach, as they could easily compare and analyse trainees’ performance against the transcription of the original speech. In order to assess the appropriate ASR tool for a given interpreting job, we will follow a six-step methodology: collection of material, selection of ASR tools, automatic transcription process, assessment of ASR tools, ad hoc corpus compilation, and term extraction process.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Analysis of documentary and terminological needs of doctors and medical translators as a basis for the development of a next-generation multilingual dictionary

The objective of this study is to develop a multilingual lexicographical resource aimed at doctors and medical translators. Due to the fact that these two groups have different needs, current resources are unable to satisfy both equally. Our premise is that it would be possible to design a single adjustable, adaptable and flexible tool which could address their different expectations, needs and preferences. The development of this tool is underpinned by empirical user analysis through an online trilingual survey.This article is the English version of “Análisis de necesidades documentales y terminológicas de médicos y traductores médicos como base para el diseño de un diccionario multilingüe de nueva generación” by Gloria Corpas Pastor & Marina Roldán Juárez. It was not published on the print version of MonTI for reasons of space. The online version of MonTI does not suffer from these limitations, and this is our way of promoting plurilingualism

Aproximación a la variabilidad fraseológica de las lenguas alemana, inglesa y española

Phraseological units, traditionally described by means of different properties, such as idiomaticity, fixedness and non-compositionality, are also subject to variation. Far from coming into conflict with the key phraseological characteristic (fixedness), variation reinforces its identity through various categories consistent across different phraseological types, different registers and different languages. This paper sets out to find a definition of phraseological variation and to establish a general framework of this phenomenon. We distinguish two main categories: variants and modifications and Ilustrate them with German, English and Spanish examples

Análisis de necesidades documentales y terminológicas de médicos y traductores médicos como base para el diseño de un diccionario multilingüe de nueva generación

En el presente trabajo se plantea el diseño de un recurso lexicográfico multilingüe orientado a médicos y traductores médicos. En la actualidad, no existe ningún recurso que satisfaga a ambos colectivos por igual, debido a que estos poseen necesidades muy diferentes. Sin embargo, partimos de la premisa de que se podría crear una herramienta única, modular, adaptable y flexible, que responda a sus diversas expectativas, necesidades y preferencias. Se parte para ello de un análisis de necesidades siguiendo el método empírico de recogida de datos en línea mediante una encuesta trilingüe.The objective of this study is to develop a multilingual lexicographical resource aimed at doctors and medical translators. Due to the fact that these two groups have different needs, current resources are unable to satisfy both equally. Our premise is that it would be possible to design a single adjustable, adaptable and flexible tool which could address their different expectations, needs and preferences. The development of this tool is underpinned by empirical user analysis through an online trilingual survey

Size Matters: A Quantitative Approach to Corpus Representativeness

We should always bear in mind that the assumption of representativeness ‘must be regarded largely as an act of faith’ (Leech 1991: 2), as at present we have no means of ensuring it, or even evaluating it objectively. (Tognini-Bonelli 2001: 57) Corpus Linguistics (CL) has not yet come of age. It does not make any difference whether we consider it a full-fledged linguistic discipline (Tognini-Bonelli 2000: 1) or, else, a set of analytical techniques that can be applied to any discipline (McEnery et al. 2006: 7). The truth is that CL is still striving to solve thorny, central issues such as optimum size, balance and representativeness of corpora (of the language as a whole or of some subset of the language). Corpus-driven/based studies rely on the quality and representativeness of each corpus as their true foundation for producing valid results. This entails deciding on valid external and internal criteria for corpus design and compilation. A basic tenet is that corpus representativeness determines the kinds of research questions that can be addressed and the generalizability of the results obtained (cf. Biber et al. 1988: 246). Unfortunately, faith and beliefs do not seem to ensure quality. In this paper we will attempt to deal with these key questions. Firstly, we will give a brief description of the R&D projects which originally have served as the main framework for this research. Secondly, we will focus on the complex notion of corpus representativeness and ideal size, from both a theoretical and an applied perspective. Finally, we will describe a computer application which has been developed as part of the research. This software will be used to verify whether a sample bilingual comparable corpus could be deemed representative