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

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

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

Laughing one's head off in Spanish subtitles: a corpus-based study on diatopic variation and its consequences for translation

Looking for phraseological information is common practice among translators. When rendering idioms, information is mostly needed to find the appropriate equivalent, but, also, to check usage and diasystemic restrictions. One of the most complex issues in this respect is diatopic variation. English and Spanish are transnational languages that are spoken in several countries around the globe. Crossvariety differences as regards idiomaticity range from the actual choice of phraseological units, to different lexical or grammatical variants, usage preferences and differential distribution. In this respect, translators are severely underequipped as regards information found in dictionaries. While some diatopic marks are generally used to indicate geographical restrictions, not all idioms are clearly identified and very little information is provided about preferences and/or crucial differences that occur when the same idiom is used in various national varieties. In translation, source language textemes usually turn into target language repertoremes, i.e. established units within the target system. Toury’s law of growing standardisation helps explaining why translated texts tend to be more simple, conventional and prototypical than non-translated texts, among other characteristic features. Provided a substantial part of translational Spanish is composed of textual repertoremes, any source textemes are bound to be ‘dissolved’ into typical ways of expressing in ‘standard’ Spanish. This means filtering source idiomatic diatopy through the ‘neutral, standard sieve’. This paper delves into the rendering into Spanish of the English idiom to laugh one’s head off. After a cursory look at the notions of transnational and translational Spanish(es) in Section 2, Section 3 analyses the translation strategies deployed in a giga-token parallel subcorpus of Spanish-English subtitles. In Section 4, dictionary and textual equivalents retrieved from the parallel corpus are studied against the background of two sets of synonymous idioms for ‘laughing out loud’ in 19 giga-token comparable subcorpora of Spanish national varieties. Corpas Pastor’s (2015) corpus-based research protocol will be adopted in order to uncover varietal differences, detect diatopic configurations and derive consequences for contrastive studies and translation, as summarised in Section 5. This is the first study, to the best of our knowledge, investigating the translation of to laugh one’s head off and also analysing the Spanish equivalent idioms in national and transnational corpora

Soluciones tecnológicas para intérpretes: el sistema VIP

© 2022 The Author. Published by Facultad de Traducción e Interpretación, Universidad de Valladolid. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.24197/her.23.2021.91-123Interpreting technologies have abruptly entered the profession in recent years. However, technology still remains a relatively marginal topic of academic debate, although interest in developing tailor-made solutions for interpreters has risen sharply. This paper presents the VIP system, one of the research outputs of the homonymous project VIP - Voice-text Integrated system for interPreters, and its continuation (VIP II). More specifically, a technology-based terminology workflow for simultaneous interpretation is presented.This paper has been carried out in the framework of various projects on language technologies applies to interpreting (FFI2016-75831-P, PID 2020-112818GB-I00, UMA18-FEDERJA-067, E3/04/21 and UMACEIATECH-04).Published onlin

Compilación de un corpus ad hoc para la enseñanza de la traducción inversa especializada

© 2001 The Author. Published by Department of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Malaga. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.24310/TRANS.2001.v0i5.2916En este trabajo se exploran las posibilidades presentes y futuras que ofrece la lingüística del corpus para los Estudios de Traducción, con especial referencia a la vertiente pedagógica. En la actualidad, la investigación basada en corpus constituye un componente esencial de los sistemas de traducción automática, los programas de extracción terminológica y conceptual, los estudios contrastivos y la caracterización de la lengua traducida. Los dos tipos de corpus más utilizados para tales fines son los comparables y los paralelos. En este artículo, sin embargo, se parte de un corpus ad hoc de textos originales comparables en calidad de macrofuente de documentación para la enseñanza y el ejercicio profesional de la traducción inversa especializada.Published onlin