A syntactic complexity analysis of translational English across genres

IF 1 3区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Across Languages and Cultures Pub Date : 2021-11-16 DOI:10.1556/084.2021.00015

Jiajin Xu, Jialei Li

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引用次数: 3

Abstract

This study compares the syntactic complexity between translational and non-translational English across four genres (i.e. fiction, news, general prose, and academic prose) and examines the connections between various forms and degrees of syntactic complexity measures and explicitation. Fourteen syntactic complexity indices were examined based on a one-million-word translational English corpus (COTE) and a one-million-word non-translational English corpus (i.e. FLOB), respectively. This study shows that syntactic explicitation in translations varies with the formality of discourse. The most significant complexity difference between translational vis-à-vis non-translational English is found in fiction, which is regarded as the major contributor to translational English syntactic complexity. No significant difference in syntactic complexity was observed between the two types of academic English texts. Translational English news and general prose stand between fiction and academic texts. Translational fiction and news are characterised by more phrasal complexity features such as coordinate and complex nominal phrases, and a key indicator of translational English general prose complexity is subordination. The findings of this study will help students of translation to make informed decisions on the arrangement of sentence structures when given texts of different genres.

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跨体裁翻译英语的句法复杂性分析

本研究比较了四种体裁(小说、新闻、普通散文和学术散文)中翻译英语和非翻译英语的句法复杂性，并考察了不同形式和程度的句法复杂性措施和阐释之间的联系。基于100万词的翻译英语语料库(COTE)和100万词的非翻译英语语料库(FLOB)，分别检测了14个句法复杂性指标。本文的研究表明，翻译中的句法表达随语篇形式的不同而不同。翻译英语与-à-vis非翻译英语的句法复杂性差异最显著的是小说，小说被认为是翻译英语句法复杂性的主要来源。两种类型的学术英语语篇在句法复杂程度上没有显著差异。翻译英语新闻和一般散文介于小说和学术文本之间。翻译小说和新闻具有更多的短语复杂性特征，如协调和复杂的名词性短语，而翻译英语一般散文复杂性的一个关键指标是从属关系。本研究的结果将有助于翻译专业的学生在不同体裁的文本中对句子结构的排列做出明智的决定。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Across Languages and Cultures Multiple-

CiteScore

1.70

自引率

14.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： Across Languages and Cultures publishes original articles and reviews on all sub-disciplines of Translation and Interpreting (T/I) Studies: general T/I theory, descriptive T/I studies and applied T/I studies. Special emphasis is laid on the questions of multilingualism, language policy and translation policy. Publications on new research methods and models are encouraged. Publishes book reviews, news, announcements and advertisements.