Problems of corpus linguistics
The use of electronic translation resources in translation. General characteristics of the English definite and indefinite articles. Translation and differences in a language concept. Translation equivalents of the definite article in specific reference.
| Рубрика | Иностранные языки и языкознание |
| Вид | курсовая работа |
| Язык | английский |
| Дата добавления | 13.02.2015 |
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- Table of contents
- Introduction
- 1. Corpus Linguistics
- 1.1 Development of Corpus Linguistics
- 1.2 Main Object of Study in Corpus Linguistics - Corpus
- 1.3 Stages of corpora development
- 1.4 Types of corpora
- 2. Corpora and translation
- 2.1 The use of electronic translation resources in translation industry
- 2.2 Machine translation
- 2.3 Bilingual parallel corpora as a translation resource
- 3. The Use of the Articles
- 3.1 General characteristics of the English definite and indefinite articles
- 3.2 The Articles in Specific Reference
- 3.2.1 Uses of the Definite Article
- 3.2.2 Uses of the Indefinite Article
- 3.3 The Articles in Generic Reference
- 3.3.1 The Generic Use of the Definite Article
- 3.3.2 The Generic Use of the Indefinite Article
- 3.3.3 The Generic Use of the Zero Article
- 4. Translation and Differences in a Language Concept
- 4.1 Equivalence in Translation
- 4.1.1 Types of Equivalence
- 4.2 Non-equivalence
- 4.2.1 Types of Non-Equivalence at Word Level
- 5. Translation Equivalents of the English Articles
- 5.1 The English-Czech Corpus KAИENKA
- 5.2 Methods of Research
- 5.3 Analysis of the Translation Equivalents
- 5.3.1 Translation Equivalents of the Definite Article in Specific Reference
- 5.3.2 Translation Equivalents of the Indefinite Article in Specific and Generic Reference
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Printed Sources
- Electronic Sources
- translation article language english
Introduction
This thesis deals with translation equivalents of English articles into Czech language. It is based on a research on the English-Czech parallel corpus KAИENKA (Korpus anglicko-иeskэ-elektronickэ nбstroj Katedry anglistiky) version 1.0, 1998 created by Ing. Mgr. Jiшн Rambousek and PhDr. Jana Chamonikolasovб from the Department of English and American Studies, the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno. The thesis interconnects linguistics and translation, specifically corpus linguistics, grammar and the problem of non-equivalence in translation.
English and Czech are typologically different languages, which implies that their grammatical systems, apart from other constituents of language, differ to a great extent. Czech language lacks the grammatical category of articles, therefore, no direct translation equivalents of English articles can be found in a dictionary. However, English articles influence the translation into Czech in two aspects. The first aspect is the functional sentence perspective (FSP) introduced by Jan Firbas. This aspect deals with distinguishing between the “new” and the “given” (the terms such as the topic-focus or the theme-rheme respectively are also used). Thus, this aspect deals rather with the influence of articles on a translation rather than finding their translation equivalents. This aspect is dealt with in Ivana Hrщzovбґs B.A. Minor Thesis defended in 2006. The latter aspect is lexical. It is this particular aspect which will be dealt with in this thesis.
Although English articles have no direct equivalents in Czech, there are certain cases where the translation equivalents of the indefinite article correspond with the respective forms of the Czech indefinite pronoun nмjakэ, jakэsi and the definite article is translated into Czech by using the respective forms of the demonstrative pronoun ten. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to verify this assumption and to examine whether any other translation equivalents of articles can be found.
A part of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling called Mowgliґs Brothers comprised in KAИENKA will be examined. Its translation by Miloљ Maixner from 1911, called “Kniha dћunglн” and another translation by Aloys and Hana Skoumalovi from 1965, called “Prvnн kniha dћunglн“ will be searched for direct translation equivalents. Both translations will be compared from the point of view of the direct translation equivalents found. In addition, the instances, where one of the translators used a different translation strategy than a direct translation equivalent, will be compared. The instances from the original text together with their translations will be organized on the basis of Quirkґs classification of the use of articles in specific and generic reference discussed in The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. The nature of the original text must be taken into consideration as it mainly deals with animals and nature, which may condition the frequency of specific and generic reference respectively. Additionally, the text examined represents a rather little sample.Therefore, all the types of specific and generic reference listed by Quirk may be found in the original text, however, probably not all of them will be found in the translations.The original text contains 1548 occurences of the definite article and 494 occurences of the indefinite article (a: 471 occurrences, an: 23 occurrences). Finding these data was enabled by Bonito, a corpus manager. It is a specialized software which enables the user to search the corpus effectively and process the data found.
The theoretical part of this thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter 1 deals with corpus linguistics and its development. Further, it introduces the main object of study of corpus linguistics - a corpus, and the main stages in corpora development and particular types of corpora. It also discusses the possibility of using the Internet as a one large corpus.
Chapter 2 demonstrates how corpora can be exploited by translators. It presents the specific advantages which monolingual and bilingual corpora, respectively, offer. It also introduces the electronic translation tools and several factors that prompted their use among translators as some of these tools function on the principle of a parallel corpus and thus are related the main subjects of this thesis.
Chapter 3 focuses on grammar and serves as a theoretical basis for the practical part. It maps the use of articles in specific and generic reference and demonstrates the use on examples found in the texts comprised in KAИENKA, namely The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, The List of Seven by Mark Frost, Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens, Tess of the dґUrbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence and electronic texts BBG Private: Emerging Markets Report, Private Investorґs Report.
Chapter 4 deals with translation problems which are caused by differences in a language concept. The main distinguishable approaches to translation are discussed and some of the most prominent translation theorists and their concepts of equivalence are presented. It introduces the notion of equivalence and also the problem of non-equivalence.
Chapter 5 constitutes the practical part of the thesis. The translation equivalents found in Mowgliґs Brothers (The Jungle Book) are classified on the basis of the types of specific and generic reference listed in Chapter 3 and presented in the form of tables. A comparison of both translations from the point of view of the translation equivalents found is drawn.
The thesis is provided with a CD KAИENKA and annexed with small subcorpora which provide a certain amount of context for the direct translation equivalents found.
1. Corpus Linguistics
In this chapter, basic information on corpus linguistics will be provided, as well as its object of study, its development and its relation to computer technology which is extensively used in corpus linguistics. The term corpus will be explained as it is central in corpus linguistics and the main stages of corpora development will be introduced. The advantages of machine-readable corpora and the main features of corpus analysis tools that enable the investigation of data contained in a corpus will be presented. Furthermore, different types of corpora with examples will be introduced and also the possibility of using the Internet resources as one large corpus will be discussed. This chapter and the terminology used in it are based mainly on Working with Specialized Language by Lynne Bowker.
1.1 Development of Corpus Linguistics
This section provides a brief introduction into the development of corpus linguistics. It explains the interconnection between corpus linguistics and computational linguistics and also presents the aspects in which both the disciplines differ. In addition, corpus linguistics is defined.
Corpus linguistics is closely related to computational linguistics. In the last decades, the processing of natural language by computers offered great possibilities in the study and analysis of data contained in corpora.
Computers made it possible to get data quickly and easily and also to present the data in a format which enables an effective analysis. Corpus linguistics and computational linguistics are very often seen as overlapping disciplines. It can be said that they are interdependent. Computational linguistics relies on computer-readable linguistic data and corpus linguistics makes extensive use of computer technology when analysing data. The difference between these two disciplines is that the main object of study in corpus linguistics is the data in the corpus, whereas in computational linguistics a corpus as such is used as a resource in solving problems.
The term corpus linguistics refers to a methodology, which is based on examples of real life language use. “It is an empirical approach that involves studying examples of what people have actually said, rather than hypothesizing about what they might or should say.” (Bowker 9) The methodology includes all processes, usage and analysis of written or spoken machine-readable corpora.
In this section, corpus linguistics was defined as an empirical approach or methodology which is based on real life language use. It was explained that corpus linguistics relies on computational linguistics. The computer technology enables displaying the data contained in a corpora in such a format which enables linguists to analyze those data effectively.
1.2 Main Object of Study in Corpus Linguistics - Corpus
In this section, corpus is defined and its relevance to corpus linguistis is introduced. The advantages of electronic corpora over printed ones are introduced, specifically the possibility of using corpus analysis tools. Additionally, the use of corpora in various linguistic disciplines is presented and also its possible use in language teaching and translation.
Corpus is a central term in corpus linguistics, as it serves as the basis for the linguistic research. In the past, the word corpus refered only to printed text. The simplest definition says that a corpus is a body of text. However, corpus linguistics uses a broader definition: “A corpus can be described as a large collection of authentic texts that have been gathered in electronic form according to a specific set of criteria.” (Bowker 9) The electronic form of corpora brings many advantages over the printed corpora. It enables the user to manipulate the data contained in the corpus with special software known as corpus analysis tools such as word list generators which allow the user to perform a statistical analysis of data found in the corpus, e.g. how frequent is a certain word form, how many words are contained in the corpus. Another of these tools called concordancer allows the user to see the word in search in its immediate contexts. The results of the search are displayed in a format known as keyword in context (KWIC). In this format, all the occurences of the word are displayed in the centre of the screen and certain amount of context is displayed on both sides. The concordancers are very flexible because the user can select the context of a word on his own criteria, e.g. count the words on either side.
These tools allow the user to access and display the data at speed and in an efficient manner. “You can use corpus analysis tools to help you find those specific sections of text that are of interest - such as single words or individual lines of text - and this can be done much more quickly than if you were working with printed text.“ (Bowker 10) However, it is a human being who has to perform the analysis of data found in the corpus. Because of the electronic form, it is also possible to easily enrich the corpora with extra information (mark-up or annotation providing information about the texts, authors, speakers) and keep them up-to-date.
Corpora are very popular and useful resource for people who want to learn more about language use. They have been applied in a wide range of disciplines, such as lexicography, sociolinguistic studies, computational linguistics, comparative linguistics, cultural studies, semantics, machine translation, natural language processing, etc. They are used not only in linguistic research but also in translation trainnig and language teaching. Corpora can be used for investigations in both language for general purposes (LGP) and language for special purposes (LSP).
This chapter discussed mainly the electronic corpus and what types of investigations corpus analysis tools allow for. The term corpus used to refer to printed text. Generally, corpus refers to a body of text. However, the development of corpus linguistics prompted a new definition saying that corpus is a large collection of authentic texts in electronic format gathered on the basis of specific criteria. Corpora can be used to make investigations about a given language by experts in the field of linguistics, translation, language teaching and also laymen.
1.3 Stages of corpora development
This chapter introduces particular types and characteristics of electronic corpora which are considered as pillars in corpora development and have inspired other corpora projects.
Collections of text have been used in language study since the Middle Ages. The scholars did not use computers then, however their research methods were very similar to the research methods that corpus linguists use today. The scholars were making lists of all the words in given texts. Moreover, the words were provided in contexts. This method is called concordancing today. The scholars also produced word frequency lists.
The first machine-readable corpus was The Brown Corpus of Standard American English. The corpus consists of one million words of American English texts printed in 1961. The texts were sampled from fifteen different categories. The corpus is still used, although it is considered small and dated. However, it served as inspiration to other corpus projects, such as LOB Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen corpus or Kolhapur Corpus. Much research in corpus linguistics has been based on these corpora, as they were the only easily available machine-readable corpora for a long time.
BoE The Bank of English and BNC The British National Corpus are considered the second generation corpora. Their compilation was prompted especially by lexicographers and their need for larger and up-to-date collections of texts. The BoE at its latest release in 1996 contained 320 million words and is still being augmented. The BNC was released in 1995 and contains about 100 million words. Unlike the BoE, the BNC is not updated anymore. Both of them contain written and spoken material.
This chapter introduced the first generation corpus The Brown Corpus of Standard American English which was the first electronic or machine-readable corpus ever. Though small and dated in comparison with subsequent corpora, it is still used. The second generation corpora Bank of English and British National Corpus are much larger as for the total number of words and contain both written and spoken material. However, British National Corpus has not been augmented since its release in 1995.
1.4 Types of corpora
In this chapter, different types of corpora are introduced and their characteristics is given. Each type of corpora is provided with real examples of corpora. Additionally, the possible research into Internet as one large corpora is discussed.
There are many different kinds of corpora. “There are almost as many different types of corpora as there are types of investigations. Language is so diverse and dynamic that it would be hard to imagine a single corpus that could be used as a representative sample of all language.“ (Bowker 11) Corpora can contain various types of texts - from one language or several languages, transcriptions of spoken language, or samples of a particular variety of language. Corpora also vary in their size and scope.
General reference corpora
A general reference corpora consist of texts that do not belong to a single text type, subject field, or language register and, therefore, can be used to make general observations about a given language. In other words, they can be taken as representative of a given language as a whole. This types of corpora focus on language for general purposes (LGP), usually contain written and spoken material, and a wide range of text types.
Example: BNC The British National Corpus
Special purpose corpora
Special purpose corpora (sometimes called sublanguage corpora) focus on a particular aspect of a language. They can be restricted to the specialized language of a particular subject field, to a specific text type, to a particular language variety or to the language used by members of a certain demographic group. Because of its specialized nature, such corpus cannot be used to make observations about language in general.
Example: COLT The Bergen Corpus of London Teenager Language, Japanese Speech Corpora of Major City Dialects, TRAINS Spoken Dialogue Corpus, Kolhapur Corpus
Written corpora
Written corpora contain texts that have been written, such as reports, business letters, books, editorials, newspaper articles, etc.
Example: WWC Wellington Corpus of Written New Zealand English, Corpus of Estonian Written Texts
Spoken corpora
Spoken corpora consist of transcriptions of spoken material, such as conversations, lectures, broadcasts, etc.
Example: CSPA Corpus of Spoken, Professional America-English, MLTS Multilanguage Telephone Speech Corpus
Monolingual corpora
Monolingual corpora are collections of texts from a single language.
Example: ICE The International Corpus of English, BNC The British National Corpus
Multilingual corpora
Multilingual corpora can be further subdivided into parallel (sometimes called translation) and comparable (sometimes called reference) corpora. Parallel corpora contain texts in two or more languages and are often used in the field of machine translation. Comparable corpora, on the other hand, do not contain translated texts. They are collections of related texts in several languages. These texts are related as to their type, subject, and time frame - they all have the same communicative function.
Example: United Nations Parallel Text Corpus (English, French, Spanish), CRATER Multilingual Aligned Annotated Corpus (English, French, Spanish), English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus
Synchronic corpora
Synchronic corpora present a snapshot of a language use during a limited time frame.
Example: The Complete Corpus of Old English, The Middle English Collection, The Modern English Collection
Diachronic corpora
Diachronic corpora can be used to study how language has evolved over a long period of time.
Example: ИNK Иeskэ nбrodnн korpus (Czech National Corpus), BoE Bank of English
Open corpora
Open corpora (sometimes called monitor corpora) are not finite as to their size. In this type of corpora, new texts are constantly being added, which provides for a broad sample of language. Open corpora are extensively used in lexicographers who need to be able to find out about new words entering a language or changes in meaning of old words.
Example: BoE Bank of English, ИNK Иeskэ nбrodnн korpus (Czech National Corpus)
Closed corpora
Closed corpora do not increase in size once they have reached a certain number of words. Corpora in general very often consist of a finite number of words. The total number of words is determined at the beginning of a corpus-building project.
Example: BNC The British National Corpus
Learner corpora
Learner corpora do not consist of native speaker language. They are produced by learners in different countries and can contribute significantly to the research on second language aquisition.
Example: ICLE The International Corpus of Learner English
Internet
The Internet made it possible to find many collections of texts available in electronic format and, thus, there have been some attempts to use the Internet as corpus. “Language scientists and technologists are increasignly turning to it as a source of language data, because it si so big, because it is the only available source for the type of language they are interested in, or simply because it is free and instantly available.“ (Kilgarriff 1) The texts on the Internet are available either in form of web-pages or on-line newspapers, journals, and books. Although these collections of texts probably cannot be recognized as corpora, corpus linguistics tools and methods can be applied to their analysis. However, linguists suggest that current search engines do not allow thorough and efficient linguistic investigation and also their opinions as to representativeness differ. One of them is that “the web is not representative of anything other than itself, but then nor are other corpora, and more work needs doing on text types.“ (Kilgarriff 1) The Internet is an area which has not yet been explored sufficiently in relation to corpus linguistics research.
In this section, various types of corpora were introduced and real examples of each type were given. The particular types of corpora are suitable only for certain types of investigation as they may be limited by their size, scope, nature, and time frame. Also the Internet has started to gain its importance in corpus linguistics as it can be investigated in the similar way as corpora are. However, in-depth research is necessary to prove its relevance to corpus linguistics. As was mentioned earlier in this text, corpora can be exploited by translators. This possibility is discussed in the following chapter.
2. Corpora and translation
This chapter focuses on corpora use in translation, namely on bilingual parallel corpora as my thesis includes research on KAИENKA, which is an English-Czech parallel corpus. This corpus will be introduced in a more detailed way in the practical part of my thesis. The bilingual parallel corpora are one of the electronic tools that are very often consulted by professional translators, besides being used in linguistic research and language teaching. As the electronic translation tools are often used by both translators and non-translators, I find it convenient to introduce what has caused their increased usage on the translation market and present the main categories of electronic translation tools and types of translations they can be used for. Also some statistic information on the use of corpora among students and professionals in the field of translation and interpreting will be provided.
2.1 The use of electronic translation resources in translation industry
This section presents several factors which prompted the development of electronic translation resources in translation industry and also their increased use by both professional and non-professionals.
The translation market has been largely influenced by globalization. “It is the coming of online translation on the Internet, however, that has brought the most significant changes, with potentially far reaching implications for the future.“ (Hutchins, Machine translation today and tomorrow 2)
Companies that intend to expand and take a stake on the international market need to spread information about their products as quickly as possible and in as many languages as possible. Therefore the demand for translation increased as well as the volume of text to be translated. Moreover, deadlines for translation jobs have grown shorter. New types of text, such as Web pages have emerged and have prompted the development of systems designed specifically for their translation. It was also the enlargment of the European Union which contributed to this phenomenon. As a result, an immense pressure is put on translators nowadays. They have to work more quickly to meet tight deadlines but their work still has to maintain high quality. This is why many translators started to use electronic tools and resources and these are also used in translator training. These tools provide translators access to on-line dictionaries, glossaries, translation memories and corpora. One of the popular electronic resources is also the bilingual parallel corpus. However, even a monolingual corpus can provide valuable translation information as for terminology or style of the translated document. Electronic tools are very often refered to as machine translation, although professionals categorize them differently.
This chapter introduced the three main factors that prompted the increased use of electronic translation resources such as bilingual and monolingual corpora, on-line dictionaries, glossaries, translation memories, etc. These factors are the Internet, globalization and the enlargement of EU.
2.2 Machine translation
This section clarifies the term machine translation which is often used by laymen to refer to the electronic translation tools, and also briefly presents its origin. Additionally its strengths and drawbacks are discussed in relation to various types of texts.
“The term machine translation (MT) refers to computerized systems responsible for the production of translations with or without human assistance.“ (Hutchins, Machine Translation: General Overview 501) The computer-based translation systems are also known under the term computer-aided translation (CAT), however, the terms MT and CAT cannot be used interchangeably, although both help a human translator to perform his/her quality work.
The idea of using computers to translate natural languages was first proposed in the 1940s. The first investigations were begun in the 1950s and translators regarded them with great scepticism as the goal of these investigations was to ensure that the qualtiy of the automatic translation should equal that of the human translators. Nowadays, it is obvious that human revision of machine translation output is necessary, however, the computer-based translation systems are recognized as valuable aids by human translators, because these systems increase translators productivity. This is applicable mainly to the field of technical and scientific translations where a restricted range of vocabulary is involved. There are differences as to the functions of these systems. It is necessary to distinguish between the machine translation and translation tools (CAT).
Machine translation undertakes the whole translation process, but the translated text must necessarily be revised. “Machine translation is demonstrably cost-effective for large scale and/or rapid translation of (boring) technical documentation, (higly repetitive) software localization manuals, and many other situation where the costs of MT plus essential human preparation and revision or the costs of using computerized translation tools (workstations, etc.) are significantly less than those of traditional human translation with no computer aids. By contrast, the human translator is (and will remain) unrivalled for non-repetitive linguistically sophisticated texts (e.g. in literature and law), and even for one-off texts in specific highly-speciialized technical subjects.” (Hutchins, Towards a new vision for MT 2) MT works best where the source language and the target language are typologically similar.
Translation tools include, for example, glossaries and translation memories and serve the professional translator as a support. In its broader sense, the term translation tools includes the use of language corpora or search engines.
This chapter discussed the possible use of machine translation in a translation process. The whole process of translation is undertaken by a machine, however, the output has to be revised by a human translator so that the quality of translation is ensured. Furthermore, machine translation is suitable mainly for technical and scientific translations where it can help the translator to increase his/her productivity as it can process large numbers of documents very rapidly. The difference between MT and CAT was explained. As opposed to MT, CAT ensure a support in the area of terminology and style of a translation. However, the research and the evaluation of data found has to be carried out by the translator.
2.3 Bilingual parallel corpora as a translation resource
This section discusses the use of bilingual parallel corpora as a translation resource and explains how this type of corpus is compiled. The process of alignment which is essential to the compilation of a parallel corpus will be explained. Additionally, problems arising in this process will be presented.
As was mentioned above, bilingual parallel corpora can be exploited to find translation equivalents but also monolingual corpora can provide translators with relevant translation information. “You can use monolingual corpora to help you choose between synonyms, identify usage information and determine what style is appropriate for your translation.“ (Bowker 209)
Billingual parallel corpora are very often used in the field of computer-aided translation. In fact, translation memories function on the principle of a parallel corpus.
The word parallel indicates that the corpus contains text pairs - the original document and its translation. However, these text pairs do not have to be necessarily translations of each other. The corpus can also contain translations of a third text - a translation of a translation. Compilation of a a parallel corpus involves alignment, which is the process of creating links between the text and its translation, or more precisely between the matching segments. Before the process of alignment is possible, it is necessary to prepare the texts. “What usually happens in this stage is that all texts are automatically marked up using a small set of basic tags (to indicate start and end of documents, paragraph boundaries, page breaks, etc.)” (Bowker 100) Finally, sentence boundaries are identified and marked up and the texts are prepared for processing by the alignment programme. The alignment programmes align corresponding paragraphs and very often attempt to align even corresponding sentences. However, the successful alignment is conditioned by a sequential one-to-one correspondence between the originial text and its translation. In this regard, the alignment programme only makes assumptions about the coresspondence. Problems arise in cases where the translator for some reasons omitted certain parts of the original text. The alignment programme then produces mismatches. The development of computer technology will probably soon overcome these problems as the above mentioned translation memories are very often provided with special tools that allow the users to correct the alignments made.
As well as corpus linguistics, parallel corpora are a recent development, so translators and linguists have not been able to exploit their full potential yet. However, as was demonstrated in previous chapters, parallel corpora are widely and successfully being used by linguistic researchers and professional translators. Moreover, parallel corpora are not only used for linguistic research and translation, they can also be used as an aid to language learners, because they provide them with comparison of all the aspects of their mother tongue and the foreign language. According to a survey carried out by MeLLANGE (Multilingual e-Learning in LANGuage Engineering) among 1015 students (26.0%) and professionals (74.0%), 41.8% of the respondents use corpora in their translation practice. As for the type of a corpus, it is the monolingual corpus that is used most frequently with 25.9% of the respondents using corpora of the target language and 22.8% respondents using the corpora of the source language. 18.8% of respondents use parallel corpora, 15.9% domain specific corpora (special purpose corpora), 12.9% comparable corpora and 3.7% general language corpora (general reference corpora). Out of the total number of respondents who do not use corpora, 41.0% stated as a reason that they never heard about them, 21.0% do not have time to build them, 20.2% do not know how to use a concordancer, 7.5% cannot see in corpora any advantage over Google, 6.7% cannot see in corpora any advantage over translation memories and 3.6% did not specify the reason. The results of this survey were first published in June 2005 and updated in March 2006.
This section introduced bilingual parallel corpus as a possible translation tool and also what use translators may find for a monoligual corpus. However, both the types of corpora may be exploited by language learners and also by teachers. The process of alignment which can be defined as creating links between matching segments of original text and its translation. A special programme is used to align the text. However, mismatches may occur if certain parts of original text are omitted in translation as the programme only assumes that given segments of text match. This issue is already being overcome by the development of computer technology. Translation memories are often provided with tools enabling the human translator to subsequently correct the mismatches.
The previous two chapters provided an introduction into corpus linguistics and presented the possibilities that the use of corpora in translation offers, which is relevant to this thesis as the practical part consist in parallel corpus analysis. It also provided some statistic information on the use of corpora among students and professionals in the field of translation and interpreting.The following chapter focuses on grammar, namely the use of articles in English.
3. The Use of the Articles
This chapter presents the use of respective articles in generic and specific reference and serves as a theoretical basis for the practical part of this thesis. Its aim is to introduce the system of articles in English and factors that influence their use. Furthermore, a grammatical survey of particular types of specific reference and generic reference in relation to respective articles will be provided and ways of indicating a particular type of reference will be introduced. The survey of the references and the terminology used is based on The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Randolph Quirk.The particular types of reference are provided with instances from the texts comprised in the parallel bilingual corpus KAИENKA, namely The Jungle Book (JUNGLE) by Rudyard Kipling, The List of Seven (SEVN) by Mark Frost, Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (PCKW) by Charles Dickens, Tess of the dґUrbervilles (TESS) by Thomas Hardy, Lucky Jim (LJIM) by Kingsley Amis, Sons and Lovers (SONS) by D.H. Lawrence and BBG Private: Emerging Markets Report, Private Investorґs Report. The abbreviated forms of titles are adopted from KAИENKA and the numbers of pages refer to the electronic form of texts. In some cases, instances from The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk COM) and A Studentґs Grammar of the English Language (Quirk STU), both by Randolph Quirk, are supplied.
3.1 General characteristics of the English definite and indefinite articles
In this section, the function of articles in the noun phrase will be explained and the factors that delimit the use of respective articles will be introduced. In addition, the possible combinations of noun categories with articles will be presented.
The definite article the and indefinite article a/an and also zero article belong to central determiners.They affect the meaning of nouns in front of which they occur. Thus, a noun phrase can have either definite or indefinite reference depending on the accompanying article. The function of articles entirely depends on the noun that they precede. Usually, articles do not occur with proper nouns, i.e. names of specific places, months, days, festivals, people, etc. However, there are specific categories of proper nouns which occur with the definite article. Quirk terms them descriptive names stating that “not only do they take the article, but they can be analysed, in terms of noun-phrase structure, into head and modifiers”, e.g. “the English Channel” (premodification), “the House of Commons ” (postmodification). (QuirkCOM 295) Descriptive nouns also comprise those nouns occurring without a modification, e.g. the Bible, The Times. However, articles most typically occur with common nouns. In common nouns, the distinction between countable nouns (refering to units of the substance) and uncountable nouns (refering to the substance) is essential for the use of articles as each of these categories of nouns allows only certain type of article to be used in front of a noun. Thus a/an can occur only in front of singular countable nouns, the can occur in front of singular countable nouns, plural countable nouns and uncountable nouns, and zero article with plural countable nouns and uncountable nouns. Articles donґt have gender or special plural forms in English, however, when making choice as to which type of article should be used in front of a noun, it is always necessary to consider to which noun category the noun belongs, and, whether a statement is general or whether hearer is able to identify what is being refered to. There are two types of reference that can be identified in a noun phrase, specific and generic. The former occurs more frequently. In addition, the distribution into number and definiteness is more important for this type of reference.
In this section, articles and their functions in noun phrases were introduced. Articles determine the noun that they precede and have no independent function in a sentence but the determining one. Since articles usually occur with common nouns rather than with proper nouns, it is important to distinguish two categories of common nouns when making choice. A/an can never occur with uncountable nouns as well as with plural countable nouns. The can occur with both categories of common nouns and is not restricted as to number. Zero article occurs with uncountable nouns and can occur with plural countable nouns. The choice is further influenced by the type of reference - specific or generic which are discussed hereafter.
3.2 The Articles in Specific Reference
In this section, the articles in specific reference will be presented. Specific reference will be defined and particular instances which can be identified in the scope of respective articles will be presented.
In case of specific reference, the distinction between definite and indefinite, and between singular and plural, are more important than in generic reference. Also the specific use of articles is much more frequent than the generic as the latter is more or less restricted to general statements.
The following three sub-sections provide information on types of specific reference in the scope of definite and indefinite article.
3.2.1 Uses of the Definite Article
In this sub-section, the use of definite article in specific reference will be discussed and demonstrated on example sentences.The means by which a noun phrase can be marked as definite will be introduced, particular types of specific reference - immediate and larger situation, direct and indirect anaphoric reference, cataphoric reference, sporadic reference - in the scope of definite article will be presented and also the use of the with body parts and the logical use of the will be discussed.
The definite article the in specific reference is typically related to shared knowledge of the world. The indicates the reference to something which can be identified uniquely in the contextual or general knowledge shared by speaker and hearer. However, speaker can only assume that the shared knowledge between him and hearer exists and, therefore, misinterpretations may occur.
The referent, the noun refered to, may be any kind of noun phrase. Furthermore, the referent may be accompanied by premodification or by postmodification, which provides a more precise specification of the referent:
PREMODIFICATION: Yes, that's the d'Urberville nose and chin - a little debased. (TESS 1)
POSTMODIFICATION: She realised the life of the miners, hundreds of them toiling below earth and coming up at evening. (SONS 11)
The types of specific reference that the speaker makes may be categorized in the following way:
Situational reference:immediate situation
The reference of the depends on the specific experience of the speaker and the hearer. In other words, it is derived from the extralinguistic situation. The can be used to refer to the immediate situation or to the larger situation described hereafter. In the immediate situation, the referent is either physically present and visible or is present in the minds of the speaker and the hearer.
“"Here," he said, kneeling down. "There was no rug; the floor was bare."” (SEVN 24)
“Is there nothing to eat in the house?” he asked, insolently, as if to a servant.” (SONS 39)
Situational reference: larger situation (general knowledge)
In contrast to the immediate situation, this type of reference depends on the general knowledge which the speaker and the hearer share rather than on the specific experience:
“Hush! Don't `ee sing so loud, my good man,'said the landlady; in case any member of the Government should be passing, and take away my license.” (TESS 14)
“The chairman felt it his imperative duty to demand of the honourable gentleman, whether he had used the expression which had just escaped him in a common sense.” (PCKW 4)
“So he was always in the town at one place or another, drinking, knocking about with the men he knew.” (SONS 413)
There are certain expressions such as the sun, the moon, the earth, the sky, etc., where the referent is regarded as the only of its kind and the refers to its uniqueness:
“When he was not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate, and went to sleep again; when he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it, and that Bagheera showed him how to do.” (JUNGLE 4)
“Ruthless, intelligent, even brilliant persons. Well placed, enormously rewarded by the world for their skills and achievements.” (SEVN 19)
“The moon was high and magnificent in the August night.” (SONS 24)
“The sea was grey and shaggy and dismal.” (SONS 408)
The use of specific the in larger situation may overlap with the generic use in collective phrases such as the aristocracy, the poor, etc.(which will be discussed in 4.3.1.):
“Oh - nothing, nothing; except chasten yourself with the thought of „how are the mighty fallen.“ (TESS 2)
“Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves; and good luck and strong white teeth go with the noble children, that they may never forget the hungry in this world.” (JUNGLE 1)
“There is no clear dividing line between immediate and larger situations; instead, there is a scale of generality running from the most restricted to the least restricted sphere that can be envisaged: that of the whole universe of human knowledge.” (Quirk COM 267)
Anaphoric reference
Anaphoric reference identifies the referent as unique on the basis of information supplied earlier in the discourse. In other words, the reference can be identified from the context. We may distinguish two kinds of anaphoric reference: direct and indirect.
a) direct
The direct anaphoric reference arises when a relation of coreference exists between two noun phrases. The coreference occurs in a text where the same noun head noun already occured and, thus, the two noun phrase have the same reference. The referent is mentioned directly:
“Presently he was met by an elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune. `Good night t'ee,' said the man with the basket. `Good night, Sir John,' said the parson.” (TESS 1)
b) indirect
Indirect anaphora arises when referent is not mentioned directly but the reference can be retrieved from what has already been mentioned.The reference of the is derived from the extralinguistic situation:
“"You've attempted to publish a work of fiction recently." "What's that got to do with any of this?" "I'm endeavoring to tell you." He smiled again. "The answer is yes." "Hmm. Rough business, the publishing game. Fairly discouraging, I imagine, but then you don't strike me as the easily discouraged sort.” (SEVN 18)
Cataphoric reference
Cataphoric reference is the opposite of anaphoric reference. The reference is identified by the modification which follows the head noun rather than precedes it. However, the use of the in cataphoric reference is restricted to instances where the modification which follows the noun is deliberately used to define the reference uniquely:
“The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting-grounds of his pack or tribe.” (JUNGLE 2)
“ He was not invited to sit down, but stood there, coolly asserting the rights of men and husbands. (SONS 20)
Sporadic reference
The is sometimes used in reference to an institution of human society. The reference is made to an institution existence of which is permanent at various places and times:
“And I wouldn't bother going to the police with all this, because they will think you mad, and word will only filter up to someone who could do you even greater harm.” (SEVN 20)
The in sporadic reference can also be used to refer to media: the radio, the television, the paper,etc.; and to means of transport: the bus, the train, etc.
The “logical” use of the
This term refers to cases where the uniqueness of the referent is determined rather by knowledge of grammar rather than by general knowledge of the world. The uniqueness is conveyed by meaning. These words are postdeterminers and adjectives whose meaning is entirely associated with uniqueness: ordinals such as first: “The first prerequisite of elaborate mental exercise was a full stomach.” (SEVN 25); general ordinals such as next and last: “The killer had left this room within the last ten minutes.” (SEVN 27); also same, only, sole: “Entering the only building to display a light, he heard a scuffling sound, and a wheezy snort that drew him to the entrance of a long library.” (SEVN 29); and superlative adjectives like best and largest: “"It will afford me the greatest pleasure to know you, sir," replied Mr. Winkle.” (PCKW 25)
The use of the with reference to body parts
With reference to parts of the body and following preposition, the is often used instead of possessive pronouns my, your, her, their:
“'Look here, Dixon, you're talking as if you want a bloody good punch on the nose, aren't you?'” (LJIM 28)
The personal pronoun or noun referring to the possessor of the body part may be the object, and the body may be a prepositional complement:
“A python four or five feet long can knock a man down if he hits him fairly in the chest, and Kaa was thirty feet long, as you know.” (JUNGLE 36)
In these instances, it is possible to substitute the for a possesive pronoun, which is, however, regarded as unidiomatic.
In this sub-section, the use of the definite article in specific reference was discussed. The concept of uniqueness is essential to the use of the in specific reference. The specific reference was divided into further sub-types and ways to identify each of the sub-types were provided. First, the immediate and larger situation were contrasted from the point of view of shared knowledge. In the former, the speaker relies on specific knowledge or rather experience that he shares with hearer, whereas in the latter speaker relies on general knowledge that is shared with hearer. There are also certain noun phrases, which can be included into the larger situation, where the is used to identify the referent as unique. In anaphoric reference, direct and indirect anaphora can be distinguished. In general, anaphoric reference identifies the referent as unique on the basis of information that can be retrieved from context. Direct anaphora arises when the relation of coreference exists between two noun phrases. Indirect anaphora arises when the referent is not mentioned directly but can be retreived from extralinguistic situation, from what has already been mentioned. Cataphoric reference is the opposite of anaphoric. It is identified by postmodification which defines the head noun as unique. Sporadic reference is related to institutions of human society that exist permanently at various times and places, and also is related to media and means of transport. The use of the in specific reference is also influenced by grammatical factors and the uniqueness is conveyed by meaning. The with reference to body parts and following prepositions and the use of possesive pronouns in reference with body parts can be interchangeable, however, the is regarded as a more idiomatic option.
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