translating in the 21st century in a 20th century corpus culture randall a. major faculty of...
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Translating in the 21st Century in a 20th Century Corpus Culture
Randall A. MajorFaculty of PhilosophyUniversity of Novi Sad
Two words of thanks
Personal Background
• Translator• Teacher of (future) translators• Interested in Corpus Linguistics
Reflections based on experience
Some (Translator) Frustrations
• The software, often magnificent, is equally often not very user-friendly
User Friendliness?
User Friendliness?
User Friendliness?
User Friendliness?
Some (Translator) Frustrations
• The software, often magnificent, is equally often not very user-friendly
• It seems that sometimes programmers don’t think of the end users and their needs (don’t take into account the specificities of Serbian, for example)
• Little effort has been made to make Serbian itself user-friendly (jeste comes from biti?)
More (Translator) Frustrations
• Based on Fallacies:– It’s enough to be bilingual to be a translator– Everyone in Serbia “speaks English” and therefore
almost anyone can be a translator– Translation is seen as “type this Serbian text out
for me in X language”– “We have enormous lexical resources available –
RMS is in 6 volumes (or one big one), and RSANU is nearly finished at volume 20”
Difficulties
• The problem of alphabet(s)• The problem of historical dictionaries vs.
usage dictionaries• The problem of up-to-date dictionaries• The problem of translation dictionaries• Creating a Serbian to English parallel corpus:
what might it mean?
The Problem of Alphabets
• Great advances made possible with the introduction of Unicode
• Serbian is specific – represented in two alphabets
• The characters occupy different spaces in the Unicode map
Unicode addresses for ć and ћ
Unicode addresses for ć and ћ
The Problem of Alphabets
• Great advances made possible with the introduction of Unicode
• Serbian is specific – represented in two alphabets
• The characters occupy different spaces in the Unicode map
• > Many computer tools are unable to cope with the differences (even simple searches, TM, etc.)
The Problem of Historical vs Usage Dictionaries
• The most important dictionaries in Serbian are HISTORICAL and not USAGE dictionaries.
• Flood of new terminology coming from other languages, especially English.• Creation of unnecessary words, false friends (e.g. mobbing
vs. мобинг)
• Changes in meaning over time NOT encapsulated
• Shifts of “primary meaning”
The Case of InačeRMS RSANUPrilog+adverbial Prilog1. na drugi način, drukčije 1. u drukčijem, suprotnom
slučaju, u protivnom2. a. osim toga, pored toga 2. a. posmatrano u celini,
uopšte uzevši b. po drugim osobinama, b. i bez toga, i bez obzira
s drugog gledišta na dati slučaj, ionako c. uostalom c. na drugom mestu, na
drugim mestima 3. u suprotnom slučaju 3. a. obično, redovno, u
drugoj prilici, u drugim prilikama b. po drugom imenu, ili
drukčije 4. na drugi način, drukčije;
različito; suprotno
The Case of Inače
RMS RSANUPrilog+adverbial Prilog1. na drugi način, drukčije 1. u drukčijem, suprotnom
slučaju, u protivnom2. a. osim toga, pored toga 2. a. posmatrano u celini,
uopšte uzevši b. po drugim osobinama, b. i bez toga, i bez obziras drugog gledišta na dati slučaj, ionako c. uostalom c. na drugom mestu, na drugim mestima
3. u suprotnom slučaju 3. a. obično, redovno, u drugoj prilici, u drugim prilikamab. po drugom imenu, ili drukčije 4. na drugi način, drukčije; različito; suprotno
The Case of Inače
RMS RSANUPrilog+adverbial Prilog1. na drugi način, drukčije 1. u drukčijem, suprotnom
slučaju, u protivnom2. a. osim toga, pored toga 2. a. posmatrano u celini,
uopšte uzevši b. po drugim osobinama, b. i bez toga, i bez obziras drugog gledišta na dati slučaj, ionako c. uostalom c. na drugom mestu, na drugim mestima
3. u suprotnom slučaju 3. a. obično, redovno, u drugoj prilici, u drugim prilikamab. po drugom imenu, ili drukčije 4. na drugi način, drukčije; različito; suprotno
The Case of Inače
RMS RSANUPrilog+adverbial Prilog1. na drugi način, drukčije 1. u drukčijem, suprotnom
slučaju, u protivnom2. a. osim toga, pored toga 2. a. posmatrano u celini,
uopšte uzevši b. po drugim osobinama, b. i bez toga, i bez obziras drugog gledišta na dati slučaj, ionako c. uostalom c. na drugom mestu, na drugim mestima
3. u suprotnom slučaju 3. a. obično, redovno, u drugoj prilici, u drugim prilikamab. po drugom imenu, ili drukčije 4. na drugi način, drukčije; različito; suprotno
The problem of up-to-date dictionaries
• Is there an up-to-date, corpus based dictionary of the Serbian language?
• Are the meanings copied from former (historical) dictionaries or derived from usage?
• Learner’s dictionaries, specialized (medical, legal, engineering…) dictionaries, frequency dictionaries, based on a modern corpus?
The problem of translation dictionaries
• If you don’t have a modern, corpus based dictionary, it’s really hard to have an accurate translation dictionary…
The Case of Inače
MB ŽBinače - adverb inače - adverb 1. otherwise 1. otherwise; else2. (+ i) already, anyway, 2. (+ i) anyway
anyhow
Note that there were 20 nuances of meaning given in the Serbian dictionaries
Creating a Serbian to English parallel corpus: what might it mean?
• Work in progress: A Parallel Literary Corpus Serbian into English
• Carefully chosen, representative (important for multi-lingual parallel corpus)
• Modern authors (David Albahari, Ivo Andrić, Vladislav Bajac, Svetislav Basara, Miloš Crnjanski, Danilo Kiš, Svetlana Velmar-Janković, Mirjana Novaković, Vida Ognjenović, Milorad Pavić, Milisav Savić, Slobodan Selenić, Meša Selimović, Srdjan
Valjarević, Milovan Vitezović, etc.), SPiT• “Official” published translations
Benefits?
• To see how native speakers of English experience Serbian words, phrases, syntax, sentence focus, etc.
• To clarify syntactic similarities and differences in the two languages
• To study the possible existence of translationese in terms of phrasing, adverbial usage, tense vs. aspect
Benefits?
• Training of future translators based on actual corpus evidence as opposed to “because I said so…”
• More objective evaluation of translations based on corpus results instead of intuition
• Possible applications in MT…• Possible aid in developing primary meanings
for Serbian words in Serbian monolingual dictionaries
Conclusion
• The national Serbian corpus must have a parallel corpus (if possible a multilingual one)
• The parallel corpus must have a scope beyond literature
• The parallel corpus would benefit everyone – teachers, translators, lexicographers, dictionary users, and so on…
That’s all for now…
Thank you for your attention!