Abstract
This paper offers a new introduction to the translation network model, a tool conceived to describe human translation in a linguistically adequate way in the field of tense and aspect. After describing the main tenets of the model and discussing its original properties in the light of translation studies, I acknowledge its lack of empirical validation so far. Therefore I turn to a quantitative presentation of the large amounts of syntactically annotated Portuguese corpora publically available at Linguateca in terms of tense and aspect operators, discussing their content and some annotation options (from the underlying PALAVRAS parser developed by Eckhard Bick). A research program for a corpus-based description of Portuguese tense and aspect phenomena is then put forward, with illustration of several different statistical techniques to explore the material, motivating it as the next step to validate the concrete English–Portuguese and Portuguese–English translation networks suggested in my doctoral dissertation of 1996.
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Notes
- 1.
Coercion is how the context forces another interpretation.
- 2.
Andrew Chesterman pointed out that translators are not necessarily target language native speakers, and this remark of course holds only for them. Still, the opposite phenomenon probably occurs when one is translating from one’s mother tongue: one projects into the other language shades and implications which are not necessarily there for a native reader. In any case, and given that my studies so far have concentrated on the first situation, it would be interesting to investigate whether different translation networks are necessary to describe the practices of these two kinds of translators.
- 3.
Namely, a nucleus with a preparatory phase, a culmination phase, and a resulting state.
- 4.
Parsed with Eckhard Bick’s parser, PALAVRAS (Bick 2000), and made available through Linguateca.
- 5.
For the record, here are the queries issued: [pos="V.*"], [func="[IF]MV.*"], [func="FMV.*"], [func="[IF]AUX.*"], and [func="FAUX.*"].
- 6.
a/GER stands for the alternative a plus infinitive, usual in Portugal, or gerund, usual in Brazil.
- 7.
Of course, when the same marker is used for two different purposes, it may not be possible to automatically distinguish which is which, as is the case for the auxiliaries acabar de with an infinitive construction, or ir with a gerund.
- 8.
- 9.
Such as amanhã (‘tomorrow’), no próximo dia 11 (‘next 11’), na próxima semana (‘next week’), num futuro próximo (‘in the near future’), or daqui a dois meses (‘in two months’ time’).
- 10.
Lay the table, recount/tell/count, greet, work, warm up, run, write a book, go round something, hide something, sing the national anthem, wash the car, go through.
- 11.
Fall, enter, go to London, go to the movies, arrive, open the window, fall asleep, break, close, become/remain, grow, cool down.
- 12.
Remember, attain, meet/know, round/circle, know/learn.
- 13.
Be ADJ, be a N, rhyme, resemble, like.
- 14.
Be, see one self, find one self, have.
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Acknowledgements
The writing of this chapter was partially supported by the University of Oslo, and by Linguateca, which over the years has been supported by the Portuguese Government, the European Union, UMIC, FCT, and FCCN. I am most grateful for Janet Pierrehumbert and Andrew Chesterman’s comments; both of them helped considerably in shaping the final version of this chapter, but they cannot be considered responsible for the remaining shortcomings. I also acknowledge the support of the Research Computing Services group at the University of Oslo.
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Santos, D. (2012). The Next Step for the Translation Network. In: Santos, D., Lindén, K., Ng’ang’a, W. (eds) Shall We Play the Festschrift Game?. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30773-7_5
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