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108 Jarmo Harri Jantunen
second phase, i.e. the comparison between CNF and MoCTF (comparison 2 in
Figure 1) seeks to uncover the influence of one particular source language on
translated Finnish. If the results of this phase are in line with the first comparison,
we can presume that the source language does not influence on translated
Finnish. On the other hand, if the findings are contradictory, the possibility
of a source language impact cannot be excluded. The last phase (comparison
3), in turn, will complement the picture of translated Finnish by contrasting
two translational corpora. In this phase, the MoCTF will be compared with the
MuCTF to reveal whether the texts translated from one source language only
may show dissimilar patterns from those retrieved from the MuCTF. That is
to say, are translations from one source language different from translations in
general in terms of lexico-grammatical patterning? If the outcome from both
translational subcorpora turns out to be similar, the source language seems to
have no impact on the patterning in translated Finnish, and vice versa.
The idea of investigating the impact of one particular source language is
not unique, however. TPCA procedure can be said to be influenced by two
earlier analyses, namely Laviosa’s and Mauranen’s. First of all, in her studies
on simplification, Laviosa (Laviosa-Braithwaite 1996; Laviosa 1998a) also focuses
on source language influence, although her overall methodology consists
mainly of comparison of non-translational and multi-source-language corpora
(see also Laviosa 1998b). In order to test the SL influence, she compares several
translational subcorpora. Laviosa’s model shows, however, significant differences
compared to the method in the present chapter: while in TPCA, the aim
is to examine the influence of one specific source language by using a monosource-language
corpus, Laviosa approaches the same question either by comparing
language-group-specific SL corpora (e.g. Germanic with Romance languages)
or two-source-language corpus (Italian together with Spanish) with two
mono-source-language corpora (e.g. French) (Laviosa-Braithwaite 1996:125,
129; Laviosa 1998a:105–107). The latter type of comparison is nearly the same
as the analysis performed in the present analysis, the former one, however, can
be problematic, if an attempt is made to obtain information on the influence
of one particular source language, although the lexical and grammatical makeup
of related languages could reflect similar characteristics. However, Laviosa’s
primary aim has been to develop the methodology, and grouping of several
source languages can be seen as a first stage towards an analytic research of SL
impact (personal communication, 2001).
In line with Laviosa, Mauranen (2000) also aims to analyse the source
language variable. However, the analyses clearly differ in terms of comparison
procedure. Whereas Laviosa compares several (groups of) source languages,