Translation Universals.pdf - ymerleksi - home

60 Silvia Bernardini and Federico Zanettin
that the type/token ratio in a corpus of translations provides evidence of
simplification if (1) it is lower than that of a corpus of comparable original
texts in the target language, and (2) this difference is greater than that between
the type/token ratio of its source texts and that of a control corpus in the
source language. This implies access to a large quantity and variety of electronic
texts, to be combined in different ways within comparable corpora of different
compositions.
For these reasons, we have decided to set up CEXI as a parallel bidirectional
corpus allowing different combinations of subcorpora, in which
each component can be used as a control for the mirror one.
4. Conclusion
We hope to have shown that corpus-based translation research does not
only involve word counts and software development, even though these are
important aspects of the methodology. The search for norms or universals of
translation through large quantities of texts is certainly favoured by corpus
linguistics techniques, but it seems important not to forget that research based
on specific types of corpora can only give us a partial picture, depending on
what those corpora stand for. Corpora are an invaluable resource for the study
of conventions, norms, and patterns of behaviour in different target cultures.
But designing a translational corpus implies researching the social context(s) in
which translations are produced and interpreted, so as to provide a framework
within which textual and linguistic features of translation can be evaluated.
Extending the interpretation of findings based on a few texts and text
combinations to postulate universal features of translation is likely to be misleading
and counter-productive for the discipline. We can probably subscribe
to de Beaugrande’s (n.d.) claim about language universals, and extend it to
translation universals as well:
To judge from past experience, ‘universals’ tend to be indirectly extrapolated
from particular languages after all, especially English. The latter’s dominance
in linguistic theory can only be effectively transcended by much resolute work
on large corpora in as many languages as possible, each treated on its own
terms.