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Corpora, universals and interference Anna Mauranen University of Tampere In the quest for translation universals, the status of interference has remained unclear. First, it is often indistinguishable from transfer, which blurs the concept of source language or source text influence on translated text. Second, it has been posited as either contradicting universals (Baker 1993), or as a universal, or a major translation law in itself (Toury 1995). This paper tackles these issues in the light of corpus data from the Corpus of Translated Finnish (CTF). It also offers a methodological path forward to comparing the relative distance of different corpora from each other, which is crucial for testing hypotheses concerning universals of translated language. The method is used for comparing the overall amount of transfer-like features in corpora from individual source languages, as well as from a mixture of several source languages. 1. Introduction Mona Baker’s seminal paper (1993) on translation universals has stirred both controversy and research activity in translation studies. The basic issues concerning the nature, or even the very existence, of universals in translation remains controversial, but Baker’s original paper and a number of others following it have inspired fascinating research into fundamental issues in translation studies. One research project on these lines has been my own (see, e.g. Eskola 2002; Jantunen 2001; Mauranen 1998a, 2000a, Tirkkonen-Condit 2000). In the course of this research, one of the points of departure has been Mona Baker’s definition of translation universals, which runs like this: universal features of translation, that isfeatureswhichtypicallyoccurin translated texts rather than original utterances and which are not the result of interference from specific linguistic systems. (Baker 1993:243)
66 Anna Mauranen The aspect in this definition that has begun to raise queries, particularly since it has come up in my own empirical work as well as that of my students, is the status of interference. Baker’s definition appears to exclude interference, but if we turn to an earlier classic of translation universals (or ‘translation laws’ as he calls them), Gideon Toury, we see that he in fact posits “the law of interference” as a fundamental law of translation (Toury 1995:275): in translation, phenomena pertaining to the make-up of the source text tend to be transferred to the target text. Interference is thus either seen as contradicting universality, as in Baker’s definition, or alternatively a basic manifestation of universality, as in Toury’s. This is an intriguing conflict: are we dealing with different senses of ‘universal’, different levels or kinds of universal, or different understandings of ‘interference’? Or possibly all of these? Toury’s other proposed universal, the law of growing standardisation, has under different guises received plenty of attention in the literature, while interference has remained in the shadow, perhaps in part due to Baker’s formulation. In this paper, I would like to discuss two things: First, what do we understand by interference and in which ways can it be related to universals, and second, can we extract evidence from corpora to study this (and if, so, in which ways)? 2. Interference and its manifestations The classic definition of interference comes from Uriel Weinreich: “those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language” (Weinreich 1953:1). In second language learning, this has been taken to imply that an individual’s first language (L1) necessarily influences his or her second language (L2), and an enormous amount of research has been devoted to describing and explaining the ways in which L1 interferes with L2. In contrast, translation studies, although more rarely referring to Weinreich, seem to have adopted a reverse view: it is the source language (the L2, as it were) that influences the target language (usually the translator’s L1). Recently, some L2 acquisition scholars (papers in Cook 2003a) have been inspired by the implications of the phrase ‘either language’ in Weinreich’s definition, and have started looking into the ways in which second (or third, etc) languages influence the first. This brings L2 acquisition research closer to translation
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Translation Universals
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Translation Universals Do they exis
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Table of contents Introduction 1 I.
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Introduction The search for univers
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Introduction 3 the main methodologi
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Introduction 5 tious corpus would w
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Introduction 7 of several frequent
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Introduction 9 For many, the term u
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Introduction 11 Toury, Gideon (1991
Page 22 and 23: Probabilistic explanations in trans
Page 40 and 41: Beyond the particular* Andrew Chest
Page 42 and 43: Beyond the particular 35 6. A trans
Page 44 and 45: Beyond the particular 37 characteri
Page 46 and 47: Beyond the particular 39 Contributi
Page 48 and 49: Beyond the particular 41 A crucial
Page 50 and 51: Beyond the particular 43 representa
Page 52 and 53: Beyond the particular 45 or unclear
Page 54 and 55: Beyond the particular 47 What we ne
Page 56: Beyond the particular 49 Schulte, R
Page 59 and 60: 52 Silvia Bernardini and Federico Z
Page 74 and 75: Corpora, universals and interferenc
Page 90 and 91: Untypical frequencies in translated
Page 106: Untypical frequencies in translated
Page 109 and 110: 102 Jarmo Harri Jantunen Mauranen (
Page 111 and 112: 104 Jarmo Harri Jantunen 2.2 Lexica
Page 113 and 114: 106 Jarmo Harri Jantunen eighth day
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114 Jarmo Harri Jantunen items comp
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116 Jarmo Harri Jantunen Table 4. T
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118 Jarmo Harri Jantunen translatio
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120 Jarmo Harri Jantunen Table 7. T
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122 Jarmo Harri Jantunen However, t
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124 Jarmo Harri Jantunen 13. The bo
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126 Jarmo Harri Jantunen Mauranen,
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Translation-specific lexicogrammar?
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144 Vilma Pápai It is in the last
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146 Vilma Pápai Table 1. Summary o
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148 Vilma Pápai (Sinclair 1991:13-
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150 Vilma Pápai Table 2. Summary o
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152 Vilma Pápai 4.1.2 Shifts on th
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154 Vilma Pápai part of speech and
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156 Vilma Pápai his former prison
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158 Vilma Pápai Table 4. Frequency
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160 Vilma Pápai In addition, consi
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162 Vilma Pápai PA Porter, A. 1997
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164 Vilma Pápai Ishikawa, Luli (19
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166 Tiina Puurtinen (1996) and Bake
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168 Tiina Puurtinen (1) Hän katsoi
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170 Tiina Puurtinen conditional: jo
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172 Tiina Puurtinen Table 2. Occurr
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174 Tiina Puurtinen (5) Lisko voisi
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176 Tiina Puurtinen Mauranen, Anna
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178 Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit equivale
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180 Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit Table 1.
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182 Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit do not t
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184 Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit Östman,
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What happens to “unique items”
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“Unique items” in learners’ t
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The fate of “The Families of Mede
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Thefateof“TheFamiliesofMedellín
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Author index A Adab 1 Aijmer 131 Al
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Author index 217 Schäffner 1, 38,
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220 Subject index G generalization
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In the BENJAMINS TRANSLATION LIBRAR
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47. SAWYER, David B.: Fundamental A
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