Moderna Språk

Dealing with Inverse Translation: Word Order in Spanish L1-English L2 Translated Texts

2023-03-14T12:30:11+01:00

The aim of this article is to focus on the arrangement of words in phrase, clause and sentence structures in English discourse and its importance in achieving successful communication, for example, when doing inverse translation. Positioning syntax is considered as a contributing factor in the construction of expression of meaning in coherent and unified pieces of translated discourse. After several years of teaching inverse translation (Spanish-English) to proficient English L2 students, I have observed that for them mastering word order in Spanish L1-English L2 translated texts is extremely challenging and more complex than is often presumed; bringing awareness of this into the classroom is worthwhile. One of the main obstacles students must overcome when producing discourse in English is that of L1 interference; misapplication of the descriptive rules of word order in their own, or any other, language, will lead to stumbling blocks in the process of communication. By providing carefully selected samples of language for analysis, together with clear explanations, this article attempts to offer a practical approach to dealing with this aspect of grammar. For the purposes of illustration, Spanish, the source language in the examples included in the study, has been used for comparative reference.

Functional discourses of contemporary multilingualism in urban texts: A case study of three capital cities: Warsaw, Berlin, and Luxembourg

2023-05-11T18:56:19+02:00

Multilingualism plays an increasingly significant role in the urban landscapes of contemporary cities. A city does not speak just one language; instead, it speaks the languages of its users, i.e. residents, visitors, companies, organisations etc. By producing urban texts, they simultaneously contribute to the communicative community that is also open to the needs and expectations of individuals who remain there only temporarily. From this perspective, a city gradually becomes a linguistic melting pot, in which the linguistic needs of a society are manifested but which also acknowledges and generates these needs. These processes result in the growing scientific interest in different aspects of textualisation of the contemporary urban space. In this paper, we attempt to describe functional discourses in multilingual texts appearing in contemporary public space. The researched corpus comprises urban texts from three European capital cities: Warsaw, Berlin, and Luxembourg. The applied research method is based on the functional discourses and supplemented with the basic criteria of multimodal analysis carried out depending on the language or languages used in the urban text, the genre and multimodal form of the urban text, its content and function, and communicative practice. As a result of combining and interpreting the available typologies of text types, we propose in the theoretical section 10 types of functional discourses. In the analytical part, we relate these discourse types to multilingual urban texts. Thus, we identify and analyse orientation, regulatory, commemorative, commercial, educational, artistic, protest, political, identity and alerting discourses.

A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of hate speech in German and Polish social media posts

2023-03-17T10:50:54+01:00

The present paper investigates linguistic data that include hate speech motivated by the alleged or real ethnic or national identity of its addressee in German and Polish Internet-based communication. Focusing on hate speech on Facebook, this paper contributes to the studies of hate speech (e.g. Meibauer, 2013; Meibauer, 2021) in online communication (e.g. Baider & Constantinou, 2020; He et al., 2021; Founta & Specia, 2021) and, in a more general sense, to the vast area of research on the use of aggressive language. Based on a representative corpus, the predominant categories of user-generated hateful statements are teased out relative to their form and stance by means of critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics tools. In the analytical part, we discuss the discursive practices used in the posts, together with the meanings they communicate, followed by a comparative analysis of their frequencies in comparable corpora. Our findings confirm that hate speech is linguistically conditioned by its socio-cultural context. For instance, our contrastive analysis of German and Polish online data indicates that the two nationalities use different discursive practices to express their aversion to the Other, and that Polish comments are more overtly insulting than German comments.

Efeitos do realce do input no noticing e na aprendizagem da gramática em PLE: um estudo de rastreamento ocular

2023-03-31T09:33:53+02:00

This work aims to investigate the effects of input enhancement vs. input flood on noticing and grammatical development in Chinese learners of Portuguese as a foreign language. Thirty-six participants were divided in two groups: the experimental group (n = 18) performed a reading task with enhanced input and the control group (n = 18) read the same text without enhancement. The target form was the present subjunctive used in three specific contexts. A pretest/ posttest design was used, and four eye tracking measures were selected (first fixation duration, gaze duration, total fixation duration and fixation count). Grammar correction increased significantly in the posttest of both groups. In the unenhanced group (i.e., input flood group) learners’ noticing on the target-form was significantly higher through first fixation duration. Thus, the input enhancement hypothesis (Sharwood Smith, 1991, 1993) was not confirmed, as enhancement did not promote noticing nor a deeper processing of the input. Pedagogical implications of this research are discussed.

A Pan-Hispanic approach to the usage of Anglicisms in the thematic area of sports

2023-03-13T08:14:11+01:00

The influence that English exerts on different languages has been widely examined. Particularly, many studies that have brought the classification of Anglicisms according to thematic fields into focus have shown that, in relation to various languages and varieties, sports is the area in which Anglicisms seem to appear most frequently (Seidel 2010, Andersen 2011). Considering Spanish, when introducing English names of sports, the two main choices are either to adopt/adapt these foreign names or to calque them into the recipient language. This paper aims to clarify which of these two options has been the most successful one and whether diatopic variation plays a part in this respect. To fulfil this goal, a series of equivalent pairs and their variants are looked up in CORPES XXI, and the statistics provided by this corpus in relation to geographical distribution are analysed. Results show that diatopic variation affects disparity in the frequency of use of the different forms of English ball sports names in Spanish.

A case study of delexical nouns in an EFL setting

2023-04-19T09:25:36+02:00

This paper demonstrates the relevance of delexical nouns (way, end, case and point) based on corpus findings, course book analyses and classroom experiments. To this end, first, delexical noun functions and frequencies have been studied in-depth in two large English language corpora: Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC). Additionally, the study reviewed the compound nouns' dictionary meanings. Two coursebooks, namely New English File and Face2Face, have been investigated to determine if delexical nouns are addressed in English language coursebooks to provide ideas to guide the learners in the classroom. Finally, a data-driven learning (DDL) experiment was carried out to assess the participants’ familiarity with the delexical nouns and their collocations. The results of the quantitative analysis from the study demonstrate that delexical nouns are introduced in the course books but are not explicitly explained. Consequently, there are no actual exercises to practise them. The classroom experiment findings reveal the participants’ positive attitude towards how the four delexical nouns, way, end, case and point, were introduced and taught.

Traducción, comparatismo y ética. El problema de las identidades de género en la literatura nigeriana (traducida)

2023-04-11T15:01:46+02:00

In this article, we intend to examine the relationship between ethics, comparative literary and translation studies (Bassnett, 1993; Bassnett & Lefevere, 1992; Berman, 1985 and Venuti, 1995/ 2018). In this sense, we evaluate the theoretical trajectory of two literary figures belonging to different periods, the Nigerian male writer Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) and the Nigerian woman writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977-) in their efforts to deconstruct an image of Africa that is seen embodied in “Colonialist Criticism” (1988) and “The Danger of A Single Story” (2018). In a complementary fashion, we explore the way in which the first generation of African male writers, in which Achebe is registered, and the third generation of contemporary African women writers, to which Adichie is associated, build figures of women and men in the narrative. Finally, we present different perspectives that address the way of ethically translating postcolonial, diasporic and translingual literature in which the works of Achebe and Adichie are framed (Federici & Fortunati, 2019; Ergun, 2021; Tissot, 2017; Vidal Claramonte, 2021).

Zenderowska-Korpus, Grażyna (2020), Phraseme in Textsorten. Landau: Verlag Empirische Pädagogik. (Beiträge zur Fremdsprachenvermittlung, Bd. 27)

2023-02-06T18:17:26+01:00