The effect of directionality on lexico-syntactic simplification in French-English student translation
(2024) Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings — ISBN: [9789027246967], 153-190, published
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- This chapter reports on an exploratory case study designed to investigate lexico-syntactic simplification in French-English translations produced by students in two within-subjects language contact settings: translation from the foreign language (FL) into the first language (L1) (FL-L1 translation) and translation from the L1 into the FL (L1-FL translation). The aim of the study is to determine whether directionality affects student translation production and, if so, how. Lexico-syntactic simplification is operationalised as mean sentence length, root lemma-token ratio, lexical density, and core vocabulary coverage. The results indicate that translation directionality exerts an effect on the distribution of lexical items (lemmas, lexical words, and high-frequency words) in the translations (as compared to their corresponding source texts), with there being more lexical simplification in L1-FL translation than in FL-L1 translation. They reveal, in addition, that student translation production is also impacted by constraints both at the macro level (translation experience) and at the micro level (students’ idiosyncrasies and individual source texts).
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Aguiar De Souza Penha Marion, L., Gilquin, G., & Lefer, M.-A. (2024). The effect of directionality on lexico-syntactic simplification in French-English student translation. In Bertus van Rooy, Haidee Kotze (ed.), Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings (pp. 153-190). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/coll.60.06pen