John Benjamins Publishing Company

John Benjamins Publishing Company

This is a contribution from Advances in Corpus-based Contrastive Linguistics. Studies in honour of Stig Johansson. Edited by Karin Aijmer and Bengt Altenberg. © 2013. John Benjamins Publishing Company This electronic file may not be altered in any way. The author(s) of this article is/are permitted to use this PDF file to generate printed copies to be used by way of offprints, for their personal use only. Permission is granted by the publishers to post this file on a closed server which is accessible to members (students and staff) only of the author’s/s’ institute, it is not permitted to post this PDF on the open internet. For any other use of this material prior written permission should be obtained from the publishers or through the Copyright Clearance Center (for USA: www.copyright.com). Please contact [email protected] or consult our website: www.benjamins.com Tables of Contents, abstracts and guidelines are available at www.benjamins.com

A corpus-based analysis of English affixal negation translated into Spanish* Rosa Rabadán and Marlén Izquierdo University of León, Spain

This paper reports on a corpus-based analysis of how English affixal negation is translated into Spanish and the extent to which the use and distribution of the translations differ from those in non-translated Spanish texts. Empirical data for the study are drawn from the ACTRES Parallel Corpus (P-ACTRES http://actres. unileon.es/) and from the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA). The cross-linguistic analysis reveals a fairly large and varied inventory of Spanish translation choices which are then compared with non-translated CREA data. The contrastive procedure includes a verification of target language fit which reveals that differences in translated and non-translated usage are statistically significant. These differences are interpreted qualitatively in terms of translation universals. Keywords: affixal negation, English-Spanish cross-linguistic analysis, P-ACTRES corpus

1. Introduction This paper describes a corpus-based analysis of the distribution of affixal negation in English and Spanish, based on an initial hypothesis that the apparent correspondence between the majority of negative affixes may not actually match their distribution and use in the two languages. Whether this is the case is tested by means of a double contrastive procedure involving original English texts, their translations into Spanish, and the use of affixal negation in Spanish originals. The study aims to determine how English affixal negation is translated into Spanish and to examine whether the translations match the use and distribution of the same forms in original non-translated Spanish. * Research for this article has been undertaken as part of the ACTRES program, funded by the regional government of Castilla y León, Spain [LE025A09], and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and ERDF [FFI 2009-08548].

© 2013. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

58

Rosa Rabadán and Marlén Izquierdo

Although the behaviour and distribution of resources to express negation in English and Spanish are typologically practically the same (Zanuttini 2001), in practice they tend not to be so. From among the various possibilities for conveying negation in the two languages, namely, negative operators such as not/no, negative polarity items like never/nunca, lexical items and affixes, the latter are particularly interesting. While affixal negation is available in both languages, in Spanish it is used more sparingly than in English, other formal options being favoured. In order to identify the Spanish resources used as conveyors of the negative meanings encoded by English affixes, we first explore translated Spanish texts which serve as diagnostic material (Gellerstam 1996, Mauranen 1999 and 2000). The diagnostic data come from the ACTRES Parallel Corpus (P-ACTRES), which contains English source texts and their Spanish target texts.1 The Spanish correspondences are further tested using the CREA (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual) monolingual corpus of original Spanish textsas a source of control data.2 This step is necessary to determine the extent to which translated Spanish and original Spanish differ in the use of the negative resources. The findings of the double comparison are analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively and interpreted in terms of the effectiveness and appropriateness of cross-linguistic correspondences and of universal translation features (Chesterman 2004, Mauranen 2004 and 2007, Tirkkonen-Condit 2002 and 2004, Toury 2004). A review of affixal negation in English and Spanish is presented in Section 2. Section 3 is devoted to the method and procedures used in the study. The empirical data are compared and extensively analyzed in Sections 4 and 5. The conclusions are presented in Section 6. 2. Affixal negation in English and Spanish Before embarking on the search for evidence to test our initial hypothesis that affixal negation is realised differently in English and Spanish, it is necessary to review negative affixal resources in both languages, their similarities and differences and their status as conveyors of negative meanings, the assumption being that different grammatical traditions may have an influence on the actual distribution of negative means of expression. 1. For copyright reasons, P-ACTRES cannot be freely distributed. A sample demonstration is available at (March 2011). 2. The contents and architecture of the CREA corpus are described at (March 2011). The querying interface can be reached at (March 2011).


English affixal negation translated into Spanish

Negative affixes in both English and Spanish convey the negation of a property, entity or action designated by the base. This negation can convey a number of meanings: (i) a property opposite to that stated by the base; (ii) the privation of such an action, entity or property; (iii) the reversal of a previous action or situation; (iv) the removal of any of the above mentioned features (Bauer and Huddleston 2002: 1687–88 and 1711; Real Academia Española de la Lengua 2009: 716–18). Grammatically, these affixes are relevant as productive elements in word formation processes. Not all the affixes in either English or Spanish can be attached indiscriminately to any word, however (Bauer 1983). For example, English –less is class-changing, as it produces adjectives from nouns (use-less, N → Adj), so that the newly-formed word is characterised as lacking the entity designated by the base noun. In the case of prefixes, the word class is maintained, while the meaning is changed. For example, English un- can be attached to different word categories, namely adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and less frequently to nouns. This never implies a change in class but imposes the opposite meaning, as in un-consciously Adv → Adv, or un-certainty N → N. English in- (and variants) behaves in the same way; the prefix respects the word class of the base, which is usually an adjective or a noun as in im-possible Adj → Adj or in-dependence N → N. Spanish in-, assumed equivalent of English in- and a close counterpart of English un-, usually generates antonyms for positive adjectives (in-creíble, un-believable Adj → Adj), so that the word class is kept while the meaning is changed. Likewise, English dis- and Spanish des- combine with nouns (dis-credit, des-crédito), adjectives (dis-loyal, des-leal) and verbs (dis-connect, des-conectar) to refer to the opposite entity, characteristic or action encoded by the base. The basic criteria used to establish affixal status in each of the languages, namely formal analysability, semantic and phonetic transparency, productivity, recurrence and the existence of a generally accepted inventory of negative affixes, together represent yet another shared property. Differences are confined to the make-up of the English and Spanish inventories and to the importance granted to these as conveyors of negative meanings in each of the languages. The present analysis is limited to a well-defined set of English negative affixal resources that will act as input for our cross-linguistic searches, and their standard equivalents in Spanish as evidenced by reference grammars. The problem addressed is defined from the perspective of Spanish as a target language. However, in order to corroborate our working hypothesis, the starting point of our enquiry must necessarily be the source language. A review of the reference literature related to English (Quirk et al. 1985, Biber et al. 1999, Bauer & Huddleston 2002, Carter & McCarthy 2006) reveals agreement on the constituents of the inventory, though not on the importance © 2013. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

59

60 Rosa Rabadán and Marlén Izquierdo

given to negation by means of affixes. The standard repertoire of English negative affixes (Quirk et al. 1985: 1540–41, Bauer & Huddleston 2002: 1687–88 and 1711) includes five core prefixes and one suffix: a-, dis-, in-, non-, un-, and –less. Their meanings are summarized in Table 1. Table 1. Semantics of English negative affixes in standard reference works Meaning(s) Contradiction Contrary Privation Reversal and removal

a-

✓

dis✓ ✓ ✓

in✓

non✓

un-

–less

✓ ✓ ✓

✓

Most authors add three peripheral ones, namely anti-, counter- and contra-, which indicate ‘opposition’ rather than ‘negation’, plus de-, which indicates ‘reversal’ exclusively. These are not considered in this study. The Spanish reference grammar, Real Academia Española de la Lengua (2009) (R.A.E.),3 provides an inventory which is recurrent in standard studies on wordformation (see Table 2). Table 2. Inventory of Spanish negative affixes in standard works Negative affixes

a-

des-

in-

sin

no

R.A.E. 2009 Varela and Martín García 1999 Montero Curiel 1999 García Platero 2006 González Rodríguez 2009

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

A clear difference between the inventories of English and Spanish affixal negation is that Spanish only has prefixes, since there is no suffix able to convey the negative meaning cluster. A distinction is usually made between detachable and integrated prefixes. Sin can be both, and is a homograph (and a homophone as well) of the preposition sin (Eng without). As a detachable prefix it combines with nouns to designate ‘a class of people or objects lacking in something’, e.g. los sin techo, Eng the homeless; cerveza sin alcohol, Eng alcohol-free lager. When integrated with a nominal base, sin displays very limited productivity and often its meaning no longer reflects its morphological structure, maintaining the negative semantics (see 3. The Real Academia Española de la Lengua describes grammatical uses of Spanish in Europe and in America and reflects mainstream analyses of the Spanish language. It is regarded by native users of Spanish as the standard grammar.



Table 3): e.g. sindiós, Eng godless, but sinsabor, Eng distress, unhappy or sad fact. No is included in the general inventory as a detachable prefix meaning ‘contradiction’, i.e. the negation of one of the elements implies that the other is positive, the two thus becoming mutually exclusive, e.g. a non-violent path, Sp una vía no violenta. The R.A.E. grammar (2009: 725) considers it an equivalent to clausal negation, e.g. Sp la elección no es aleatoria, Eng the choice is found to be non-random, a view shared by a number of experts (Sánchez López 1999: 2566, Varela & Martín García 1999: 5021). Table 3. Semantics of Spanish negative affixes in standard works Negative affixes

a-

des-

in-

Contradiction Contrary Privation Reversal and removal

✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

sin

no ✓

✓

The degree of correspondence between the two languages can be traced to the Latin origin of many of the prefixes, and the differences to the fact that English has two additional, very productive, Anglo-Saxon affixes (un- and –less). However, our research question goes beyond a simple comparison of the affixal capabilities of the languages as we are interested in how the negative content conveyed by the English affixes is translated into Spanish. 3. Method and procedure In this section we will discuss the corpora, the use of statistics and the tertium comparationis. 3.1

Corpora

This study is based on the parallel corpus P-ACTRES (Izquierdo et al. 2008) and the monolingual corpus CREA (2008). P-ACTRES contributes empirical information about translation behaviour concerning our chosen negative items, while CREA, which acts as a control corpus for non-translated Spanish, provides empirical information about the actual distribution of the negative resources in Spanish (Section 4.3.1). P-ACTRES is a ready-made parallel corpus of English originals and their translations into Spanish which contains nearly 2.5 million words distributed in © 2013. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

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a number of subcorpora, namely Books, Press (newspapers and magazines) and Miscellanea (see Table 4). Table 4. Contents of the P-ACTRES Parallel Corpus: number of words P-ACTRES

English

Spanish

Total

Books (Fiction and non-fiction) Press (Newspapers and magazines) Miscellanea Total

890,820 235,106 40,178 1,166,104

974,132 264,191 49,026 1,287,349

1,864,952 499,297 89,204 2,453,453

The Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA) is a large monolingual reference corpus sponsored by the Real Academia Española de la Lengua. For this study, the following corpus restricting choices were made: the chronological period was reduced to 2000–2004; the source subcorpora limited to Books, Newspapers, Magazines and Miscellaneous (see Table 5), and the geographical variety restricted to Spain. Table 5. Contents of the 2000–04 CREA-derived monolingual corpus: number of words (March 2011) Registers

Size

Libros (Books: fiction and non-fiction) Prensa (Newspapers and magazines) Miscelánea (Miscellaneous) Total

18,500,104 8,474,325 346,500 27,320,929

3.2

Statistics

The quantitative and qualitative information gathered in this study is verified statistically in order to establish the difference, if any, between the translated and non-translated use of the items previously identified as functional resources to convey negation. To ensure the stringency of the results and the appropriateness of the tests, ‘hypothesis testing for independent proportions’ is applied.4

4. For concepts in inferential statistics, see Lowry (2008). The statistics have been calculated using the software Megastat®: (2 March 2011).


3.3


Tertium comparationis

Due to the nature of the study, the tertium comparationis is translation equivalence. Here this means an inventory of formal means, both lexical and grammatical, that functionally account for the negative meanings conveyed by the English affixes in the target language. The inventory is derived from empirical evidence from a preliminary analysis of the P-ACTRES corpus data (see Section 3.2). The formal patterns offered by the translations were first analysed in detail, so as to determine the degree of delicacy of the labels to be used as a platform of comparison. This means that in Spanish, for example, prepositional phrase (PrepP) covers combinations with different prepositions (sin, a, con, etc. Eng without, to, with), quantifier/ degree includes resources meaning ‘paucal’ (e.g. poco, Eng little) as well as downtoners (e.g. menos, Eng less). Most of the resources apply to nouns and adjectives (less frequently to verbs), but since part-of-speech categorization does not seem to affect meaning transfer, the labels in our tertium comparationis do not take parts of speech into account. Table 6 displays the labels identified as tertium comparationis and which characterize the various translation choices observed. Section 4.2 offers prototypical examples for each of them taken from P-ACTRES. Table 6. Tertium comparationis for English affixal negation translated into Spanish Tertium comparationis

Example

Affixal neg Borrowing Clausal neg Lexical neg No + (positive) lexical item Ø Paraphrasing Positive lexical item Prepostional phrase Quantifier/degree

In-correcta < improper Topless < topless No le gusta < dislikes Ignoró < dismissed No adecuados < improper […] Acto seguido < immediately Extraordinariamente < unusually Con crueldad < Unkindly Escasa (Eng scant) actividad < inactivity

4. The study The contrastive study follows the four-tier procedure based on Krzeszowski’s classical stages (1990): (i) selection, (ii) description, (iii) juxtaposition and contrast, and (iv) verification of ‘target language fit’ (Chesterman 2004).


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4.1

Selection

Our selection process commences with an examination of negative affixes in the original English texts and their translations into Spanish. The inventory of English negative affixes (see Section 1.2) is used as querying input to obtain diagnostic data. Next we select what and how to query the monolingual CREA corpus so as to acquire empirical non-translated evidence to verify the ‘target language fit’. 4.1.1 Diagnostic data: The P-ACTRES corpus Our first query, which required substantial exclusion of irrelevant structural combinations (mainly comparisons and items that show strong lexicalization, such as wireless or nevertheless which are no longer negative in meaning), focused on the English suffix –less combined with any noun or adjective. Searching for negative prefixes in P-ACTRES was done using the input patterns un-, in- (including variants il-/ir-/im-), dis-, –less and non- combined with any adjective, noun or adverb. The raw frequencies obtained are recorded in Table 7. The negative prefix a-/an- was not considered for this diagnostic query for a number of reasons. First, the fact that many of the items, in both English and Spanish, are borrowings from the classical languages and are therefore fully lexicalized means that they are best classified as lexical negation, as illustrated in Example (1):

(1) Genetic vestiges of lost mitochondria were first discovered in Entamoeba histolytica, an anaerobic parasite nested among conventional amoebas in the eukaryotic tree. (EKAH1E.s173) Los vestigios genéticos de las mitocondrias perdidas se descubrieron primero en Entamoeba histolytica, un parásito anaeróbico que se sitúa entre las amebas convencionales en el árbol eucariota. (EKAH1S.s165)

Second, this prefix is not particularly favoured as a Spanish translation choice, the only examples being agramatical/Eng ungrammatical (1 case), apátridas/Eng stateless (1 case), asexuado(s)/Eng sexless (2 cases), atemporal/Eng timeless (1 case), and atípico/Eng atypical (3 cases). The third and most important reason is the querying difficulty: our corpora do not offer the possibility to formally distinguish a- (or any other prefix) as meaning ‘negative’ or otherwise. 4.2

Description

According to the data, the negative prefix un- is more productive than the other affixes. Not only is it more frequent, it also combines with various grammatical categories which potentially trigger the use of a wider range of formal resources © 2013. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved


in Spanish. P-ACTRES also reveals a rather large number of examples where negation is conveyed by means of in- and its variants im, il- and ir-. The other affixes, including –less, are considerably less frequent. The corpus reveals a number of formally dissimilar Spanish resources that are available for the translation of these negative contexts (see Table 7). Table 7. English negative affixes and Spanish translations (P-ACTRES) Spanish English affixes translations Un InN AfNeg

%

1,151

51

Dis-

N

%

N

918 79.8

–less %

N

Non %

N

Total %

356 72.5

226 49.3

4

114 23.2

N

%

2.4

2,655 58.7 491 10.8

LNeg

236 10.5

80

6.9

61 13.3

0

–

Prep P

265 11.7

9

0.7

0

–

73 15.9

7

4.2

354

7.8

Parap

174

7.7

26

2.2

2

0.4

52 11.3

8

4.8

262

5.7

Cl Neg

168

7.5

37

3.2

8

1.6

17

3.7

11

6.6

241

5.3

No+pos

73

3.2

8

0.6

0

–

2

0.4

127 76.9

210

4.6

Ø

88

3.9

52

4.5

11

2.2

14

3.0

1

0.6

166

3.6

101

4.5

19

1.6

0

–

12

2.6

3

1.8

135

2.9

Borrow

0

–

0

–

0

–

1

0.2

0

–

1

0.2

Non-T

0

–

0

–

0

–

0

–

4

2.4

4

0.8

Total

2,256 100

491 100

458

100

Q/deg

1,149 100

16 100

451 100

4.2.1 Affixal negation Affixal negation is the prime translation choice in Spanish (58.7%). It ranks first with an outstandingly high frequency in the translations of in- and dis-based negative items (around 75%). Similarly, just over half of all the un-examples have a prefix-based negative equivalent in the target language. Spanish lacks negative suffixes and prefixes convey the negative connotations implied by –less. Apart from this formal difference, all the Spanish prefixes retain the negative meaning of the original affix (see Examples 2 and 3). Minor divergences occur when the Spanish prefixes sub- and extra- are used for translating English un- words. These prefixes seem to add slightly different connotations which displace the negative meaning (see Example 4).

(2) The building, a featureless block of concrete and glass, seems to give off a gas, odourless, colourless, that finds its way into his blood and numbs him. (FCJM1E.s551) El edificio, un bloque de hormigón y cristal desnudos, parece desprender un gas inodoro, incoloro, que se le cuela en la sangre y lo atonta. (FCJM1S.s543)


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(3) You are an insolent, ungrateful little… Eres un niño insolente, desagradecido y…

(FRJK4E.s493) (FRJK4S.s508)

(4) Unofficially it ‘s stronger Extraoficialmente la posición es más dura

(FCJ1E.s236) (FCJ1S.s230)

4.2.2 Lexical negation Expressing negation lexically is the second most frequent solution (10.8%). Rather than affixal negation, the translators usually resort to an affix-free word that carries negative connotations. This is the case of esterilidad/Eng infertility: (5) […] the family would suffer illness, infertility, poverty (RLKE1E.s32) […] la familia padecería enfermedades, esterilidad, pobreza (RLKE1S.s28)

For the translators, most cases of lexical negation imply the use of an opposite of the base to which the prefix or suffix has been attached in English. This solution is particularly frequent when the source item is formed by dis-. Such a negative prefix does exist in Spanish, but according to our data it is infrequent, as it is rarely used in the corpus. Similarly, the CREA frequency word lists reveal a low position for dis- items. 4.2.3 Prepositional Phrase Another frequently used translation solution (7.8%) is the PrepP. The great majority of those analysed in this study are introduced by the preposition sin (Eng without), which carries negative meaning. This pattern is very frequent in the translation of negation expressed by –less and un-: (6) Deconstructionists and postmodernists are faithless Augustinians (ESG1E.s102) Los deconstruccionistas y los posmodernos son agustinianos sin fe (ESG1S.s99)

(7) […] answered Cosey, unaffected, it seemed, by the old man-young girl com(FMT1E.s47) ment […] respondió Cosey, sin que, al parecer, le hubiera afectado el comentario (FMT1S.s49)

In a number of these PrepPs another phrase such as a diferencia de or al contrario que (Eng unlike) carries the negative connotation: (8) […] unlike Atlantis, which was really embarrassing (EMM1E.s25) […] a diferencia de la Atlántida, que fue verdaderamente vergonzoso (EMM1S.s24)



4.2.4 Paraphrasing Paraphrasing is not one of the most common solutions (5.7%), despite the fact that it is quite frequent as a translation of English –less and non- affixes. In the case of –less the use of a paraphrase is no doubt due to the lack of negative suffixes in Spanish, which prompts the use of other formally dissimilar equivalents. Similarly, in the case of non-, which is not a prefix or a word in Spanish, the translators resort to a paraphrase solution:

(9) How did those little creatures transform into not only the hippo and the mole rat but also today ‘s vast panorama of mammals with fur, hooves, and fangs, as well as others that swim hairless through deep oceans – or ride, like me, in a Land Rover across this grassland? (RGR1E.s44)

¿Cómo se transformaron aquellos animalillos en la vasta relación actual de mamíferos con pelo, pezuñas y colmillos, o en nadadores de piel desnuda que surcan los océanos, o en los que, como yo, viajan en Land Rover por esta pradera? (RGR1S.s40)

Irrespective of the English affix, the choice of paraphrase depends on the overall interpretation of the co-text: (10) Jesse crossed and uncrossed his legs Jesse no paraba de cruzar las piernas

(FKO1E.s1234) (FKO1S.s1215)

Spanish no parar de (Eng not stop doing sth) indicates the repetition of an action, with a hint of irritation on the part of the speaker. A particular type of paraphrase that is only found among the translations of the negative affix un- is illustrated in Example (11). It accounts for 4.6% of all the un-derived paraphrases and consists of using a Spanish positive item that is a semantic opposite of the English baseword. (11) But now the door was unlocked Pero ahora la puerta estaba abierta

(FBT1E.s282) (FBT1S.s286)

While this solution might not appear to achieve correspondence, when comparing the expressions of negation in English and Spanish, in fact all the translations found maintain the original semantics. Usually, some item in the surrounding co-text captures the inherent meaning of the original prefix. Positive polarity might be attained through the semantic convergence of the content expressed by the prefix with that of the base, as in the equivalent pattern unlocked/abierta (in Example 11). Other examples include not unusual/habitual and unchained/ liberados. Only in two cases does this solution override the original negative meaning:


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(12) The bland features of Hans Blix became an unlikely fixture on our television (ELM1E.s149) Las suaves facciones de Hans Blix se convirtieron en una imagen habitual de nuestras pantallas de televisión (ELM1S.s150)

Habitual means ‘frequent’, a positive meaning indicating ‘iteration’, a feature which is not conveyed by unlikely. 4.2.5 Clausal negation Clausal negation, with a frequency of 5.3%, ranks fifth as a translation solution for un-, in-, dis- and non- negative prefixes. It occupies second position when the source examples contain –less. This solution involves the use of a negative operator, normally the negative adverb no preceding the main verb: (13) […] scholastics considered God the Father to be incapable of forgiving Judas (ESG1E.s533) […] escolásticos consideraban que Dios Padre no podía perdonar a Judas (ESG1S.s529)

Examples where the main verb is modified by adverbs such as tampoco or jamás (neither and never) are also considered instances of clausal negation, as well as those where the actor is expressed by nadie (nobody, none): (14) […] by the unplayed, untuned harpsichord and the unused rosewood music stands (FMEI1E.s24) […] el clavicémbalo desafinado que nadie tocaba y los insólitos atriles de palisandro (FMEI1S.s24)

The Spanish example requires a full negative and a personal subject (nadie/nobody) to encode the absence of the action implicit in unplayed. 4.2.6 No + (positive) lexical item The corpus brings to light a less common translation practice (4.6%) in which the English affixal negation is rendered by means of Spanish no placed directly in front of a noun or an adjective or, at times, in front of an infinitive. This translation is very frequent when the source item contains the prefix non- and is perhaps favoured by the formal resemblance (see Example 15). It has a 3.4% frequency rate as a translation of un-based negative items, but is rare as a translation of in- and –less, and non-existent as a rendering of dis-. (15) Yet at the non-threatening margins of civility (ETC1E.s328) No obstante, en los márgenes no amenazadores de la urbanidad (ETC1S.s327)



An interesting feature of this solution is that the adverb functions locally in these examples, restricting its negative scope to the following item rather than the clause as a whole, as observed in 4.2.5. As a consequence, the pattern no + positive lexical item is a closer equivalent than clausal negation. 4.2.7 Omission On occasion (3.6%), translators do not provide a translation into Spanish. There can be a number of reasons for this. Two main trends have been observed: (a) the example where affixal negation occurs is left untranslated and (b) only the negative item is ignored. Often, this turns out to be functionally irrelevant, as the omission does not affect the overall meaning of the text: (16) Poppy noticed my uneaten cake Poppy reparó en mi pastel Ø

(FHC1E.s105) (FHC1S.s108)

4.2.8 Quantifier/degree Certain translations convey either quantification or degree. The former is attained by means of the quantifiers poco (and variants) and nada. The negative connotation is kept as these words imply paucal or no quantity. Usually, these quantifiers are followed by the referential equivalent of the word to which the English affix has been attached (see Examples 17 and 18). Quantification can also be expressed lexically (Example 19): (17) I gave a non-committal smile Puse una sonrisa poco comprometedora

(FWM1E.s84) (FWM1S.s85)

(18) […] the wise course for the British presidency is to behave in quite un-Blair(PATG32E.s49) like fashion […] lo más prudente que puede hacer la presidencia británica es no ser nada (PATG32S.s48) blairista (19) She carried out endless tests and fought an ongoing war with the giants of the pesticide industry (EGJBM1E.s460) Llevó a cabo múltiples pruebas y libró una guerra contra los gigantes de la industria de los pesticidas (EGJBM1S.s422)

In addition, some Spanish translations express degree by means of (i) intensifiers, e.g. muy (Eng very); (ii) degree adverbs, e.g. inmensamente (Eng immensely) (see Example 20); (iii) lexical items that express a higher degree of a quality. On the other hand, there are also downtoners, such as al menos (Eng at least), poco (Eng little) or other modifiers that convey a lesser degree, e.g.escasa (Eng scant) (see Example 21).


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(20) One that made them immeasurably powerful Un secreto que les hizo inmensamente poderosos

(FBD1E.s896) (FBD1S.s838)

(21) […] the figure moved away with a shuffling, uncoordinated gait (FHL1E.s725) […] la figura se apartó arrastrando los pies con escasa coordinación (FHL1S.s722)

4.2.9 Borrowing This solution appeared once only in this study in the translation of –less, in topless, a word already accepted as a loanword in the Spanish lexicon. (22) […] and whichever side comes out top in each day’s campaigning will earn their girl a topless appearance in the next day’s Sun (PATG22E.s50) […] y el partido que más destaque en cada día de la campaña contará con una aparición en topless de su joven al día siguiente (PATG22S.s48)

4.2.10 Non-translation Two cases of non-translation, non-refoulement and non-US, borrowed by the translators, also appear. These represent a marginal option (see Table 7). (23) […] it is also possible to circumvent the “non-refoulement” clause by depositing refugees and asylees in so-called safe third countries (EBS1E.s291) […] también es posible burlar la cláusula de “non-refoulement” depositando a los refugiados y asilados en así llamados terceros países seguros (EBS1S.s287)

4.3

Juxtaposition and contrast

Our diagnostic analysis has shown that there is a marked preference for a number of translation solutions, both grammatical and lexical. Among the first, PrepPs are significant. The negative force of this resource rests entirely on the semantics of the preposition in either language (without/sin), which narrows the scope of negation to a local domain. Another common grammatical resource is the general negative operator no, which in some cases conveys clausal negation, deviating from the source text negation which is mostly local, as is commonly the case with affixes. Nevertheless, the Spanish operator no frequently conveys local negation as well (see 4.2.6), which makes the no + positive lexical item pattern a functionally closer Spanish equivalent as it displays greater similarity with regard to both meaning and form. A further grammatical solution in Spanish for meanings conveyed by English affixes is the use of quantifiers or degree adverbs such as poco (Eng little) to encode the lack of, lacking in. A second set of translations rely on lexical resources: affixal negation, lexical negation and paraphrasing. Affixal negation is a central translation option for © 2013. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved


rendering negative meanings. The question arises, however, whether this centrality also applies to non-translated Spanish; this will require verification in CREA, along with the other translational options whose frequency of use is significant (Section 4.4). The variability of lexical negation has prompted a verification stage which is lexis-based, so the results obtained are mainly quantitative. As for paraphrasing, the absence of any regularity whatsoever makes it impossible to identify any grammatical pattern that can serve as input query in CREA for verification of target language fit. The information derived from the descriptive stage is qualitative: there are two main (though not unique) paraphrasing strategies: (i) interpretation, i.e. an explanation of the translator’s reading that may include negative elements, and (ii) some type of free transposition, i.e. total or partial transfer of the negative meaning to other parts of speech (Vinay & Darbelnet 1977) (see Example 24). Certain semantic changes have been observed when this strategy is applied (see Example 15). (24) Not sexless, because he was leanly handsome enough, H-D, and sure of himself (FBW1E.s310) No le faltaba atractivo sexual, porque era guapo, dentro de su delgadez, y además seguro de sí mismo (FBW1S.s308)

Negative –less corresponds to faltaba (lacking in) in the Spanish translation. Atractivo (attractive) adds further positive characterization which cannot be derived from the original English text. Of the two remaining solutions, borrowing, in this analytical context, belongs rather in the realm of lexical negation since the borrowed items have been used as units, and there is no evidence that these non-translated items (e.g. topless) have combined with the affixal capabilities of Spanish. Omission (Ø) resists any interpretation other than functionally redundant and, for obvious reasons, will not be considered for target language verification. At this point, we are interested in whether the translations reflect Spanish grammatical usage or rather correspond to translation-induced grammatical features of the ‘third code’ (Frawley 1984), i.e. a separate variety of the target language showing characteristics of the original language that do not usually appear in nontranslated language (Øverås 1998). To make such an assessment, we need to contrast the diagnostic P-ACTRES findings with data from the CREA control corpus so as to obtain empirical evidence that corroborates or falsifies our working hypothesis, namely that the use of affixal negation and other negative resources is distributed differently in translated and non-translated Spanish. To do so, we will start with a quantitative comparison and then proceed to qualitative interpretations.


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5. Control data: The CREA corpus In the selection of the querying elements for CREA to establish significant differences (or otherwise) between translated and original data, two important considerations need to be borne in mind: (i) this study aims to analyse the distribution of formally diverse resources, not particular lexical items, e.g. prepositional phrases, clausal negatives; (ii) when searching for parts of items or combinations of items some (apparently obvious) searches are inefficient, because the querying capabilities of CREA do not match those of P-ACTRES exactly. Hence, depending on the nature of the input resource, one of two different strategies were employed: (i) to search the CREA 10,000-item frequency list for the ten most frequent occurrences of one particular resource in non-translated Spanish,5 e.g. affixed negative items, and use them as querying inputs; (ii) to use P-ACTRES findings as input query in CREA. This second strategy is employed when the first one is either not possible or simply inefficient. For example, searching for the negative pattern sin + N in CREA is out of the question, but using the top ten sin + N combinations yielded by P-ACTRES and running them against the CREA frequency list results in a far more robust set of querying items. However, for some types of search, due to the degree of lexicalization and/or grammaticalization in Spanish, it is recommendable to confine the search in CREA to the ten most frequent P-ACTRES findings, as is the case with No + (positive) lexical item. The frequency list strategy has been applied to affixal, lexical and clausal negation; the top ten diagnostic findings (in one of its variants) have served as querying strategy for the rest. Affixal negation. The CREA 10,000-item frequency list was searched for the ten most frequent affixal negative items in Spanish (see Table 8). The search yielded a population (N) of 5,388 occurrences, which constitute the raw figures of our control data (see Table 9). Table 8. CREA querying items for affixal negation6 CREA order 962. 3238. 3227.

imposible desconocido imprescindible

Absolute freq.

Relative freq.

14,178 4,399 4,418

92.93 28.83 28.95

5. 6. The standard English equivalents listed in the same order are: impossible, unknown, imperative, useless, unable, essential, illegal, incredible, unconscious, invisible.



CREA order 3287. 3796. 3976. 4306. 4343. 5112. 5636.

Absolute freq. inútil incapaz indispensable ilegal increíble inconsciente invisible

4,340 3,729 3,547 3,237 3,208 2,701 2,409

Relative freq. 28.44 24.44 23.25 21.21 21.02 17.70 15.79

Table 9. Control CREA: negative prefixes, quantitative data Query item

Population (N)

imposible desconocido imprescindible inútil incapaz indispensable ilegal increíble inconsciente invisible

1,564 534 839 314 545 284 315 334 376 301

Total

5,388

These data are necessary for the subsequent testing of the statistical significance of the occurrences of affixal negation found in the translated Spanish of P-ACTRES. Lexical negation. Querying for lexical negation was done by identifying lexical negative items in P-ACTRES and using them as input in our search for frequencies in CREA. P-ACTRES yielded 48 entries which were later browsed in CREA. Some of these entries were used recurrently, as for instance carente de + N [Eng lacking (something)], which was the most common of these recurrent items. Interestingly, however, there is no evidence that this item is significantly typical in CREA, which may call its acceptability as a translation solution into question. Another interesting piece of information is that some of the lexical translations convey the opposite (positive) meaning of the original negative item (e.g. puro; pure < sinless). The 48 entries from P-ACTRES were run against the CREA 10,000-frequency list (see Table 10) in order to check their position in non-translated Spanish. Only 21 of these items were represented in CREA, and there is no evidence of any significant typicality for the remaining entries. As before, only the top ten truly negative items were used as querying inputs in CREA (see Table 11). © 2013. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

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Table 10. CREA frequencies for lexical negation7 CREA order 1161. 5303. 7595. 9554. 9002. 8569. 5612. 4546. 9781. 9195. 8720. 4319.

perder malestar implacable impecable idiota faltaban cruel carece anónima anónimo absurda absurdo

Absolute freq.

Relative freq.

11,890 2,601 1,678 1,252 1,345 1,434 2,418 3,044 1,216 1,314 1,403 3,226

77.93 17.04 10.99 8.20 8.81 9.39 15.84 19.95 7.97 8.61 9.19 21.14

Table 11. Control CREA: lexical negation, quantitative data Query item

Population (N)

perder absurdo carece malestar cruel implacable faltaban absurda idiota anónimo Total

1,296 333 353 313 218 147 397 156 73 123 3,409

Prepositional phrase. In order to testthe negative pattern sin + N in non-translated Spanish, CREA was searched for all the combinations found in P-ACTRES. From these a group of 47 different lemmas, including some recurrent ones, were used as input query in CREA. The CREA written sub-corpora did not yield any instances of seven of these combinations (sin guante, sin sanguijuelas, sin fricción [Eng gloveless, leechless, frictionless], among others). The ten most frequent combinations were selected for verification of target language fit, yielding a population of 445 instances. The querying combinations are shown in Table 12. 7. English equivalents are lose, discomfort, relentless, impeccable, idiot, missing, cruel, lack, anonymous (masc. and fem.), absurd (masc. and fem.).



Table 12. Control CREA: Prepositional phrase (sin + N) data8 Query ítem

Population (N)

sin sentido sin fin sin palabras sin nombre sin vida sin limites sin rostro sin esperanza(s) sin piel sin cabeza Total

69 62 60 57 55 54 25 23 22 18 445

Clausal negation. In order to obtain evidence of the relative frequency of clausal negation in non-translated Spanish, the CREA 10,000-item frequency list was queried for high-frequency finite verbal forms (see Table 13). These were combined with the adverb no and used as querying items for clausal negation in CREA. The search yielded 103,403 occurrences (see Table 14). Table 13. CREA frequencies for finite verbal forms9 CREA order 28. 40. 44. 45. 50. 55. 59. 65. 84. 95.

ha son había era está han puede tiene hace dijo

Absolute freq.

Relative freq.

380,339 232,415 223,430 219,933 194,168 169,718 161,219 147,274 114,507 108,471

2493.07 1523.45 1464.55 1441.63 1272.74 1112.47 1056.76 965.36 750.57 711.01

8. English equivalents (of N): sense, end, words, name, life, limits, face, hope, skin, head. 9. English equivalents: has (< haber), are, had, was (for both era < ser and está < estar), have, can, has (< tener), do, say.


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Table 14. Control CREA: clausal negation, quantitative data1011 Query ítem no ha10 no son11 no había no era no está no han no puede no tiene no hace no dijo Total

Population (N) 5,562 9,561 12,221 12,208 9,344 8,911 10,941 10,396 10,973 13,286 103,403

No + (positive) lexical item. The frequency of occurrence of this pattern was also verified in CREA independently of affixal negation. The reason for this is that the (lexical) combinatory range of the separable prefix no appears far more limited and less stable than that of the other Spanish prefixes, being closer to clausal negation than to derivation (see Section 2). The data observed in P-ACTRES indicate that this category ranks as a mid-to-low frequency translation solution in those cases where the English text features non- prefixation (see Section 4.2.6). Because of this limited combinatory range, the querying strategy was to search CREA for the ten most frequent combinations found in the translations. The search yielded 134,027 examples (see Table 15). Quantifier/degree. The diagnostic findings (see Table 7) show that this is a low frequency option restricted to well-delimited combinations of poco (over 90% of all cases) or nada + adjective. Again the querying strategy was to search in CREA for the ten most frequent combinations found in the translations. The search yielded a population of 243 occurrences (see Table 16).

10. Spanish offers two translations for have: haber when it is an auxiliary, tener, if a lexical verb meaning ‘own’. 11. English be has two translations into Spanish: ser and estar. As a general rule, ser indicates ‘existence’ and estar ‘temporary state’.



Table 15. Control CREA: no + (positive) lexical item, quantitative data12 Query item no arios no centrista no anticuada no contiguos no afiliados no alimenticias no aleatoria no conceptual no blancas Total

Population (N) 15,047 15,038 15,001 14,997 14,961 14,937 14,918 14,865 14,263 134,027

Table 16. Control CREA: quantifier/degree, quantitative data13 Query item poco frecuentes poco frecuente poco probable poco habitual poco importante poco eficaz poco inteligente poco desarrollados poco amable poco práctico Total

5.1

Population (N) 63 56 39 24 23 9 8 8 7 6 243

Verification of target language fit

In order to determine whether the frequency of the resources identified as Spanish translations of English affixal negation is the same in translated and non-translated Spanish, two statistical tests known as p-value and z were applied to the diagnostic and control data. The working hypothes was that the distribution of usage in nontranslated language differs from native usage. Therefore, when the two proportions are compared, the p-value is expected to be lower than 0.05, which is the error 12. English equivalents (of Adj): Aryan, centrist, old-fashioned, adjacent, affiliated, nourishing/ nutritious, random, conceptual, white. 13. English equivalents (of Adj): frequent (sing. and pl.), probable, habitual, important, effective, intelligent, developed, pleasant, practical.


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threshold. Calculations for two-tailed p-value yielded países no alineados) abound, the translators show a preference for more conventional formulations in an attempt to standardize the expressive means of translated texts. Clausal negation, however, seems to respond simply (if at all) to a strategy of transfer, whereby grammatical choices reflect as closely as possible those present in the source text. The use of paraphrasing, particularly in –less cases, seems to point towards a difficulty in recognizing Spanish grammatical resources to encode the same meanings, which creates the need for explicitation. Paraphrasing has as its ultimate aim to meet target reader’s expectations by improving information flow in the translated text (Pápai 2004: 144–45). Omission (Ø) is the opposite of paraphrasing and may be explained as a particular case of simplification, as maintained by Tirkkonen-Condit (2004) for lexical items. Simplification refers to the “tendency to simplify the language used in © 2013. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

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translation” (Baker 1996: 181–182). This triggers an added problem in our translated data: shifts in negative scope and meaning, both semantically and pragmatically, which would also imply a certain degree of sanitization. This study is a first attempt to tackle the behaviour of particular negative resources in an English-to-Spanish translation context. The results can be further systematized as prescriptive or descriptive guidelines which might be useful in applied activities, mainly in the areas of foreign language teaching and translation, which share some of the basic characteristics of cross-linguistic communication. However, more finely attuned analyses using other corpora will be needed to corroborate the present results before they can be transferred to applied research.

References Corpora Parallel ACTRES Corpus P-ACTRES. 2008. Real Academia Española de la Lengua. 2008. Banco de datos (CREA) Corpus de referencia del español actual.

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