MUST publications

Publications 

Penha-Marion, L., Gilquin, G., & Lefer, M.-A. (2024). The effect of directionality on lexico‑syntactic simplification in French>< English student translation. Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings, 60, 153-190.  

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). 

Vaičenonienė, Jurgita. (2023) Besimokančiųjų vertimo studentų tekstynas MUST-LT: kolokacijų vertimo atvejo analizė. Studies about languages, no. 42, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.1.42.33269. 

The translation of collocations is an under-researched topic in the field of Translation Studies; more attention is given to professional translator output research, while the texts of trainee translators have not been extensively studied so far. On the other hand, as Granger and Lefer (2018) maintain, the analysis of the work of trainee translators can provide useful knowledge for both pedagogical and research purposes. The aim of this article is to present an international Multilingual Student Translation corpus project to Lithuanian researchers and show the application possibilities of the MUST-LT sub-corpus compiled within the project framework. A case study of collocation translation in the English-to-Lithuanian MUST-LT sub-corpus (46299 words) is presented. 6 collocations (192 translations) are analyzed, considering if their translation (1) may or (2) may not be word for word due to the context, habitual Lithuanian usage, or (3) cross-lingual differences. The results have shown that English interference and neutralization of stylistic expression occur in collocations for which word-for-word translation should not be applied; student translation decisions are less successful compared to collocations which may be translated literally. Application of trainee translator output can be useful for developing translation studies-oriented exercises, curricula, or translation research in general. 

Resource books 

Kovalevskaitė, J., Rimkutė, E., & Vaičenonienė, J. (2022). Lietuvių kalbos kolokacijos: vartojimas, mokymas(is) ir vertimas: mokomoji priemonė. Kaunas:  Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas. https://doi.org/10.7220/9786094675249 

The second part of the resource book, where MUST data is used is divided into four chapters: the first discusses cross-cultural differences in linguistic expression and the concept of equivalence; the second presents collocations as a unit of translation; the third analyses the problems of translating collocations; and the fourth focuses on collocations that reflect metaphorical expression. Each chapter provides the basic terminology and theoretical material needed to identify and understand collocations as a translation phenomenon, while three types of practical exercises - warm-up, self-test and independent work - are designed to develop collocation translation skills. The warm-up exercises at the beginning of the chapters will help students to familiarize themselves with the topic and to gain a deeper understanding of it. The interactive self-test exercises after the theoretical overview will help students to consolidate the theory and apply it to identifying and translating collocations. Each interactive exercise is accompanied by possible answers or information on where to find them. The third type of exercises is for independent work. Answers can be checked in monolingual or bilingual dictionaries or are discussion-based. There are also additional readings at the end of each chapter. 

Collocations are seen in this part in a broad sense as combinations of words used together, which can be frequent, rare, stylistically marked, metaphorical; these qualities can intertwine and converge in the same compound, and, which is particularly important to note in translation, may or may not coincide with the linguistic expression of the target language. English has been chosen as a reference language to illustrate the discussion on cross-cultural differences in expression and the translation features of collocations, but the exercises can easily be adapted to other languages and can be completed and edited using contextual examples from openly available sources (e.g. open access resources stored in the CLARIN ERIC repositories). 

To show the widest possible context for the translation of collocations and to demonstrate the application of corpora in developing exercises for trainee translators, data from MUST-LT corpus, among other resources, was used. Examples and exercises were developed using the following texts in the MUST corpus database: 

- Lancaster J. 2015: Pure Hawaiian. National Geographic (2). 

- McGiffin J. 2008: Murder by Art. Cambridge English Readers. 

- Donald Trump´s Congress speech. 2017. CNN. 

- Zacharek St. 2018: Truth in the Post-Truth Era. Time (08 6-13), p. 99. 

The tasks mostly ask for translation from English into Lithuanian, but some examples illustrate the reverse direction of translation to show the problematic nature of translating collocations into a language other than the mother tongue. The examples of trainee translations are discussed from a descriptive point of view, i.e. rather than criticizing or judging what is right or wrong, the aim is to describe the situation from an observer's point of view, looking at translation as the result of a process influenced by external and internal factors. From a functional point of view, it seeks to understand the possible reasons that have led to one translation decision or another, and to show how the justification and final expression of the translation strategies used depends on the addressee, the purpose of the translation and other circumstances. 

Presentations 

Prinzie, Thomas (2024). The effect of schematic network structure on translation choices and their variability. Paper presented at the Cog Ling Days (Benecla), University of Antwerp (Antwerp, Belgium). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/296930

Bodart, Romane & Marie-Aude Lefer (2023). Errors in student translation and post-editing: Same or different? Paper presented at UCCTS (Poznan, Poland). https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal:278076 

Prinzie, Thomas (2023). Cognitive and linguistic factors influencing the French translation of English noun sequences: evidence from a multiple translation corpus. Paper presented at the Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies Conference UCCTS), Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznan, Poland). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/296923  

Prinzie, Thomas (2023). Variability of multiple translations as evidence for cognitive and linguistic factors underlying translator decisions. Paper presented at the 16th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC), Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/296925  

Vaičenonienė, J. (2023). Besimokančiųjų vertimo studentų tekstynas MUST-LT: kolokacijų vertimo atvejo analizė. Presented at the conference "Sustainable multilingualism 2023: the 7th international conference". https://doi.org/10.7220/9786094675720