Bogusława Whyatt
The ParaTrans research project
While the need to translate across language barriers does not require any justification, the need to reformulate or paraphrase within the same language to overcome communication problems seems less self-evident. For obvious reasons, it is interlingual translation, defined by Jakobson (1959) as ‘translation proper’, which has attracted most interest in Translation Studies. Intralingual translation, by the same token, continues to be more peripheral and empirical research into what makes the activity of paraphrasing similar and different from translating, apart from the obvious choice of language, is hardly available (Zethsen 2009). In this presentation I would like to report on the ParaTrans project, funded by the Polish National Science Centre (UMO–2012/07/E/HS2/00661), in which we investigate how translators at various stages of their expertise make decisions when they translate and paraphrase similar texts. Using a multi-method approach and state-of-the-art translation process research tools, including keystroke-logging, eye-tracking and screen-capture software to collect data on how translators proceed in both tasks, we hope to contribute to our understanding of the human ability to interpret and reformulate meaning within one language and across language barriers.
Dr Małgorzata Kul
Perception of reduced forms in English by non-native users of English
Meanwhile perception of reduced forms by native users of a language has been studied (Warner et al. 2012), insights into perception by non-native speakers are infrequent in comparison. The study aims to fill the gap by testing three hypotheses: (i) gradient reduction in which a segment is reduced (fricativization, assimilation, Yod coalescence) is perceived slower and less accurately than the categorical ones where a segment is not realized (deletion) (Hanique et al. 2013) (ii) within the gradient category, fricativization has lowest accuracy as Polish has both elision and assimilation but no fricativization (Wierzchowska 1980, Sawicka 1995) (iii) subjects with musical background and/or greater exposure to English outside classroom perceive reduced forms better than those without (Pastuszek-Lipińska 2009) .
To this end, a study on 52 Polish learners of English was implemented in E-Prime. 170 stimuli from the Phonologie de l’Anglais Contemporain corpus (Durand and Pukli 2004) were used, 30 per each category (/t, d, h/ deletion, assimilation and Yod coalescence; fricativization had 20 stimuli). Participants’ accuracy and reaction times were assessed by means of two-way Anova (i) (ii), whereas the results of the groups claiming (or not) their exposure and music education, given in a questionnaire, were compared by means of Repeated measures Anova (iii).
In general, the subjects’ alarmingly low accuracy in recognizing the stimuli (31 per cent) suggests considerable processing difficulties. Group differences were not evidenced for the first hypothesis, revealing that categorical reduction failed to be perceived more accurately than the gradient one F(1,4) = 0.001, p < 0.05. Findings for reaction times, however, are not significant, suggesting that the gradient category did not slow down the responses, compared to categorical reduction. As for the second hypothesis, the subjects performed the best with fricativized stimuli which runs counter to the typological differences. Surprisingly, music background did not prove relevant for perception whereas a stay in an English-speaking country had visibly boosted recognition of reduced forms.
References:
Durand, J. and M. Pukli. (2004). How to construct a phonological corpus: PRAAT and the PAC project. Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes (TILV), Vol. 36: 36-46.
Hanique, I., M. Ernestus, and B. Schuppler (2013). Informal speech processes can be categorical in nature, even if they affect many different words. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 133, 1644-1655.
Pastuszek-Lipińska B. (2009). Do you want to pronounce correctly in a foreign language? Start music lessons!. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 125 (4): 2755.
Sawicka, I. (1995). Fonologia [Phonology], in: H. Wróbel (ed.) Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego. Vol. 3. Fonetyka i fonologia. [The grammar of the contemporary Polish language. Vol. 3. Phonetics and phonology.] Kraków: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Języka Polskiego PAN. 105-191.
Warner, Natasha L., D. Brenner, B. V. Tucker, J.-H. Sung, M. Ernestus, M. Simonet and A. Gonzalez (2012) Processing reduced speech across languages and dialects. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 132 (3), 1935.
