Over the past 30 years corpus-based investigations have witnessed unprecedented familiarity among the circles and trends of modern linguistic researchers. The research potentialities are limitless and rather confusing. The applications extremely proliferate every day ranging from language teaching, forensic linguistics, historical studies, psycholinguistics, cross-cultural studies to translational studies. This book chases one particular potentiality of corpus-based studies related to the process of translation within a sort of assessment context.
The challenges are quite many starting with the scarcity of serious corpus-based studies of Arabic and ending with the complex morphological variations between Arabic and English and the way these variations should be addressed within the context of a corpus-based assessment of the translation as a process. Knowing the criss cross nature of translation assessment, the researchers focused on one specific feature to be traced in the source text and the target text(s). This feature scores the rates of lexical loss in both ST and TT to reach a sort of calculation that might measure the size of the gap between the lexicon sizes of both texts.
With the aid of corpus linguistics and stylistics in respect to their meeting area corpus stylistics, the researchers measure the lexicons of three English translations (those of Yusuf, Pickthall and Muhammad) which have shown different degrees of lexical loss in comparison with the original Arabic Quranic text. These degrees go hand in hand with the size of the linguistic repertoire each translator utilizes in his translation to such an extent that it sounds rather promising to regard lexical loss measure as a trustworthy stylistic marker. That is, each translator has his own distinctive rate of lexical loss that might be an idiosyncratic marker of his translational style.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Basic Argument, Aims and Values
- Corpus Linguistics, Stylistics & Translation
- Corpus Linguistics (CL): What is it?
- What Does 'Corpus' Mean?
- The Aims of Corpus Linguistics
- Characteristics of Corpus Linguistics
- Corpora Typology
- General Corpora
- Specialized Corpora
- Learner Corpora
- Pedagogical Corpora
- Opportunistic Corpora
- Monitor Corpora
- Parallel Corpora
- Comparable Corpora
- Virtual \ On-Line Corpora
- Diachronic \ Historical Corpora
- The Potentialities of Corpus-Based Methods
- Concordances
- Frequency Lists
- Keyword Lists
- Collocate Lists
- Dispersion Plots
- Stylistics and Style: Areas of Interest
- Stylistics as an Advanced Level of Practicing Linguistics
- The Need of Stylistics in Analyzing Texts
- Stylistics and Aspects of Style
- Style as Choice
- Style as Deviation
- Style as Recurrence
- Corpus Stylistics
- The Aims of Corpus Stylistics
- Characteristics of Corpus Stylistics
- The Scope of Corpus Stylistics
- Corpus Linguistic Circle: Linguistic Description & Literary Appreciation
- Translation: What is it?
- Theories of Translation
- Philological Theories of Translation
- Linguistic Theories of Translation
- Sociolinguistic Theories of Translation
- Models of Translation
- The Grammatical Model
- The Cultural Model
- The Interpretive Model
- The Text Typological Model
- Translation Assessment of the Models
- Style and Translation
- The Style of Translation
- The Translation of Style
- Stylistic Habits and Rhetorical Choices
- Literary Relevance of Stylistic Habits
- Stylistic Habits and Rhetorical Choices in Translation
- Lexical Loss as a Stylistic Marker
- The Concept of Translation Loss
- Lexical Translation Loss
- Lexical Diversity Measures
- TTR
- GI
- Measuring Style in Translation
- Technical Difficulties in Measuring Style
- Literature Review: Some Issues in Translating the Glorious Qur'an into English
- Lexical Issues
- Syntactic Issues
- Semantic Issues
- Metaphorical Issues
- Elliptical Issues
- Polysemic Issues
- Metonymic Issues
- Corpus Design & Methodology
- Accountability in Designing a Corpus
- Designing the Corpus
- Issues in Corpus Design
- Static vs. Dynamic
- Representativeness & Balance
- Size
- Morphological Typology
- Sampling Methodology
- Corpus Properties
- Corpus Data
- Methods Used in Corpus Analysis
- WordSmith Tools
- Microsoft Office Excel
- WordCounter Tools
- Farasa Tools
- Corpus Analysis Procedures
- Analysis & Results
- TTR Analysis
- GI Analysis
- TTR and GI Analyses of the Arabic Corpus
- TTR Analysis of the Arabic Corpus (before and after using Farasa)
- GI Analysis of the Arabic Corpus (before and after using Farasa)
- TTR and GI Analyses of the English Corpus
- The application of corpus linguistics to translation studies
- The concept and measurement of lexical loss in translation
- The relationship between lexical loss and stylistic features
- The development and application of corpus-based methods for analyzing lexical loss
- A case study examining Arabic-English translation of the Glorious Qur'an
Objectives and Key Themes
This book aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of lexical loss in Arabic-English translation using corpus linguistics methods. The study explores the concept of translation loss, specifically focusing on lexical loss, and examines its impact on the stylistic characteristics of translated texts.
Chapter Summaries
The book begins with an introduction to the topic of lexical loss in translation, outlining the key arguments, aims, and values of the study. It then delves into the theoretical frameworks of corpus linguistics, stylistics, and translation, exploring the methodologies and applications of each in analyzing texts.
Chapter Three focuses on the concept of translation loss, specifically focusing on lexical loss and its significance as a stylistic marker. It introduces various lexical diversity measures such as Type/Token Ratio (TTR) and Guiraud's Index (GI) for quantifying and analyzing lexical loss. The chapter also delves into the technical difficulties in measuring style in translation, highlighting the specific challenges encountered when analyzing translated texts.
Chapter Four outlines the design and methodology of the study, detailing the corpus construction process, sampling techniques, and methods employed for corpus analysis. It discusses the importance of accountability in corpus design, ensuring representativeness and balance in the chosen data. The chapter also describes the specific software and tools used for data analysis, including WordSmith Tools, Microsoft Office Excel, WordCounter Tools, and Farasa tools.
Keywords
The primary keywords and focus topics of this work include corpus linguistics, translation studies, lexical loss, stylistic analysis, Type/Token Ratio (TTR), Guiraud's Index (GI), Arabic-English translation, the Glorious Qur'an, corpus design, methodology, and data analysis.
- Quote paper
- Khalid Shakir Hussein (Author), Abdul-Haq Abdul-Kareem Abdullah Al-Sahlani (Author), 2019, Translation Assessment and Lexical Loss. A Corpus-Based Approach, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/462343
