Neįprastų kolokacijų vertimas grožinės literatūros kūriniuose : tekstynu paremtas tyrimas

Abstract

The object of the research is unusual collocations in literary texts. The aim is to investigate whether the stylistic markedness of Lithuanian collocations is retained in their English translations and what translation methods are applied. The source of the research is a parallel corpus of Lithuanian– English prose works, consisting of 1,7 million words. The theoretical background of the work is based on the ideas of such scholars as Newmark (1988), Baker (1992), Short (1996), Kenny (2001), and Wales (2011). The method of corpus linguistics allowed us to retrieve 48 unusual collocations and their English translations, representing the work of half of the authors and translators included in the corpus. The stylistic markedness of original and translated collocations was checked against available lexicographical sources, the reference corpora, and the Google search engine. The investigation of the translation of unusual collocations revealed that word-for-word translation which helps to transfer the original effect was applied only for 38% of the data. Mostly, collocations were transformed syntactically, semantically, or both. In this way, the fluency and naturalness of the target text were given priority over the unusual structure and meaning of the original collocation. As a result, only 56% of the translations were also unusual. Certain translators retained the stylistic markedness of the original more than others. Moreover, the same translator applied different translation methods to unusual collocations within the same or across different texts.