Towards a Methodology for a Corpus
Towards a Methodology for a Corpus-Based
Approach to Translation Evaluation
lynne bowker
University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
RéSUMé
L’évaluation d’un texte traduit est probablement l’une des taches les plus difficiles qui
soit pour le professeur de traduc tion, et il y a peu de chances qu’une formule miracle
simplifie un jour celle-ci. Le présent article laisse toutefois entrevoir un début de solution,
qui consisterait à se servir d’un ? corpus d’évaluation? comme norme de
référence
à laquelle comparer les choix traductionnels des étudiants.
ABSTRACT
Translation evaluation is undoubtedly one of the most difficult tasks facing a translator
trainer. It is unlikely that there will ever be a ready-made formula that will transform this
task into a simple one; however, this article suggests that the task can be made somewhat
easier by using a specially designed Evaluation Corpus that can act as a benchmark
against which translator trainers can compare student translations.
MOTS-CLéS/KEYWORDS
translation evaluation, corpus-based approach, Evaluation Corpus, student translation,
corpus analysis
Introduction
This article aims to present a practical and objective approach to translation evaluation, particularly the evaluation of specialized translations in the context of translator training, based on the use of electronic corpora. In the past, translators and trainers
have had to work with conventional resources (e.g. dictionaries, printed parallel
texts, subject field experts, unverified intuition) which are not always highly conducive to providing the conceptual and linguistic knowledge necessary to objectively
evaluate a translation. Therefore, many translations were assessed in a relative vacuum—a situation that is particularly untenable in a translation classroom, where trainers are responsible not only for grading students‘ work, but perhaps more importantly
for providing useful feedback. It is only relatively recently that advances in
computer technology have resulted in the development of resources and tools, such
as electronic corpora and corpus analysis software, which can be used to facilitate a more practical and objective approach to translation evaluation. The corpus-based approach makes the task of translation evaluation somewhat less difficult by removing
a great deal of the subjectivity, and by providing the translator trainer with improved access to the appropriate conceptual and linguistic information of a specialized subject
field as documented by experts in that field. In short, a specially designed Evaluation Corpus can act as a benchmark against which translator trainers can compare student translations on a number of different levels. By having access to a wide range of authentic and suitable texts, the trainer can verify or correct the students‘ choic es,
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both conceptual and linguistic, and can provide more constructive feedback based
on the evidence (or indeed, on the lack of evidence) in the corpus. Moreover, students benefit more from, and are more receptive to, this type of concrete and objective feedback because they can see for themselves that it is based on corpus evidence and not merely on the subjective opinions or incomplete understanding of the trainer.
A corpus-based approach to translation evaluation has the following characteristics. Firstly, it is based on the analysis of a comparatively large and carefully selected collection of naturally occurring texts that are stored in machine-readable form (i.e.,
a corpus). Secondly, because it analyzes actual patterns of language use in the corpus, it is empirical and therefore objective. Thirdly, the corpus-based approach takes advantage of computational tools and methods for manipulating the corpus, arranging the data in ways that make it possible to spot items and patterns that would be
difficult to identify in other types of resources. An additional advantage of computers is that they provide consistent and reliable analyses (i.e., they do not change their minds or get distracted). Finally, the corpus-based approach combines both quantitative and qualitative techniques; a computer is capable of churning out counts of
linguistic features, but the translator trainer is responsible for exploring and interpreting these and other data in order to learn about patterns of language use.
It is my contention that translation evaluation will benefit from the adoption of
a corpus-based approach. Given that translation evaluation entails making judgements about appropriate language use, it should not rely on intuition, anecdotal evidence or small samples; rather, such studies require empirical analyses of larger bodies of authentic
text, as found in the corpus-based approach. Nevertheless, the corpus-based approach can be seen as complementary to some elements of more traditional approaches;
for example, information provided by subject field experts can be explored
more fully in a corpus, intuition can be verified using a corpus, or terms found in dictionaries or parallel texts can be used as access points into a corpus.
Translation evaluation can take place in many different contexts, but this article focuses on the development of an approach to translation evaluation that can be applied in the context of translator training. In brief, it shows how corpora can be used to help translator trainers who are not subject field experts to identify the conceptual and linguistic information that they need in order to be able to evaluate student translations. As such, it outlines a number of guidelines for helping evaluators to compile and exploit suitable Evaluation Corpora. However, it does not attempt to identify a comprehensive typology of translation errors, nor does it provide specific indications as to how translations should be graded (i.e., there are no discussions along the lines of ?errors of type A should result in the deduction of X number of marks‘). Although it is clearly the case that translator trainers will have to grade at least some of their students‘ translations, the scope of this article is to develop a more
general methodology that translator trainers can adopt in order to equip themselves with the information they need in order to be able to make sound decisions with regard to the seriousness of the errors they encounter.
The article is divided into four main sections. Section 1 briefly outlines some of
the challenges facing translator trainers who need to evaluate student translations in an academic context. Section 2 provides a brief introduction to corpora and corpus analysis tools. Section 3 describes the general design of an Evaluation Corpus. Section 4 provides an example of how an Evaluation Corpus can be constructed and used to help a translator trainer evaluate student translations of a short text on digital versatile discs (DVDs).
1. Challenges Facing Evaluators in an Academic Context
Translation evaluation is of central interest in the context of translator training,
and yet, as observed by Hatim and Mason (1997: 197), it is an area that is underresearched
and under-discussed. One reason for this relative neglect is summarized
by Larose (1998: 163), who notes that the problems associated with the evaluation of translated texts are of cosmic proportions. The main difficulty surrounding translation evaluation is its subjective nature: the notion of quality has very fuzzy and shifting boundaries, so that a translation which is deemed appropriate in one context or
by one evaluator may be deemed unacceptable in other circumstances. As many translation researchers and practitioners have pointed out, the same set of criteria cannot be applied uniformly to all translation activity (e.g. H?nig 1998: 14; Larose 1998: 164).
Translator trainers, who must evaluate translations in an academic context, are
faced with additional challenges. In a professional setting, clients who commission translations are not interested in educating the translator—if the quality of the target text proves to be unacceptable, the commissioners will simply take their business elsewhere. In contrast, a translator trainer has an obligation to help students improve their performance, and this includes providing not only a grade, but more importantly, providing constructive feedback with regard to translation errors or difficulties
(H?nig 1998: 32). To do this, many translator trainers end up relying on personal experience, but this can be problematic. In an ideal world, translator trainers would be equipped with the vast array of knowledge and experience required to allow them to fairly and objectively evaluate their students‘ translations; however, in the real world, even highly experienced translators and trainers regularly find themselves thrown into unfamiliar territory because relatively few of them have the luxury of working only in a narrow field of specialization. For example, McMillan (1987: 89) describes the situation of translators working for the World Bank, who are called upon to handle an immense range of texts, such as reports on town planning in
Brazil or on cardboard manufacturing in Yugoslavia, research papers on East African narcotics, detailed descriptions of contraceptive methods and practices as part of an
in-depth study of the effects of the population explosion on development, etc. Therefore, in order to properly prepare students for entering the translation profession, Fraser (1996: 246) advocates that students need to be exposed to as wide a
range as possible of translation material and text-types. While this is sound advice, it is nevertheless unreasonable to expect a translator trainer to be an expert in all the
subjects that could come up. Naturally, this makes the evaluation of student translations challenging to say the least. Translator trainers therefore require some type of resource that can be used to help them evaluate and provide accurate and objective feedback on student translations in highly specialized subject fields, particularly if
they themselves are not trained experts in these fields. It is my contention that a specially designed Evaluation Corpus can help to meet this need.
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2. Corpora and Corpus Analysis Tools
An electronic corpus is generally understood to be a large collection of machinereadable texts that have been gathered according to specific criteria. In a translation
context, a suitable corpus might be one containing texts that correspond to the intended skopos of the target text (e.g. texts of a specific text type that were published
within a certain time frame and that treat a given topic). In this way, a corpus is
similar to the conventional printed parallel texts1 used by many translators (e.g.
Sch?ffner 1998; Williams 1996); however, an electronic corpus is generally much larger than a printed corpus and it can be processed with the help of computerized
tools known as corpus analysis tools.2 Such tools let users manipulate and display the information contained within a corpus in a variety of useful ways. Most corpus analysis tools contain at least the following two main features: word frequency lists and concordancers.
A word frequency list allows users to discover how many different words are in
the corpus and how often each appears. These two figures are referred to as types and tokens. Take for example the sentence ―I really like translation because I think that translation is really, rea lly interesting.‖ This sentence contains a total of thirteen words; therefore, we could say that it contains thirteen tokens. However, some of the words appear more than once in the sentence (i.e., ?I‘, ?really‘, ?translation‘); therefore, the sentence contains only nine different words, and these are known as types. In a word frequency list, the types are presented in a list and the number of tokens (i.e.,
the number of times that word occurs) is shown beside the type, as illustrated in
table 1. Word frequency lists can also be manipulated in a number of ways. They can be sorted in alphabetical order or in order of ascending or descending frequency. Words belonging to the same lemma (i.e., words which have the same stem and belong to the same major word class, differing only by spelling or inflection) can be
counted together or separately, as can words beginning with upper or lower case letters. Stop lists, which are lists of words to be ignored, can also be used. This could be done, for example, in order to eliminate common function words such as prepositions or conjunctions.
Frequency information can be useful for helping translators decide which term
to use when faced with a number of potential synonyms or translation equivalents.
For instance, this type of data can help them to determine whether a given term is commonly used by experts in the field, or whether it is simply one author‘s idiosyncratic preference.
table 1
An extract from a word frequency list showing types and tokens sorted by frequency.
DVD 765
is 341
will 208
it 177
drive 154
video 126
we 121
have 116
market 100
digital 97
not 89
said 85
consumer 83
PC 82
MPEG 81
player 80
all 79
technology 75
computer 73
chip 71
A concordancer retrieves all the occurrences of a particular search pattern in its immediate contexts and displays these in an easy-to-read format. The most commonly used format is known as a KWIC (key word in context) display which shows
one occurrence of the search pattern per line with the search pattern itself highlighted in the centre of the screen as shown in table 2. The extent of the context on
either side of the search pattern is variable. Moreover, these contexts can be sorted in a variety of ways, such as in order of appearance in the corpus, or alphabetically according to the words preceding or following the search pattern. Concordancers have also become quite flexible, allowing functions such as case-sensitive vs non-case sensitive searches, wildcard searches (e.g. ?play*‘ to retrieve ?play‘, ?played‘, ?player‘,?players‘,?playing‘, ?plays‘, etc.), and searches where another term must appear within a user-specified distance of the search term (e.g. contexts where ?play‘ appears within five words of ?DVD‘).
table 2
An extract from a KWIC display of the results of a query on the term ‘player’. atsushita‘s slick, portable DVD player with a color LCD and To
ndows Explorer, but their movie player software refused to pla
ndows NT compatibility. The DVD player software in all these k
ers with a ―record‖ button. The player will not even have the
o three years,‖ he says. Such a player would have a display ab
t‘s eye, Wood said. A Super VCD player is believed to improve
In translation, the main advantage afforded by concordancing tools is that they
allow translators to see terms in a variety of contexts simultaneously, which in turn allows them to detect various kinds of linguistic and conceptual patterns that are sometimes difficult to spot in isolated printed resources (e.g. meanings of terms, related terms, typical phrasal patterns).
The majority of corpus analysis tools also offer a number of other features,
which often combine the data produced by the concordancer and word frequency counts. For example, statistics regarding the collocation patterns of words (i.e., patterns of words that ?go together‘) can be generated. This type of information can be
useful for identifying typical usage patterns.
3. Designing an Evaluation Corpus
It was established in section 2 that a corpus is not a random collection of texts but rather a collection of texts that have been selected according to specific criteria in order to meet the needs of the project at hand. Clearly, the value of what comes out
of a corpus is largely dependent on what texts are included in it. Criteria for designing general language corpora have been reasonably well-documented in the literature (e.g. Engwall 1994); however, these criteria cannot be adopted wholesale for the design of a special-purpose corpus such as an Evaluation Corpus. Rather, special care must
be taken to ensure that the contents of the corpus will meet the specific needs of the intended users. In this case, the intended users are translator trainers who are faced with the task of evaluating a relatively short specialized translation (up to several thousand words) in a subject field that is relatively unfamiliar to them—a scenario
that is typical of many translator training programmes.3
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The Evaluation Corpus is the collective name given to the collection of texts that
is divided into four main subcorpora: the Comparable Source Corpus, the Quality Corpus, the Quantity Corpus and the Inappropriate Corpus. These subcorpora differ with regard to their content and intended function. The following sections outline
and explain some of the general design principles to be considered when compiling
an Evaluation Corpus. These principles will later be exemplified in section 4 with reference to the construction of an Evaluation Corpus on DVDs and its application
for evaluating some student translations.
3.1. Comparable Source Corpus
The first subcorpus contained in the Evaluation Corpus is referred to as the Comparable Source Corpus and it is actually an optional component. The decision about
whether or not to include a Comparable Source Corpus in an Evaluation Corpus
may depend on factors such as time, text type and the skopos of the target text.4
The essential idea behind a Comparable Source Corpus is that it contains a selection
of source language texts that are similar to the source text in terms of text type, publication date and subject matter. The purpose of the Comparable Source Corpus
is to allow the evaluator to gauge the ―normality‖ of the source text with regard to other source language texts of that type.
Baker (1997: 183) describes ?normalization‘ as a feature of translated texts, noting
that normalized texts display exaggerated features of the target language and conform to its typical patterns. Meanwhile Kenny (1998: 515) defines ?sanitization‘ as the suspected adaptation of a source text reality to make it more palatable for target audiences. Both normalization and sanitization result in deliberately chosen unconventional
lexical or syntactic source text features being watered down in translation
so that the target text fits in with the conventions of the target language. What was
creative and original in the source text becomes humdrum and typical in the target text.
If the source and target texts both have the same skopos, then it may prove useful
to have a Comparable Source Corpus to establish whether or not a passage in the source text is creative. It is important for evaluators to establish what the conventions
of source language use are for a particular text type so that they can determine whether the author of the source text in question has followed these conventions or whether he or she has taken a deliberately different or more creative approach to language use. In order to determine whether or not a target text has been inappropriately normalized or sanitized, evaluators can first use the Comparable Source Corpus
as a reference corpus to establish the relative normality of the source text. As a second step, they can then use the Quantity Corpus (see section 3.3) as a reference
corpus to establish the relative normality of the target text. The source and target
texts are intended to have the same skopos, and they should have a similar degree of normality with respect to their relative reference corpora. In other words, if the
source text is deemed to be normal (in terms of vocabulary, register, style, etc.) with reference to texts in the Comparable Source Corpus, then the target text should also appear normal when compared with texts in the Quantity Corpus. However, if the source tex t is deemed to be ?abnormal‘ (e.g. more creative, different register, etc.) when compared with the Comparable Source Corpus, then the target text should display the same types of ―abnormalities‖ when compared with texts in the Quantity Corpus.
3.2. Quality Corpus
The Quality Corpus is a high-quality subcorpus consisting of texts that have been hand-picked primarily for their conceptual content. It is very small by corpus linguistics standards5, containing only four or five texts with a total word count in the
area of 5, 000 words. The texts in the Quality Corpus serve much the same purpose
as conventional parallel texts in translation (see section 2); therefore, they should be authentic texts written by subject field experts that provide a good explanation of the subject matter covered in the source text to be translated. Because the Quality Corpus is used primarily as a source of conceptual, rather than linguistic, information, it
is not necessary for all these texts to be of the same text type as the source text. It is, however, important that they are complete texts rather than extracts or samples as favoured by some types of general language corpora, such as the Longman/Lancaster English Language Corpus (Summers 1993). If a text were to be randomly chopped, it could result in an important conceptual explanation being omitted or cut short.
If necessary, some of these texts in the Quality Corpus can treat the subject
matter in a broader fashion than does the actual source text in question. This may be useful for evaluators who have an extremely limited knowledge of the field and are looking for a gentle introduction that will enable them to situate the specific subject within the broader subject field. Evaluators who already have some knowledge of the subject may prefer to focus on texts that deal more specifically with the precise topic
of the source text.
It is also worth pointing out that slightly older texts often have an intrinsic knowledge. In our experience, experts writing on a particular topic tend to provide clearer and more detailed explanations of relevant concepts when an idea, product,
technology, etc. is first introduced or begins gaining popularity. As time goes by, these concepts become part of the general knowledge of subject field experts and hence the concepts, acronyms, etc., are not explained as frequently or in as much detail. Nevertheless, if the subject in question is part of a field that is evolving quickly, there is a significant risk associated with consulting only older documentation: as ideas evolve, the concepts, as well as the terms used to describe them, may
evolve also. Therefore, at least some of the texts contained in the Quality Corpus should be current.
Because the Quality Corpus is small in size and has been hand-picked for relevance, translator trainers can initially (skim) read all the contents of this corpus,
treating it in much the same way as they would conventional parallel texts. Perusing the Quality Corpus will help the translator trainer to become familiar with the basic concepts in the subject field and to identify some of the key terms. This initial reading can later be followed by a more focused computer-assisted analysis. Clearly this
will not transform the translator trainer into an immediate bona fide subject field expert, but if the texts are well chosen, they can serve as a benchmark against which the translator trainer can judge whether or not students have correctly understood
the concepts and ideas expressed in the source text.
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3.3. Quantity Corpus
When using conventional resources, such as parallel texts, most evaluators stop after gathering a selection of documents that resemble the Quality Corpus as described above. However, there are a number of reasons why it is not appropriate to rely exclusively
on the Quality Corpus to evaluate a translation. Firstly, because it is a relatively
small collection, there is no real way of knowing whether the texts that have
been selected are truly representative of the text type at large, or whether the authors who wrote those texts have used generally accepted terminology, phraseology, etc. Secondly, as mentioned in section 3.2, the texts contained in the Quality Corpus may often be somewhat ―older‖ texts as these have an intrinsic knowledge value; however, it is commonly accepted that terms go through life cycles and therefore, a term which was appropriate in the past may no longer be so.
The Quantity Corpus is therefore designed to provide a larger and more representative sample of the specialized language in question. Unfortunately, the question
of how large and how representative is not entirely straightforward. External factors such as time and availability of data will have an influence on this, but what should evaluators aim for under ideal circumstances? It is true that in corpus linguistics, bigger is not necessarily better—a small but well designed corpus may provide more useful data than a corpus that is larger but less well thought out. Nevertheless, a corpus consisting of only a few short texts will not likely provide enough instances of any given search term to allow users to identify patterns. In my experience, I have found that Quantity Corpora ranging in size from 20,000 to 200,000 words have proved useful. Corpora larger than this take too long to compile, while smaller corpora do not contain enough data to be interesting. Obviously, the corpora that contain 200,000 words tend to provide a better range of data, especially for subject fields
that are not extremely narrow; however, such corpora typically take longer to put together. It is worth constructing this size of corpus if it is likely to be used over a longer period of time (e.g. over an entire semester). Corpora in the 20,000 word
range have still proved to be worthwhile, particularly in highly specialized subject fields where the language is very restricted and where large quantities of data may
not be easily available. In addition, if the corpus is not likely to be used more than
once or twice, it is not worth investing a great deal of time compiling it. Although the size of even a large Quantity Corpus may seem small in comparison to many general language corpora, which often run to many millions of words, it is commonly accepted that corpora intended for specialized applications can be smaller than those
used for general language research (Engwall 1994: 51).
The texts contained in the Quantity Corpus should be relatively recent, but exactly
how recent will depend on the subject field. In subject fields that are evolving quickly, texts should not be more than two or three years old, but in fields that are
more stable, texts that are five or six years old may still prove valuable. Where possible, the number of texts dating from each time period (e.g. each calendar year)
should be roughly comparable to enable translators or evaluators to track terminological changes over time. For this reason, it may prove useful to divide the Quantity
Corpus into further subcorpora—one for each year. A corpus analysis tool such as WordSmith (see section 2) allows users to consult multiple corpora at once, so all the subcorpora can be consulted together to get an overall picture, or each subcorpus
can be consulted individually to check for the currency of a particular term during a particular time frame.
The Quantity Corpus is compiled in a more semi-automated fashion6 than the
Quality Corpus and once compiled, it can be used to allow the translator trainer to verify the appropriateness of the terminological, phraseological and stylistic choices made by students. The volume of data makes it possible to spot patterns more easily,
to make generalizations, and to provide concrete evidence to support decisions; however, one disadvantage to interacting solely with a large electronic corpus is that it is
easy to lose sight of the fact that translation is a text-based activity. When conducting corpus analysis, the focus tends to be on micro-contexts (e.g. the KWIC displays described in section 2). Of course, most corpus analysis software gives users the option of expanding the context to several lines or even of looking at the complete text,
but the primary power of corpus analysis remains at a sub-text level. If a user simply wanted to read entire texts, there would be no advantage to collecting them in electronic form. For this reason, evaluators may decide that other resources (e.g. printed
parallel texts) may be more useful than corpora for evaluating certain elements of translation. Another drawback may be that the texts sought for inclusion in the corpus may not be readily available in electronic form (e.g. owing to the subject matter, language or text type in question). At this point, it may be useful to remind readers
that no resource is perfect and comprehensive, including an Evaluation Corpus. The purpose of this article is not to promote corpora as being a panacea that will solve all problems but rather to alert readers to the fact that corpora do have a number of strengths that can complement other types of resources.
In combination with a corpus analysis tool, the Quantity Corpus can be used to investigate the appropriateness of specific terms or expressions proposed by the students,
to check for preferred spellings, to identify appropriate collocations, to verify semantic prosody, to investigate the appropriateness of the register, style, etc. The evidence found in the corpus can then be presented to the student. In my experience,
I have found that when students are presented with this type of concrete, corpus-based evidence (whether positive or negative), they are less likely to feel that a subjective decision has been made, and they are more likely to accept and learn from the correction.
3.4. Inappropriate Corpus
The final subcorpus contained in the Evaluation Corpus is known as the Inappropriate Corpus, and as the name suggests, it is a corpus containing ―inappropriate‖ parallel texts. A translator trainer is responsible not only for assigning a grade to a student‘s translation, but also for providi ng constructive feedback. Part of the trainer‘s job is to
try to determine why a student has made an error (Kussmaul 1995: 130) so that feedback can be presented which will help that student to avoid making similar errors in
the future.
As pointed out by Pearson (2000: 237), translation students frequently show poor judgement when sourcing terminology and phraseology from parallel texts. For example, they are often primarily concerned with identifying parallel texts that deal with
the subject matter in question, but they do not ensure that the texts they choose are parallel to the source text with respect to its other features, such as register, technicality a corpus-based approach to translation evaluation 353
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and text type. In addition, in my experience, I have found that sometimes students
can also make poor choices with regard to the actual subject matter of the text, selecting texts that may belong to the same broad subject field, but to a different
(though possibly related) subfield.
The size of the Inappropriate Corpus will vary depending on the subject matter
of the translation. Some subjects may be treated in only a limited number of different text types, some subjects may be very recent, and some may have no closely
related subfields. In such cases, the Inappropriate Corpus would be relatively small. Other subjects may be more well established and of wider interest, in which case, the Inappropriate Corpus would be larger.
The purpose of the Inappropriate Corpus is to help the translator trainer uncover
the mysteries of where students come up with some of the unsuitable equivalents
that they propose. Therefore, the texts contained in the Inappropriate Corpus
are texts which, on the one hand, may deal with the subject matter in question, but which differ significantly from the source text in terms of criteria such as text type or publication date, or on the other hand, texts which treat other subfields of the broad subject field.
If a student has used a term or phrase which does not appear in either the Quality Corpus or the Quantity Corpus, the evaluator can then check to see if it appears in
the Inappropriate Corpus. If it does appear in the Inappropriate Corpus, the evaluator can look to see what kind of text it appeared in and thereby possibly determine
why it was an unsuitable choice (e.g. the term is outdated, the register is not appropriate for the text type, etc.). In this way, the evaluator can once again provide the
student with concrete evidence rather than merely putting a line through the error.
4. Using an Evaluation Corpus to Assess Student Translations
Now that the general design principles have been outlined, these will be exemplified
by describing the design, compilation an application of an Evaluation Corpus. For
the sake of clarity, I will describe a scenario where the target text has the same communicative
function as the source text; in other words, both the source and target
text can be said to have the same skopos7. For this example, I will describe the compilation
of an Evaluation Corpus in the subject field of digital versatile discs (DVDs)
which was used to help evaluate translations of an article entitled ―Le DVD tient ses promesses‖ which appeared in the February 1999 issue of a French popularized science magazine called Sciences et Avenir. The students were asked to translate the text
as if for publication in a current issue of New Scientist, a general science magazine
that addresses a lay audience interested in science and technology. A copy of the source text is provided in the appendix.
It should be mentioned that the following sections simply contain a number of examples of how a corpus can be used to help translator trainers evaluate student translations. These examples should not be viewed as a recipe that can be followed in
a step-by-step fashion, nor as a comprehensive set of techniques for compiling and extracting information from a corpus. Each text, each language pair and each subject field are different, and what this article provides is a starting point and a number of suggestions that translator trainers can adapt and develop to meet their own needs.
4.1. Contents and Application of DVD Comparable Source Corpus
Because the skopos of both the source and target texts are the same, because the text type is a popularized scientific text that is addressed to a lay audience, and because there is a lot of hype surrounding the subject of DVDs, I felt it would be worthwhile
to begin by compiling a Comparable Source Corpus to investigate possible lexical creativity which may be at risk for normalization or sanitization in the target text.
The DVD Comparable Source Corpus consists of nine texts (4, 043 words) taken
from a variety of French-language popularized science magazines including Science
et Vie, Québec Science, La Recherche and Sciences et Avenir dating from 1998 and 1999.
This corpus was used to investigate, for example, the passage ―Il [DVD] va
envoyer au tapis CD-Rom, CD-Audio et VHS.” The expression envoyer au tapis is quite a strong and vivid one with a considerable physical association (as in knocking someone out in a boxing match). The Comparable Source Corpus revealed the following expressions used to describe the relationship between DVD and other media: remplacer (6), être le successeur (3), supplanter (1), éradiquer (1). Compared with the majority of these examples, the expression envoyer au tapis packs a lot of punch! Remplacer (?replace‘) and être le successeur (?to succeed‘ or ?to be the successor of ‘) are quite mild, and although supplanter (?to supplant‘) and particularly éradiquer (?to eradicate‘) are more forceful, they are still not as vivid as envoyer au tapis. Therefore,
it would seem that the author really believes in the future of DVD and wants to make
a bold statement to that effect.
In the student translations, a number of students translated envoyer au tapis by
?replace‘ and some others selected ?overtake‘. These translations are examples of normalization—
the author‘s creativity has been neutralized. The basic semantic meaning
has been captured, but the translation lacks the flair and zeal of the original. An examination of the Quantity Corpus (see section 4.3) reveals that four texts do indeed use relatively straightforward terms such as ?replace‘ or ?outsell‘ to describe the relationship between DVD and CDs, but other texts contain much more interesting
and forceful descriptions, including ?attack‘, ?challenge‘, ?invade‘, ?make obsolete‘, ?push aside‘, ?put the squeeze on‘ and ?sound a death knell for‘. Placed alongside these tex ts, a translation such as ?replace‘ would cause this passage, which in the source text stood out as being forceful and vibrant, to pale into insignificance. These concrete examples can be used to demonstrate to students that un-normalized translations are
possible, and in this case preferable, given the skopos of the target text.
4.2. Contents and Application of DVD Quality Corpus
The DVD Quality Corpus consists of five texts totalling 3, 931 words. These texts
were all taken from popularized science or computing magazines and they were
hand-picked because they offer clear explanations of the subject matter.
? ―Much Ado about DVD‖ New Scientist (August 1996)
? ―How DVD Works‖ Windows Magazine (October 1997)
? ―Hot or Hype?—New and emerging technologies‖ Windows Magazine (January 1998) ? ―The DVD Invasion‖ Computer News (June 1998)
? ―DVD put to the test‖ EE Times (Dec 1999)
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Several of the texts are somewhat older than the source text (one by almost three years). As noted in section 3.2, older texts have an intrinsic knowledge value because concepts are explained more clearly and in more detail when technologies or products are first introduced. Nevertheless, because the field is evolving quickly and the
terms and concepts may have evolved as well, I was certain to include some more recent publications also.
This corpus was useful for learning some of the basic concepts and terms associated with the subject field. It provided information that made it possible to constructively correct some student translation errors such as the following. Note that
while a given evaluator may not need recourse to a corpus to make some of these corrections, it is nonetheless useful to be able to provide the student with concrete corpus-based feedback. In my experience, this type of concrete feedback is much appreciated by students.
Source Text: Comme le CD audio, le DVD est lu par un faisceau laser qui balaie les pistes du disque percées d‘une infinité de trous, porteurs de l‘information binaire. La
différence entre DVD et CD réside dans la taille des trous: 0,83 μm pour le CD, 0,40 μm pour le DVD, et la distance entre les pistes (respectivement 1,60 μm et 0,74 μm). Student Translation: Like the audio CD, the DVD is read by a bundle of lasers which brush the pits of the disk etched with an infinite number of gaps which carry binary information. The difference between DVD and CD lies both in the size of the gaps—
0.83μm for the CD and 0.40μm for the DVD, and in the distance between the pits
(1.60μm and 0.74μm respectively).
The first conceptual misunderstanding is the translation of faisceau by ?bundle
of lasers‘ rather than by ?laser beam‘. The student has probably consulted a bilingual
dictionary that provi ded ?bundle‘ as one possible translation of faisceau, but it is not
the correct one in this context. A quick check in the corpus reveals that while bundle appears four times, it is only in reference to ?bundled software‘—free programs that
are given to people when they purchase a DVD player. In addition, there are no instances of ?laser‘ being used in the plural, but there are several of ?laser beam‘ and many more of simply ?laser‘ preceded by a definite or indefinite article.
The next main conceptual misunderstanding is the translation of balaie by
?brush‘. ?Brush‘ implies a sort of physical contact which simply does not occur in this situation. A corpus searching using the pattern ?brush*‘ reveals that there are no instances of lasers brushing discs. It appears that the student has once again consulted
a bilingual dictionary and selected quite a literal translation—one that is not appropriate to the context. A better choice from the dictionary might have been ?sweep‘ as
in many instances, light can be referred to as sweeping, however, the corpus reveals
that even ?sweep*‘ does not typically feature in this specialized language. As illustrated
in table 3, the concordances for ?laser‘ clearly show that in the context of
DVDs, lasers are used to ?read‘ informat ion.
table 3
Concordances retrieved from the DVD Quality Corpus illustrating that a ‘laser’ is used to
‘read’ the information contained on DVDs.
create a pattern that the laser can read. With current disc coatings,
o has also added a laser modified to read DVD as well as CD-R and CD-RW
laser to focus deep into the disc to read a second data layer. Double-s
The next two conceptual errors—the translation of pistes by ?pits‘ and of trous by
?gaps‘—are related. ?Pits‘ is in fact a technical term belonging to th e specialized language used to discuss DVDs; however, it is the correct translation of trous rather than
of pistes. Having already used ?pits‘ to translate pistes (perhaps because of the superficial similarity of the two words?), the student was then forced to find a different
translation for trous and ended up by choosing the unsatisfactory term ?gaps‘. As
shown in table 4, a concordance search on ?pits‘ reveals two contexts that clearly indicate the relationship between ?pits‘ and ?tracks‘. The fact that the second context gives specific dimensions for both ?pits‘ and ?tracks‘ means that interlingual equivalences can be unequivocally established with the source text terms.
table 4
Two contexts retrieved from the DVD Quality Corpus that illustrate the relationship between
‘pits’ and ‘tracks’.
The fact that the pits are smaller means they can be packed more tightly into the tracks. The use of smaller pits (0.4 microns for the DVD vs. 8.3 microns for the CD) and narrower
track-to-track spacing (0.74 microns for the DVD vs. 1.6 microns for the CD) means that
there‘s room on the DVD for nearly four times as much information per layer than on a CD.
4.3. Contents and Application of DVD Quantity Corpus
The DVD Quantity Corpus was compiled in a much more semi-automated fashion
than was the hand-picked Quality Corpus. Texts were extracted from CD-ROMs
(e.g. New Scientist, Computer Select) and web sites (e.g. TechWeb) using a combination of user-defined selection features including keywords (DVD), publication date
(1997-1999) and text type (articles). The texts retrieved had a total word count of
27,446 and the compilation process took approximately 25 minutes. Because the corpus was fairly small and covered a restricted time period, the decision was made not
to further subdivide the Quantity Corpus according to year.
Some of the types of linguistic and stylistic choices made by the students that
can be investigated with the help of the Quantity Corpus are outlined below, and
they range from straightforward verification exercises to more sophisticated investigations.
With regard to verification, an evaluator may simply wish to confirm that a
student has made a suitable choice with regard to a particular term or phrase. For example, one student has rendered the term le CD audio by ?the audio CD‘. An evaluator may feel instinctively that this is the right choice, but may wish to confirm his or
her intuition by investigating this term in the Quantity Corpus to ensure that the
term is not in fact ?CD-audio‘ (in parallel with the form ?CD-ROM‘, for example). A search on the term ?CD‘ reveals 219 occurrences, but by sorting these terms (first to
the left and then to the right), it can be quickly established that while both ?audio
CD‘ and ?CD-audio‘ seem to be acceptable terms, ?audio CD‘ seems to be the preferred term with 6 occurrences in the corpus whereas ?CD-audio‘ appears only once.
Another use for the corpus is demonstrating that although the preferred spelling
of CD-Rom and DVD-Rom in French entails using lower case ?om‘, th e overwhelming preference in English is to use all upper case letters: CD-Rom (1 occurrence), CDROM (102 occurrences), DVD-Rom (0 occurrences), DVD-ROM (107 occurrences).
In addition, whereas one student used CD-ROM as if it were invariant in num a
corpus-based approach to translation evaluation 357
358 Meta, XLVI, 2, 2001
ber (?it combines the storage equivalent of five to seven CD-ROM‘), the corpus
shows that while ROM alone is invariant in number, CD-ROM is actually pluralized
by adding an ?s‘ to create C D-ROMs.
In another example, a student has rendered the unit of measure Go (as in
permettant au DVD de stocker 4,7 Go sur une face et jusqu’ à 17 Go sur des modèles àvenir double face et double couche!) from the source text as ?gigaoctet‘ in the target
tex t. A corpus search turns up no occurrences of ?gigaoctet‘ (or indeed of ?*octet‘).
The fact that there were no occurrences alerts the evaluator to the fact that more research is required in order to establish the equivalent, and number of strategies are
po ssible. As demonstrated in table 5, a context search on ?giga*‘ or indeed even on
?G*‘ within a five-word span of ?stor*‘ turns up a selection of useful concordances, as do searches on ?4.7‘ and on ?17‘.
table 5
A context search in which ‘G*’ appears withi n a five-word span of ‘stor*’.
OMs; specifically, they give you 2.1 GB of storage. But their performan
her much more tightly:as much as 4.7 Gbytes of data can be stored on on
n‘t be overly impressed with the 4.7 Gbytes of data stored on DVD-ROM p
ntains 26 times the storage space-17 Gbytes compared with CD‘s 650 Mbyt
, dual-layer discs can hold about 17 Gbytes. DVD‘s increased storage ca
mputer-related products that promise Gigabytes of optical storage. But
An interesting choice made by one student was the decision to render the title of
the source text, Le DVD tient ses promesses, by ?DVD‘s keeping her promises‘. Although the French pronoun ses can indeed be translated by ?his‘, ?her‘ or ?its‘, the
normal choice when referring to inanimate objects is ?its‘. Nevertheless, there are exceptions,
such as the convention of using feminine pronouns when referring to ships.
As shown in table 6, the corpus can be used to quickly demonstrate that DVD is not among these exceptions and that the impersonal possessive pro noun ?its‘ is the appropriate
choice here.
table 6
Concordance lines revealing that ‘DVD’ is associated
with the impersonal possessive pronoun ‘its’.
mer base. Like CDs, DVD has received its biggest boost from the consume
turers‘ components.‖ While DVD spins its wheels in the early going, for
ne quality that distinguishes DVD is its two-sided capability, a featur
disk and CD-ROM? Or will DVD realize its potential as a true point of c
y believe that what will sell DVD is its slick, compact size, ease of u
Other problem terms in student translations included pistes and trous. These
terms were previously discussed in the context of conceptual misunderstandings, but there were other cases where students who appeared to understand the concepts still made poor terminological choices. For instance, a number of students elected to translate pistes by ?grooves‘, while trous was translated by ?holes‘. There were no occurrences
of ?grooves‘ in the corpus, and the sole reference to ?hole‘ was referring to the
large hole in the centre of a CD. In the case of these examples, one way of using the corpus to identify possible equivalents could be to use the measurements (i.e.,
0.83μm, 0.4 μm, 1.6 μm and 0.74 μm), which turn up contexts containing references
to ?tracks‘ and ?pits‘.
Identifying appropriate collocations within the specialized language of DVDs
also posed difficulties for some students. The example that ?lasers read‘ information
was discussed in the section on conceptual misunderstandings, but another example
is the choice of the translation ?riddled with pits‘ as an equivalent for percées d’une infinité de trous. This translation is problematic in a number of senses. Firstly, the collocation ?riddled with pits‘ sounds a bit peculiar, and the corpus supports this
int uition by revealing that there are no instances of ?riddled‘ collocating with ?pits‘ (in fact, ?riddl*‘ does not appear in the corpus at all). Although ?riddled with‘ can indeed have the semantic meaning roughly equivalent to ?containing much X or many Xs‘,
one reason that ?riddled‘ sounds strange here is that it has an overwhelmingly negative semantic prosody. An evaluator can demonstrate this negative prosody to the
student by consulting another type of corpus, such as the existing British National Corpus (BNC)8, which is a large general language corpus containing 100-million words of contemporary British English. Table 7 contains twenty concordances that have been randomly selected from the 177 occurrences of this term in the BNC.
table 7
Twenty concordan ces for the term ‘riddled’ that have been randomly selected from the 177 occurrences of this term in the British National Corpus.
Her body was riddled with arthritis.
t lavas is that they are often riddled with holes.
here of this little community, riddled with prejudice and of limited in
is brown flawless skin, he was riddled with disease—disease he had c
has, from its inception, been riddled with racist practices.
ar-old teaboy Abdul Khalid was riddled with bullets as he sat in his ca
llow in the corner of a field, riddled with holes and scattered with fr
His body was riddled with bullets from the Skorpion.
d fals
e confessions, scribbles riddled with hatred or guilt, the anonym
a child, were killed when men riddled a bus with gunfire in the ?indep
His plane was riddled with bullets, and one cut an art
?death of hope‘ in a precinct riddled with drugs.
British society is riddled with miscarriages of justice.
Wounded, and with his aircraft riddled with cannon and machine gun fire
ocent-looking sarnies could be riddled with bacteria, such as listeria,
cheated death when his car was riddled by sniper fire.
sion, replete with expediency, riddled with past prejudices, they can o
said no need to worry, angel, riddled with diseases I‘m sure, apart fr
ul child but I would have been riddled with doubt for most of its life.
does not mean that the City is riddled with fraud or that the regulator
It is clear from looking at these examples that ?riddled‘ is overwhelmingly associated with negative things, such as bullets and gunfire, criminal activity (e.g. fraud, drugs), disease and other generally unpleasant things (e.g. racism, prejudice, hatred, guilt, doubt, etc.). As pointed out by Louw (1993), once a word becomes imbued
with an unfavourable prosody, it cannot, in normal circumstances, be used in a neutral or favourable environment (except for ironic effect). The discussion about the
pits on a DVD is a neutral environment, but the use of ?riddled‘ involves the intro a corpus-based approach to translation evaluation 359
360 Meta, XLVI, 2, 2001
duction of its associated negative prosody and this consequently makes the whole phrase seem peculiar.
Another problem with using the term ?riddled‘ is that it also contains the notion
of randomness. Holes created by gunfire and bullets are not typically laid out in an orderly fashion. In contrast, the contexts from the corpus indicate that the size and placement of the pits on a DVD are measured precisely in microns.
With regard to style, the point has already been made that one of the drawbacks
of corpus analysis is that it tends to focus on lexis and on small sections of text. Therefore, a corpus-based approach may not be the most useful way of evaluating
the stylistic features of a translation. Nevertheless, corpus analysis software such as WordSmith Tools can be used to make crude comparisons such as the average sentence length of texts in the corpus as compared to the average sentence length in a
student translation (provided, of course, that the target text has been submitted in
e lectronic form). Searches on words such as ?by‘ might also be useful for getting a
general idea as to whether or not passive structures are common in a given text type, searches on ?‘t‘ or ?‘ll‘ can give an indication as to whether or not contractions feat ure heavily, and searches on ?you‘ can reveal whether or not it is appropriate to address
the reader directly. One stylistic feature that was revealed using the DVD Quantity Corpus is that the symbol ?μm‘ is not used in popularized texts in English; rather, it
is more stylistically appropriate to write out the term ?microns‘.
4.4. Contents and Application of DVD Inappropriate Corpus
The final element of the DVD Evaluation Corpus is the Inappropriate Corpus. The purpose of the Inappropriate Corpus is to help the evaluator discover why a student may have made a particular error. Therefore, it contains texts that would not be deemed suitable parallel texts because they have a different skopos than that of the target text. One way in which the texts may differ from the target text is in terms of subject matter. Even subject fields that are related (e.g. they may be different subfields of a more general field) may have different conventions in their specialized languages. The DVD Inappropriate Corpus contains texts that are from the general subject field of optical storage technology, as well as texts dealing with highly specialized
types of DVDs, such as DVD-RAMs and SD-DVDs.
Another way in which texts in the Inappropriate Corpus differ from the source
text is in terms of text type. The source text was taken from a popularized science magazine, but the texts in the Inappropriate Corpus include technical reports, standards documents, Internet FAQs and advertisements.
A third type of inappropriate text that can be found in the Inappropriate Corpus
is a text that dates from a different time period than the source text. The DVD inappropriate
corpus includes a number of texts from 1995, which, given the fast-moving
pace of development in the field, can be considered to be significantly older than the source text, which is dated 1999.
The Inappropriate Corpus can be used to further investigate student choices that
do not appear in the Quality or Quantity Corpus. For example, one student expanded the acronym DVD into the te rm ?digital video disc‘. A search in the Quantity
Corpus revealed that in recently written texts, DVD is used to refer to a ?digital versatile disc‘; however, a search in the Inappropriate Corpus revealed that when the technology was first introduced, DVD did in fact refer to ?digital video disc‘, but as
the capabilities of the technology were increased, the name was switched to ?digital versatile disc‘.
5. Concluding Remarks
The main aim of this article has been to develop a more objective approach to evaluating translations in an academic setting. It proposes a general approach to designing
an Evaluation Corpus that can be used to help translator trainers evaluate student translations and provide more objective feedback. It then describes how evaluators
can use corpus analysis tools to exploit an Evaluation Corpus, extracting information that could assist them with their evaluation task. The use of an Evaluation Corpus as
a resource for evaluating translations offers a number of advantages over conventional resources. Its considerable size and electronic form mean that evaluators have
easy access to a wealth of authentic examples that provide a common evaluative
framework that can be consulted by both evaluator and student. The Evaluation
Corpus is not, however, a panacea. A corpus should not be seen as a replacement for competence and critical judgement on the part of evaluators, but rather as an aid to
help them make sound and objective judgements. The approach described here is corpus-based, but not corpus-bound.
As researchers such as H?nig (1998: 14) have stressed, where translation evaluation
is concerned, a speculative element will remain and has to be admitted. It is
unlikely that a method that will allow translator trainers to evaluate student translations in a completely objective manner will ever be devised. Nevertheless, this article
has demonstrated that adopting a corpus-based approach can significantly reduce
the subjective element in translation evaluation, and that this will benefit both evaluators and students.
5.1. Future Developments
The Evaluation Corpus described here was designed to assist with the evaluation of a translation that had the same skopos as the source text. It is also possible to design corpora that can assist with evaluation in cases where the target text has a different skopos than the source text. In such cases, it would not be worthwhile compiling a Comparable Source Corpus, but the other three subcorpora (Quality Corpus, Quantity Corpus and Inappropriate Corpus) could all be designed according to criteria
that correspond to the skopos of the target text. For example, if students are asked to translate a technical report as if for publication in a popularized science magazine,
the texts in the Quantity Corpus would contain texts from popularized science magazines rather than from technical reports, while a technical report might be included in the Inappropriate Corpus along with other texts that have different skopoi.
As explained in section 4, the techniques used for extracting useful information
from corpora will differ from language to language and from subject field to subject field. In addition, more sophisticated extraction techniques can be developed for use
on corpora that have been part-of-speech tagged or annotated in other ways. Further work is required to develop techniques and methodologies, both generic and specific, which can be used by evaluators and translators to exploit corpora more fully.
a corpus-based approach to translation evaluation 361
362 Meta, XLVI, 2, 2001
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, as pointed out by Pym (1992: 283), the
analysis of translation errors inevitably leads to an analysis of translation teaching.
The Evaluation Corpus has proved to be a useful resource for helping trainers to identify and correct errors in student translations, and the next logical step will be to investigate the potential of integrating such corpora more fully into the teaching process. As discussed in section 1, trainers should provide their students with feedback that is concrete and constructive. Bringing corpora into the translation classroom
helps to raise students‘ interest in and awareness of specialized language
helping them to become more independent learners. Preliminary research in the area
of using corpora for translation teaching is already being undertaken by researchers
and translator trainers such as Bowker (1999), Pearson (1999), and Zanettin (1998),
and more work in this area is needed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Mona Baker of UMIST (UK) and Keith Harvey of the University of
Anglia (UK) who provided constructive comments on an earlier version of the work described
here. This research was funded in part by an Albert College Fellowship awarded by Dublin City
University and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. NOTES
1. Parallel texts are printed documents that have been produced independently in the target language,
but which have the same communicative function as the translation that is being produced.
2. The corpus analysis software used to conduct the research described in this article is WordSmith
Tools, which was developed by Mike Scott at the University of Liverpool and is distributed by
Oxford University Press:
3. It is possible to imagine other types of Evaluation Corpora that could be designed for use in different
translation evaluation situations (e.g. evaluating literary translation), but they would likely have
a different make-up than the Evaluation Corpus described here.
4. For instance, there is little point in constructing a Comparable Source Corpus when the source and
target texts do not have the same skopos (i.e., if the target text is being produced for a different type
of audience then there is no real point in trying to establish whether or not the source text is
representative of its text type). Text type may also be a determining factor: although any text type
has the potential to contain non-conventional terminology or style, some text types are more likely
than others to display this type of creativity (e.g. highly technical texts that aim to communicate
specialized knowledge in a clear and precise manner are less likely to exhibit creativity than more
popularized, journalistic or literary texts). Finally, in cases where evaluators are dealing with a typically
non-creative text type, they may feel that the time required to construct a Comparable Source
Corpus would not result in a worthwhile pay off. Time invested in building corpora must always be
weighed against their potential usefulness.
5. Many general language corpora contain hundreds of millions of words (e.g. the British National
Corpus), but it is generally accepted that corpora intended for specialized applications
smaller than those used for general language research (Engwall 1994: 51).
6. For example, texts can be extracted from CD-ROMs or the WWW using keyword searches and
other limiting parameters such as dates or text types. See section 4.3 for a brief description of how
the DVD Quantity Corpus was compiled.
7. It is also possible to design an Evaluation Corpus to help evaluate a translation whose skopos differs
from that of the source text (see section 5).
8. The British National Corpus can be consulted free of charge via the World Wide Web at: https://www.sodocs.net/doc/178866438.html,/bnc>. REFERENCES Baker, M. (1997): ―Corpus-based Translation Studies: The Challenges that Lie Ahead,‖ Terminology, LSP and Translation: Studies in Language Engineering in Honour of Juan C. Sager (H.L. Somers, ed.), Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 175-186. Bowker, L. (1999): ―Exploring the Potential of Corpora for Raising Language Awareness in Student Translators,‖ Language Awareness, 8-3/4, pp. 160-173. Engwall, G. (1994): ―Not Chance but Choice: Criteria in Corpus Creation,‖ Computational Approaches to the Lexicon (B. T. S. Atkins and A. Zampolli, eds), Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 49-82. Fraser, J. (1996): ―Professional versus Student Behaviour,‖ Teaching Translation and Interpreting 3: New Horizons (C. Dollerup and V. Appel, eds), Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 243-50. Hatim, B. and I. Mason (1997): The Translator as Communicator, London, Routledge. H?nig, H.G. (1998): ―Positions, Power and Practice: Functionalist Approaches and Translation Quality Assessment,‖ Translation and Quality (C. Sch?ffner, ed.), Clevedon, Multilingual Matters, pp. 6-34. Kenny, D. (1998): ―Creatures of Habit? What Translators usually Do with Words,‖ Meta, 43-4, pp. 515-523. Kussmaul, P. (1995): Training the Translator, Amsterdam, John Benjamins. Larose, R. (1998): ?Méthodologie de l‘évaluation des traductions ?, Meta, 43-2, p. 163-186. Louw, B. (1993): ―Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? The Diagnostic Potential of Semantic Prosodies,‖ Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair (M. Baker, G. Francis A Rose for Emily 的评析(2010-06-21 23:49:34)转载▼ 标签：文化 威廉.福克纳和他的《献给爱米丽的玫瑰》 摘要：福克纳把南方的历史和现实社会作为自己创作源泉而成为美国南方文学的代表。《献给爱米丽的玫瑰》通过爱米丽的爱情悲剧揭示了新旧秩序的斗争及没落贵族阶级的守旧心态，福克纳运用神秘、暗语、象征、时序颠倒等写作手法来揭示这一主题。 关键词：威廉·福克纳；献给爱米丽的玫瑰；南方小说 一、威廉·福克纳的南方情结 威廉·福克纳(William Faulkner，1897-1962)是美国文学史上久负盛名的作家之一，生于密西西比州一个在内战中失去财富和地位的没落的南方种植园家庭。福克纳的大多数作品都以美国南方为背景，强调南方主题和南方意识。在他19部长篇小说和75篇短篇小说中，绝大多数小说的故事都发生在他虚构的美国的约克纳帕塔法县(Yoknapatawpha county）和杰弗生镇。这些作品所展示的生活画卷 和人物形象构成了福克纳笔下的“约克纳帕塔法世系”。 “约克纳帕塔法世系”是以该县家族的兴衰、变迁为主题，故事所跨越的时间上起自印地安人与早期殖民者交往的岁月，止于第二次世界大战后，长约二百年。他的世系小说依南方家系人物的生活而展开，以南方浓郁的泥土气息伴随着因工业文明而带来的焦虑、惶惑、无奈，把一百多年来即从1800年到第二次世界大战之后社会发展过程中，南方人所独有的情感和心态通过独特的艺术方式展示出来，可谓一部“南方生活的史诗”。在这部史诗的字里行间，留下了作家的血与泪之痕：割不断爱恋南方古老精神的一片深情，可又抵御不了现代文明进程的必然性。正如福克纳所说：“我爱南方，也憎恨它。这里有些东西我本不喜欢。但是我生在这里，这是我的家。因此，我愿意继续维护它，即便是怀着憎恨。”这种矛盾恰好构成了福克纳情感意识及其小说世界的无穷魅力。结果，约克纳帕塔法县成了旧南方的象征，而福克纳也借此成功地表现了整个南方社会的历史和意识。 二、《献给爱米丽的玫瑰》暗示南方的腐朽没落 福克纳素以长篇小说著称于世，但其短篇小说，无论艺术构思、意境创造、人物塑造抑或语言风格、结构艺术等，均可与其长篇小说互论短长，而其最著名的短篇之一《献给爱米丽的玫瑰》 A rose for Emily则对理解、研究福克纳的主要作品，即“约克纳帕塔法世系”具有十分重要的意义。在这篇小说中，作者以凝练的笔触、独特的结构成功地塑造了爱米丽·格里尔森Emily Grieson这个艺术典型。 《献给爱米丽的玫瑰》是福克纳1930年4月发表的被誉为最负盛名的短篇小说。故事发生在约克纳帕塔法县的杰弗生镇，小说分为五小部分，在这五个写作空间里，运用回忆来描写爱米丽·格里尔森（Emily Grieson)神秘的一生，讲述了一位被剥夺了与他人建立正常人际关系的妇女如何逃避现实以至于精神失常的故事，表现了新旧南方价值观念之间的冲突。爱米丽的个性冲突、所做所为源于她南方古老而辉煌的家庭背景，福克纳用神秘、暗语、象征等写作方法来揭示爱米丽是南方腐朽传统的象征。故事的叙述采用了时序颠倒的手法，这一手法不仅使小说结构奇突，情节跳跃，更为重要的是其具有深化主题思想的艺术功效。作者用这种手法打破时空界限，把过去和现在直接放在一起，在它们之间形成鲜明的对照，从而使读者深深地感到时代的变迁和传统价值观念的沦丧。 小说一开始就告诉读者爱米丽死了，全镇的人都去送丧。她的死象征着南方古老传统、价值观念、生活方式的彻底灭亡和消失。为展示新旧双方的矛盾和以爱米丽为代表的贵族阶级虽大势已去却拒不接受社会变革的心态，作者选取了一个极为典型的事件——纳税事件。 (一) 假定你是红星中学初三学生李华。你的美国朋友Jim在给你的邮件中提到他对中国新近出现的一种共享单车“mobike”很感兴趣，并请你做个简要介绍。请你给Jim回信，内容包括： 1. 这种单车的使用方法(如：APP查看车辆、扫码开锁等); 2. 这种单车的优势; 3. 你对这种单车的看法。 注意：1. 词数不少于80; 2. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。 提示词：智能手机smartphone, 二维码the QR code 参考范文 Dear Jim, I’m writing to tell you more about the new form of sharing bike mobike mentioned in your latest letter. It’s very convenient to use if you have a smartphone. What you do is find a nearest mobikethrough the APP, scan the QR code on the bike, and enjoy your trip. Compared to other forms of sharing bike, the greatest advantage of mobike is that you can easily find one and never worry about where to park it. It is becoming a new trend as a means of transportation, which relieves the traffic pressure and does good to the environment as well. Hope to ride a mobike with you in China. Yours, Li Hua (二) 最近很多大城市都投放了共享单车(shared bikes)，比如摩拜单车(Mobike)、Ofo共享单车等。由于它们方便停放，骑车也能起到锻炼身体的作用，作为代步工具很受大家欢迎。但是，各地也出现了很多毁车现象，比如刮掉车上的二维码(QR code)、上私锁等。 你对这种现象怎么看?你对共享单车公司有什么建议吗?写一篇符合逻辑的英语短文，80词左右。 参考词汇：bike-sharing companies 共享单车公司，Mobike 和Ofo 是两家共享单车公司，convenience 方便，register登记 参考范文 The shared bikes like Mobike and Ofo bring great convenience to people. You needn’t lock them by simply using your smart phone. They can take you where the subway and bus don’t go. And they can be left anywhere in public for the next user. However, bad things happen. Some people damage the QR code on the bike, or use their own lock, which causes trouble to other users. In my opinion, it’s difficult to turn these people’s ideas in a short time. Therefore, bike-sharing companies like Mobike and Ofo need to do something. For example, those who damage the bike should pay for their actions. Also, because people use their real name toregister as a user, it’s a good way to connect to one’s personal credit. In the end, what I want to say is to take good care of public services. (三) 共享单车(bicycle sharing)已成为时下最热的话题之一，请你就这一话题写一篇短文。内容须包括三方面：1. 共享单车蓬勃发展，成为社会热潮;2. 共享单车带来便利，但也存在问题;3. 我对解决问题的建议。 参考范文 Bicycle Sharing With the development of technology, bicycle sharing comes into people's lives. It becomes more and more popular and much news reported it. At the same time, we should see that there are some problems caused by bicycle sharing. On one side, bicycle sharing makes it very convenient of people traveling. You can find a bicycle anywhere at any time when you want to go out for a cycling, and the price of one trip is very low. It can save time for people. On the other side, its management is not perfect. Even kids can open the lock and ride the bicycle, there is no doubt that such behavior is very dangerous. 介绍北京的英语作文(2) AsBeijinghasbeenconfirmedhomecityofOlympics2008,the spiritofgreenOlympics,scientificOlympicsandhumanizedOlymp icwillsurelybringmoreandmorechangestoBeijing,promotethed evelopmentofsportsandOlympicsinChinaaswellasintheworld,a ndstrengthenthefriendlycommunicationsbetweenChineseandf oreignpeople. 篇六：Beijing BeijingisthecapitalofPeoplesRepublicofChinaandthenation scentreforpolitics,economyandculture.Itenjoysalongandrichhis tory.Therearenumerousheritagesitesandwonderfulexamplesof ancientarchitecture,suchastheworld-famousGreatWall,theTem pleofHeavenandtheForbiddenCity. Besidessightseeingplaces,therearemanydeliciousfoodsuch asPekingducksandBeijingsnacks.Beijingisreallyagoodplacetotr avel. 篇七：Beijing AsthecaptainofChina，Beijinghasbeenthemostpopularcityofchina。SomoreandmorepeoplewanttovisitBeijing. AN EXCITING JOB I have the greatest job in the world. I travel to unusual places and work alongside people from all over the world. Sometimes working outdoors, sometimes in an office, sometimes using scientific equipment and sometimes meeting local people and tourists, I am never bored. Although my job is occasionally dangerous, I don't mind because danger excites me and makes me feel alive. However, the most important thing about my job is that I help protect ordinary people from one of the most powerful forces on earth - the volcano. I was appointed as a volcanologist working for the Hawaiian V olcano Observatory (HVO) twenty years ago. My job is collecting information for a database about Mount Kilauea, which is one of the most active volcanoes in Hawaii. Having collected and evaluated the information, I help other scientists to predict where lava from the volcano will flow next and how fast. Our work has saved many lives because people in the path of the lava can be warned to leave their houses. Unfortunately, we cannot move their homes out of the way, and many houses have been covered with lava or burned to the ground. When boiling rock erupts from a volcano and crashes back to earth, it causes less damage than you might imagine. This is because no one lives near the top of Mount Kilauea, where the rocks fall. The lava that flows slowly like a wave down the mountain causes far more damage because it [标签:标题] 篇一：关于汽车的英语作文 好的 Nowadays, with the rapid improvement of people’s living standards, cars have become an indispensable part of people's lives,so that more and more people have a car of their own, especially in cities. It brings some benefits for us but also causes many problems at the same time. For one thing,there’s no doubt that cars provide much convenience for people to go where they want to quickly and easily. Especially on weekday,driving a car can save a lot of time for us to go to work.When some places are too far away from our home, driving our own car is also convenient, we can go wherever we want. However,for another, too many cars will lead to the pressure of public transport, a series of problems will appear.First of all,it will bring about more air pollution,a large amount of polluted air given off by cars do great harm to our health.What’s more, as the existing roads are not so wide for the increasing number of cars,undoubtedly,traffic jams will become more and more serious. Last but not least, cars also place burden on the public facilities in providing more parking lots. As far as I am concerned,everything has its advantages and disadvantages. It’s high time that effective action must be token to limit the ever growing number of cars, the government should take measures to control the air pollution from the cars. Some roads should be widened and more new roads should be constructed. Only in this way，will people benefit from the popularity of cars. 坏的 Nowadays, with the rapid improvement of people's living standards, cars have become an indispensable part of people's lives,so that more and more people have a car of their own, especially in cities.It brings some benefit for us but also causes many problems at the same time. For one thing,it's no doubt that that cars provide much convenience for people to go where they want to quickly and easily. Especially on weekday,driving a car can save a lot of time for us to go to work.When some places are too far away from our home, driving our own car is also convenient, we can go wherever we want. However,for another, too many cars will lead to the pressure of public transport, a series of problems will appear.First of all,it will bring about more air pollution,a large amount of polluted air given off by cars do great harm to our health .What's more, as the existing roads are not so wide for the increasing number of cars,undoubtedly,traffic jams will become more and more serious. Last but not least, cars also place burden on the public facilities in providing more parking lots. As far as I am concerned,everything has its advantages and disadvantages. It's high time that effective action must be token to limit the ever growing number of cars, the government should take measures to control the air pollution from the cars. Some roads should be widened and more new roads should be constructed. Only in this way,will people benefit from the popularity of cars. 篇二：雅思作文高分范文：私家车的利与弊 智课网IELTS备考资料 雅思作文高分范文：私家车的利与弊 介绍北京的英语作文1篇 篇一MyFamily Ilovemyfamily,becauseIhaveahappyfamily. MyfatherisanEnglishteacher.HisnameisJacky.Heisthirty-eight.Helikesplay ingbasketball.What’smymotherjop?Issheateacher?Yes,you’reright!Mymotherisverykindandnice,sheisthirty-seven.Mymotherisalways laboriouswork.Ilovemyparents! OnStaurdayandSunday,Ioftengotothelibraryandplaythepiano,Myfathergot oplaybasketball.Sometimes,wewatchTVandlistentomusicathome. Ilovemyfamily.BecauseI’mveryhappytolivewithmyparentstogether! 篇二MyFamily MyFamily Everyonehasafamily.Weliveinitandfeelverywarm.Therearethreepersonsin myfamily,mymother,fatherandI.Welivetogetherveryhappilyandtherearema nyinterestingstoriesaboutmyfamily. Myfatherisahard-workingman.Heworksasadoctor.Healwaystrieshisbesttoh elpevery,patientandmakepatientscomfortable.Butsonetimesheworkssohard thathecan”trememberthedate. “A Rose for Emily” is divided into five sections. The first section opens with a description of the Grierson house in Jefferson. The narrator mentions that over the past 100 years, Miss Emily Grierson’s home has fall into disrepair and become “an eyesore among eyesores.” The first sentence of the story sets the tone of how the citizens of Jefferson felt about Emily: “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to the funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant – a combined gardener and cook – had seen in at least ten years.” It is known around town that Emily Grierson has not had guests in her home for the past decade, except her black servant who runs errands for her to and from the market. When a new city council takes over, however, they begin to tax her once again. She refuses to pay the taxes and appear before the sheriff, so the city authorities invite themselves into her house. When confronted on her tax evasion, Emily reminds them that she doesn't have to pay taxes in Jefferson and to speak to Colonel Sartoris, although he had died 10 years before. In section two, the narrator explains that the Griersons had always been a very proud Southern family. Mr. Grierson, Emily’s father, believes no man is suitable for his daughter and doesn't allow her to date. Emily is largely dependent upon her father, and is left foundering when he dies. After Mr. Grierson's death, Emily does not allow the authorities to remove his body for three days, claiming he is still alive. She breaks down and allows authorities to take the body away for a quick burial. Section three introduces Emily’s beau, Homer Barron, a foreman from the north. Homer comes to Jefferson with a crew of men to build sidewalks outside the Grierson home. After Emily and Homer are seen driving through town several times, Emily visits a druggist. There, she asks to purchase arsenic. The druggist asks what the arsenic is for since it was required of him to ask by law. Emily does not respond and coldly stares him down until he looks away and gives her the arsenic. When Emily opens the package, underneath the skull and bones sign is written, "For Rats." Citizens of Jefferson believe that Miss Emily is going to commit suicide since Homer has not yet proposed in the beginning of section four. The townspeople contact and invite Emily's two cousins to comfort her. Shortly after their arrival, Homer leaves and then returns after the cousins leave Jefferson. After staying in Jefferson for one night, Homer is never seen again. After Homer’s disappearance, Emily begins to age, gain weight, and is rarely seen outside of her home. Soon, Miss Emily passes away. 汽车的重要性《英语作文》 The automobile has become one of the most important means/ways of transportation in the world since it was invented. The automobile has completely changed the lifestyles of almost all the people in the world. In the past, animals like horses and camels were used for traveling and transporting goods. Automobiles are more comfortable and faster. Automobiles have also made it possible for us to transport large quantities of goods and people at the same time. Besides, the invention of the automobile has provided jobs for millions of people all over the world. 翻译： 汽车已经成为世界上最重要的交通工具之一，因为它是发明的。汽车已经完全改变了世界上几乎所有的人的生活方式。 在过去，像马和骆驼的动物被用来运送货物。汽车更舒适，更快速。汽车也使我们能够在同一时间运送大量货物和人。 此外，汽车的发明为全世界上百万的人提供了工作。 三一文库（https://www.sodocs.net/doc/178866438.html,） 〔我想去北京英语作文〕 我想去北京的英语作文如何写？那么，下面是小编给大家整理收集的我想去北京英语作文，供大家阅读参考。 我想去北京英语作文1 I’d like to go to a beautiful place. I think it would be Beijing. Beijing is not only our capital city, but also a famous city with long history and wonderful culture. Beijing is also China’s political and cultural center. There’re many old places of great interest, such as the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and Tiananmen Square. Once you see Tiananmen Square, you will think of Beijing. It has been the symbol of Beijing since 1949. 我想去北京英语作文2 I went to Beijing more than eight times. Beijing is the capital of China. It’s a big city. I am very familiar with Beijing. It takes an hour and forty minutes from Nantong to Beijing by plane. There are many tall buildings in Beijing. It’s a modern city. My family visited the Great Wall, the Summer 汽车英文演讲稿 篇一：汽车英语演讲稿 Good morning everyone ,today, the topic of my lecture（演讲） is “Do you love automobiles（'tmbilz）”. before I start my speech ,I want to ask a question,did there anybody present had seen the movie”the Fast and the Furious['fjrs]”.There are many cars of different styles in the movie,for example ,when you see the movie,you can find roadsters（跑车） just like Porsche（保时捷） GT3,sports utility (通用的）vehicles （车）SUV such as Volkswagen ['f:lks,va:gn]Touareg ['twɑ:reɡ](大众途锐）,even armored cars ,all of them are so powerful and beautiful. When I was a child,I dreamed I can have a car like FORD GT 40,this racing bike（跑车） is amazing and fantastic,but as time goes on ,my hobby is changing,now my favorite car is Jeep Rubicon,this is a car I really want ,it’s dynamic performance（性能） and off-road （越野） performance is top-ranking（一流的） ,which other ordinary SUV is unable to compare; the shape and color of this car is magnificent (华丽的） [mg'nfs()nt],and it’s gear-shift system（齿轮转 小学一年级介绍北京的英语作文 Beijing is an ancient city with a long history. Back in 3000 years ago in Zhou dynasty, Beijing, which was called Ji at the moment, had been named capital of Yan. Thereafter, Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasty all made Beijing their capital. Therefore, Beijing was famous for "Capital of a thousand years". The long history leaves Beijing precious cultural treasure. Winding for several kilometers in Beijing area, the Great Wall is the only man-made structure that could been seen in the space. The Summer Palace is a classic composition of ancient royal gardens, and the Forbidden City is the largest royal palaces in the world. Tiantan is where the emperor used to fete their ancestors, and also the soul of Chinese ancient constructions. The four sites above has been confirmed world cultural heritage by UNESCO. However, the best representatives for Beijing are the vanishing Hutongs and square courtyards. Through hundreds of years, they have become symbol of Beijing's life. Tian'anmen square being still brilliant today with cloverleaf junctions and skyscrapers everywhere, the old-timey scene and modern culture are combined to present a brand new visage of Beijing. As Beijing has been confirmed home city of Olympics 2008, the spirit of "green Olympics, scientific Olympics and humanized Olympic" will surely bring more and more changes to Beijing, promote the development of sports and Olympics in China as well as in the world, and strengthen the friendly communications between Chinese and foreign people. 北京是一个有着悠久历史的古城。 早在 3000 年前的周朝,北京,这叫霁,被命 名为首都燕。此后,辽、金、元、明、清都是北京首都。因此,北京著名的一千年 的“资本”。 悠久的历史使北京宝贵的文化瑰宝。绕组在北京地区几公里,长城是唯一的 人造结构,可以在空间。 颐和园是古代皇家园林的经典组合,和故宫是世界上最大 的皇家宫殿。 天坛是皇帝用来祭祀他们的祖先的地方,也是中国古代建筑的灵魂。 上面的四个网站已经确认被联合国教科文组织世界文化遗产。然而,北京最好的 代表是消失的胡同和广场庭院。数百年来,他们已经成为北京的生活的象征。天 安门广场到处都在今天依然灿烂的蝶式路口和摩天大楼的,古色古香的场景和现 代文化相结合,提出一个全新的北京的面貌。 随着北京 2008 年奥运会已被证实的家乡,精神的“绿色奥运、科技奥 英语作文：关于共享单车的4篇范文 共享单车确实是今年最热的话题之一，很多小伙伴们留言问共享单车要怎么写英语作文，这一份写作指南想必大家都很需要。 词汇篇 bicycle-sharing /sharing bike /shared bikes 共享单车 bicycle /bike /cycle 自行车 ride a bicycle /take a ride /cycling /cycle /bicycle /bike 骑自行车 park 停车 Bluegogo 小蓝单车 Ofo bicycle 小黄车 Mobike 摩拜单车 APP 应用程序(全称为application) scan the QR code 扫描二维码 unlock the smart lock 解开智能锁 timer 计时器 user 用户 smartphone 智能手机 keep fit 健身 environmental protection/ environment friendly/ help the environment 环保的 In full swing 如火如荼 brightly coloured 色彩鲜艳 The combination of technology, creativity and market forces 科技、创意、市场力量的结合 has changed the image of the city 改变了城市形象 curb carbon dioxide emissions 减少二氧化碳排放 reduce road congestion 减少道路拥堵的情况 random parking 随机停车 illegal parking 乱停乱放 bicycle damage 车辆损坏 traffic violation 违章 social mind 公德心 quality 素质 范文篇 (一) 假定你是红星中学初三学生李华。你的美国朋友Jim在给你的邮件中提到他对中国新近出现的一种共享单车“mobike”很感兴趣，并请你做个简要介绍。请你给Jim回信，内容包括： 1. 这种单车的使用方法(如：APP查看车辆、扫码开锁等);a rose for Emily 分析
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