Contrastive Pragmatics and Translation
Evaluation, epistemic modality and communicative styles in English and German
1st Edition
Published on 11. May 2016
218 pages
978-90-272-6727-6 (ISBN)
Description
This book provides the first comprehensive account of English-German pragmatic contrasts in written discourse and their effects on English-German translations. The novel and multi-dimensional corpus-based studies of business communication and popular science writing presented in this book combine quantitative and qualitative approaches and focus on the use of evaluative adjectives and epistemic modal markers. They provide empirical evidence that English and German differ in systematic ways and that translations, while being adapted to target audience's preferences to a large extent, are clearly susceptible to source language interference when it comes to more fine-grained differences. The book discusses which general factors determine the degree of impact of source language features on translations and also comments on the possibility of source language influence on target language norms via translations. The book is of interest to researchers and students in a variety of fields, such as pragmatics, translation studies, genre analysis and stylistics.
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Svenja Kranich
Contrastive Pragmatics and Translation
Evaluation, epistemic modality and communicative styles in English and German
Book
05/2016
John Benjamins Publishing Co
€114.24
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Content
- Intro
- Contrastive Pragmatics and Translation
- Editorial page
- Title page
- LCC data
- Table of contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Chapter 1. Introduction
- 1.1 General description of the study and its central aims
- 1.2 Definitions of key terms
- 1.2.1 Contrastive pragmatics
- 1.2.2 Covert and overt translation
- 1.2.3 Translation 'universals'
- 1.2.4 Subjectivity and addressee-orientation
- 1.3 Contrastive studies of communication styles and cultural stereotyping
- 1.4 Organization of the study
- Chapter 2. General hypotheses, data and methods
- 2.1 General hypotheses
- 2.2 Methods and data
- Chapter 3. The five dimensions of English-German communicative contrasts
- Chapter 4. Contrastive perspectives on English-German pragmatic and stylistic contrasts
- 4.1 English-German contrasts in academic discourse and popular science
- 4.1.1 Text organization and linearity of academic articles
- 4.1.2 Hedging and impersonal expressions in peer-addressed and popular scientific writing
- 4.1.3 Popular science: An overview
- 4.1.4 Deictic elements in popular science
- 4.1.5 Connectivity in popular science
- 4.2 English-German contrasts in business communication
- 4.2.1 General findings
- 4.2.2 Text organization and linearity
- 4.2.3 Modality
- 4.2.4 Person deixis
- 4.3 English-German contrasts in other genres and cross-genre studies
- 4.4 Summary of previous results on English-German communicative contrasts
- Chapter 5. The impact of English-German pragmatic and stylistic contrasts on translations
- 5.1 Translations of popular science
- 5.1.1 General findings
- 5.1.2 Person deixis
- 5.1.3 Connectivity
- 5.2 Translations of business communication
- 5.2.1 General findings
- 5.2.2 Modality
- 5.2.3 Person deixis
- 5.2.4 Connectivity
- 5.2.5 Evaluative lexis
- 5.2.6 Explicitness versus implicitness
- 5.3 Translations of other genres
- 5.3.1 Connectivity
- 5.3.2 Explicitness versus implicitness
- 5.3.3 Verbal routines vs. ad-hoc formulation
- 5.4 Summary of previous results on English-German contrasts in translation
- Chapter 6. English-German contrasts in evaluative practice
- 6.1 Why study evaluation
- 6.2 Hypotheses
- 6.3 Expressions of evaluation in discourse
- 6.4 Adjectives as means of expressing evaluation
- 6.5 Methods
- 6.6 Contrastive findings
- 6.7 Translation analysis
- 6.8 Summary
- Chapter 7. English-German contrasts in epistemic modal marking
- 7.1 Why study epistemic modality
- 7.2 Hypotheses
- 7.3 Epistemic modality in letters to shareholders
- 7.3.1 Previous findings
- 7.3.2 Methods
- 7.3.3 General function of epistemic modal marking in the genre
- 7.3.4 Contrastive findings
- 7.3.4.1 General contrasts in frequency
- 7.3.4.2 Contrasts in preferred lexico-grammatical categories
- 7.3.4.3 Contrasts in the use of modalized statements in different domains of reference
- 7.3.4.4 Contrasts in the use of markers of high and low probability
- 7.3.4.5 Summary
- 7.3.5 Translation analysis
- 7.3.5.1 General contrasts in frequency
- 7.3.5.2 Preferred lexico-grammatical categories in translations
- 7.3.5.3 Use of modalized statements in different domains of reference
- 7.3.5.4 Summary
- 7.4 Epistemic modality in popular science
- 7.4.1 Previous findings
- 7.4.2 Methods
- 7.4.3 General function in the genre
- 7.4.4 Contrastive findings
- 7.4.4.1 General contrasts in frequency
- 7.4.4.2 Contrasts in preferred lexico-grammatical categories
- 7.4.4.3 Contrasts in the use of markers of high and low probability
- 7.4.4.4 Summary
- 7.4.5 Translation analysis
- 7.4.5.1 General differences in frequency
- 7.4.5.2 Preferred lexico-grammatical categories in translations
- 7.4.5.3 Use of markers of high and low probability in translations
- 7.5 A cross-genre comparison of epistemic modality in two genres
- 7.6 Summary
- Chapter 8. Translations as trigger of linguistic change? Changes in the genre of popular science in English texts, English-German translations and German originals
- 8.1 Diachronic change in English popular scientific articles
- 8.2 Diachronic change in English-German translations of popular scientific articles and in German originals
- 8.2.1 The case of we ~ wir
- 8.2.2 The case of And ~ Und
- 8.2.3 The case of But ~ Aber ~ Doch
- 8.2.4 The case of epistemic modal markers
- 8.3 Discussion of the reasons for the diachronic changes observed
- 8.4 Summary and conclusion
- Chapter 9. Conclusion and outlook
- 9.1 Summary
- 9.2 Evaluation of the general hypotheses
- 9.3 Outlook
- Index
