Identifying universals of text translation*
Ido Kanter, Haggai Kfir, Brenda Malkiel, Miriam Shlesinger · Journal of Quantitative Linguistics · 2006
Straightforward quantitative analyses of authentic texts have allowed linguists and translation scholars to discern patterns in individual languages as well as features which set translations apart from originals (Baker, 1993 Baker, M. 1993. “Corpus linguistics and translation studies – Implications and applications”. In Text and technology. In honour of John Sinclair, Edited by: Baker, M., Francis, G. and Tognini-Bonelli, E. 233–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Chesterman, 2004 Chesterman, A. 2004. “Hypotheses about translation universals”. In Claims, changes and challenges in translation studies, Edited by: Hansen, G., Malmkjær, K. and Gile, D. 1–13. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). A language can also be studied statistically, an approach epitomized by the application of Zipf's Law (Zipf, 1949 Zipf, G. 1949. Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort, Reading: Addison-Wesley Press. [Google Scholar]), which states that word-frequency distributions follow an almost identical curve regardless of language. To date, no universal behaviour governing the joint probability distribution of words in two or more languages has been either proposed or observed. This study identifies new universals which characterize the mutual overlaps between a corpus of original English and three corpora of translated English. Specifically, it suggests a remarkable similarity in (a) the number of types unique to each translated corpus, and (b) the number of types common to the original-English corpus and each of the translated corpora. We argue that these universal behaviours can be used both to determine the ontological status of an unidentified language (whether it is an original or a translation) and to identify the source language of a translation.