Across Languages and Cultures
Volume/Issue:
Volume 25: Issue 2
Looking under the hood: Which linguistic features contribute to the source language classification of direct and indirect translations into Finnish, and why is that?
Authors:
Ilmari Ivaska University of Turku, Finland

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https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7366-7111
and
Laura Ivaska University of Turku, Finland

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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6998-5077
Pages:
216–239
Online Publication Date:
20 Nov 2024
Publication Date:
20 Nov 2024
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1556/084.2024.00912
Keywords:
indirect translation; crosslinguistic interference; keyness analysis; gravitational pull model; Finnish
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Abstract

The study of features that affect the linguistic form of translated texts has been one of the central questions within the field of corpus-based translation studies. In the partially overlapping field of computational linguistics, previous studies have shown that source languages of individual texts can be detected automatically in direct translations and indirect translations (i.e., translations done from translations). However, computationally oriented approaches have paid limited attention to what specific linguistic features make successful classification possible. Consequently, the types of linguistic phenomena characterizing translations and the kinds of linguistic interference that can be detected in them remain underexplored. In this study, we study the linguistic features that contribute to the identification of the source language of direct translations from English, French, German, Greek, and Swedish, as well as indirect translations from Greek into Finnish, with English, French, German, and Swedish as mediating languages. Theoretically, this study builds on Halverson's (2017) gravitational pull model to explain the mechanisms behind our findings in a theoretically sound fashion and to generate theoretically motivated, specific hypotheses to be tested by future research. The analysis makes use of keyness analysis as a supervised machine learning technique, as well as exploratory factor analysis (EFA) as an unsupervised machine learning technique. The results indicate that sentence length, sentence-initial adverbs and sentence-final specification are the linguistic features that set the different types of translations apart from each other. Furthermore, the salient features of the ultimate source language outweigh those of the mediating languages in indirect translations or the entrenched parallels between specific language pairs.

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Cover Across Languages and Cultures
Across Languages and Cultures
Print ISSN:
1585-1923
Online ISSN:
1588-2519

Editor-in-Chief: Krisztina KÁROLY (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary)

Consulting Editor: Dániel MÁNY  (Semmelweis University, Hungary)

Managing Editor: Réka ESZENYI (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary)

Founding Editor-in-Chief: Kinga KLAUDY (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary)

EDITORIAL BOARD

  • Andrew CHESTERMAN (University of Helsinki, Finland)
  • Kirsten MALMKJÆR (University of Leicester, UK)
  • Christiane NORD (University of Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa)
  • Anthony PYM (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain, University of Melbourne, Australia)
  • Mary SNELL-HORNBY (University of Vienna, Austria)
  • Sonja TIRKKONEN-CONDIT (University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland)

ADVISORY BOARD

  • Mona BAKER (Shanghai International Studies University, China, University of Oslo, Norway)
  • Łucja BIEL (University of Warsaw, Poland)
  • Gloria CORPAS PASTOR (University of Malaga, Spain; University of Wolverhampton, UK)
  • Rodica DIMITRIU (Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Iasi, Romania)
  • Birgitta Englund DIMITROVA (Stockholm University, Sweden)
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  • Brian MOSSOP (York University, Toronto, Canada)
  • Orero PILAR (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain)
  • Gábor PRÓSZÉKY (Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungary)
  • Alessandra RICCARDI (University of Trieste, Italy)
  • Edina ROBIN (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary)
  • Myriam SALAMA-CARR (University of Manchester, UK)
  • Mohammad Saleh SANATIFAR (independent researcher, Iran)
  • Sanjun SUN (Beijing Foreign Studies University, China)
  • Anikó SOHÁR (Pázmány Péter Catholic University,  Hungary)
  • Sonia VANDEPITTE (University of Gent, Belgium)
  • Albert VERMES (Eszterházy Károly University, Hungary)
  • Yifan ZHU (Shanghai Jiao Tong Univeristy, China)

Prof. Dr. Krisztina KÁROLY 
School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University
H-1088 Budapest, Rákóczi út 5., Hungary 
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Across Languages and Cultures
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