The Unique Items Hypothesis in Czech Translated from English Cover Image

Hypotéza unique items v překladu z angličtiny
The Unique Items Hypothesis in Czech Translated from English

Author(s): Adéla Špínová
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Translation Studies
Published by: Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Nakladatelství Karolinum
Keywords: unique items hypothesis; corpus-based translation studies; comparable monolingual corpus; translated Czech

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to test the so-called unique items hypothesis on Czech language data. The hypothesis formulated by Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit presumes the underrepresentation of unique items (target-language elements that have no direct counterparts in the source language) in translated texts compared to non-translations in the same language. A monolingual comparable sample corpus consisting of Czech translations and non-translations served as language data, both subcorpora containing approximately 17 million tokens. The tested Czech unique items were chosen from lexical units, word-formation phenomena, syntactic structures and language use phenomena. The frequency of these items was subjected to statistical testing with R software. The results reveal a general tendency of translated Czech language to contain less unique items. However, some of the individual items do not correspond to this tendency.

  • Issue Year: 2018
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 117-130
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Czech