The Translation of German Nominal Compounds in Dutch and English: a Syntactic and Semantic Analysis
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Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte Jani Noninckx The Translation of German Nominal Compounds in Dutch and English: a Syntactic and Semantic Analysis Masterproef voorgedragen tot het behalen van de graad van Master in het Vertalen 2015 Promotor: Prof. Dr. Sonia Vandepitte Vakgroep Vertalen Tolken Communicatie ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein I am highly indebted to many people, both for bringing my academic career and this dissertation to a successful end. It is, therefore, that I would like to thank the following people: First and foremost, my first words of gratitude are directed to my family, for they have given me the opportunity to pursuit my dreams and studies, and for their support throughout the years. Secondly, I would also like to acknowledge my friends for bringing joy into my life every single day, and for all their help and support. However, there are some people whom I believe to deserve a little extra credit, such as Darline Colinet, my closest friend for many years and hopefully many years to come, Annelies Boonants, and Elissa Vanmarcke, for their love, appraisal, and friendship in general and during my darkest days. Of course, I must not forget those who supported me and my work academically. My highest respect and appraisal are directed towards Professor Dr Vandepitte, without her help, revision, counsel and interesting conversations, this work would not have come into existence in the first place. I would also like to thank all academic staff for passing on their knowledge and skills onto us, the students. For what would we be without their passion for the trade? 4 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables and Charts ...................................................................................................................... 6 List of Symbols and Abbreviations ........................................................................................................ 7 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 9 2 THE COMPOUND ..................................................................................................................... 10 2.1 Compounding as an important word formation process .............................................................. 10 2.2 Compound nouns: a definition .................................................................................................... 11 2.3 Types and Characteristics of Compound Nouns ........................................................................ 11 2.3.1 Compounding Patterns ........................................................................................................ 11 2.3.2 Characteristics and Differences of German, Dutch and English compounds ....................... 12 3 TRANSLATING COMPOUND NOUNS: SYNTACTIC ASPECTS ......................................... 14 3.1 On the term ‘translation strategy’ ................................................................................................ 14 3.2 From German into Dutch: Campe (2008) and De Metsenaere et al. (2014) ................................ 14 3.3 From German into English: Ermlich (2004)................................................................................ 17 4 TRANSLATING COMPOUND NOUNS: SEMANTIC ASPECTS........................................... 19 4.1 Explicitation and Implicitation .................................................................................................... 19 4.2 Types of Explicitation and Implicitation ..................................................................................... 21 4.3 Explicitation and Asymmetry Hypotheses .................................................................................. 22 4.4 Addition, Omission and Substitution .......................................................................................... 23 5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES ..................................................................... 25 6 METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................................... 27 6.1 Corpus collection ........................................................................................................................ 27 6.2 About Museum Related Texts ..................................................................................................... 28 6.3 Focus and Restrictions ................................................................................................................ 29 6.4 Syntactic Analysis ....................................................................................................................... 30 6.5 Semantic Analysis ....................................................................................................................... 31 7 RESULTS ................................................................................................................................... 34 7.1 Syntactic Analyses ...................................................................................................................... 34 7.1.1 Compound Nouns ............................................................................................................... 36 7.1.2 Simplex ............................................................................................................................... 36 7.1.3 Noun + Adjective ................................................................................................................ 37 7.1.4 Noun + Genitive Preposition ............................................................................................... 37 7.1.5 Noun + Other Preposition ................................................................................................... 37 7.1.6 Verbal Construction ............................................................................................................ 38 7.1.7 Relative Clause ................................................................................................................... 38 7.1.8 Noun + Adverb ................................................................................................................... 38 7.1.9 Pronominal Reference ......................................................................................................... 38 7.2 Discussion and Conclusion: Syntactic Aspects ........................................................................... 39 7.3 Semantic Analyses ...................................................................................................................... 40 7.3.1 Implicitation – Obligatory, Optional, Pragmatic ................................................................. 42 7.3.2 Implicitation – Omission ..................................................................................................... 43 7.3.3 Explicitation – Obligatory, Optional, Pragmatic ................................................................. 44 7.3.4 Explicitation – Addition ...................................................................................................... 45 8 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 48 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................... 51 Appendices .......................................................................................................................................... 54 6 LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table 1 Campe’s Categories with Examples (2008, p. 4) ................................................. 15 Table 2 De Metsenaere et al.’s (2014, p. 71) Translation Strategies and Functions ......... 17 Table 3 Ermlich’s Categories with Examples (2004, p. 209) ........................................... 18 Table 4 Museum Texts ...................................................................................................... 27 Table 5 Subcorpora Texts and Number of Compound Types........................................... 28 Table 6 Translation Strategy Categories ........................................................................... 30 Table 7 Semantic Strategy Categories .............................................................................. 32 Table 8 Ratio of German NN, VN and NN/VN Compound Nouns .................................. 34 Table 9 Quantitative Results Translation Strategies ......................................................... 35 Table 10 Occurrences with and without Semantic Differences ........................................ 40 Table 11 Quantitative Results Semantic Categories ......................................................... 40 Chart 1 Translation Strategies in both Subcorpora ........................................................... 35 Chart 2 Semantic Strategies German-Dutch ..................................................................... 41 Chart 3 Semantic Strategies German-English ................................................................... 41 7 LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS DE German compound noun EN English compound noun or translation NL Dutch compound noun or translation NN Noun-Noun compound nouns VN Verb-Noun compound nouns NN/VN Double motivated compound nouns ST Source Text TT Target Text * Non-existing or (grammatically/syntactically) incorrect ? Irregular or unfamiliar