COHESION IN TRANSLATION: A CORPUS STUDY OF HUMAN- TRANSLATED, MACHINE-TRANSLATED, AND NON-TRANSLATED TEXTS (RUSSIAN INTO ENGLISH) A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Tatyana Bystrova-McIntyre December, 2012 i © Copyright by Tatyana Bystrova-McIntyre 2012 All Rights Reserved ii Dissertation written by Tatyana Bystrova-McIntyre B.A., Tver State University, Russia, 1999 M.A., Kent State University, OH, 2004 M.A., Kent State University, OH, 2006 Ph.D., Kent State University, OH, 2012 APPROVED BY __________________________, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Brian J. Baer (advisor) __________________________, Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Gregory M. Shreve __________________________, Erik B. Angelone __________________________, Andrew S. Barnes __________________________, Mikhail Nesterenko ACCEPTED BY __________________________, Interim Chair, Modern and Classical Language Studies Keiran J. Dunne __________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Timothy Chandler iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... XIII LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... XX DEDICATION ......................................................................................................... XXXVI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................... XXXVII CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background ........................................................................................... 2 1.1.1 Global textual features and translation: Text as a culture- specific phenomenon .................................................................................. 2 1.1.2 New realities of the translation industry today ...................... 5 1.1.2.1 Machine translation as a reality of modern translation practice .......................................................................... 5 1.1.2.2 Editing and post-editing in the translation industry today ................................................................................................ 9 1.1.2.3 Translation memory tools and their effect on translators' work ............................................................................ 10 1.2 Statement of the problem .................................................................... 11 1.3 Goals and components of this study ................................................... 12 1.4 Research questions .............................................................................. 14 1.5 Organization of this study ................................................................... 15 iv CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................... 16 2.1 Non-translated vs. translated texts ...................................................... 16 2.1.1 The notion of translationese ................................................. 16 2.1.2 General laws of translation .................................................. 18 2.1.3 Interference of the source language vs. translation universals ................................................................................................................... 19 2.1.4 Methodology of studies involving translated and non- translated texts .......................................................................................... 22 2.1.5 Applicability of studies involving translated and non- translated texts .......................................................................................... 22 2.2 Cohesion, global textual features, and related terms .......................... 23 2.2.1 Text organization and discourse analysis ............................ 23 2.2.2 Cohesion as a linguistic phenomenon .................................. 26 2.2.3 Cohesion and texture............................................................ 28 2.2.4 Cohesion vs. coherence ........................................................ 28 2.2.5 Standards of textuality ......................................................... 30 2.2.6 Definition of cohesion in the present study ......................... 31 2.2.7 Categories of cohesion ......................................................... 32 2.2.7.1 Grammatical cohesion .......................................... 33 2.2.7.2 Lexical cohesion ................................................... 46 2.2.8 Other global textual features ................................................ 50 v 2.2.8.1 Nominalization ...................................................... 51 2.2.8.2 Lexical density ...................................................... 52 2.2.8.3 Average word length ............................................. 52 2.2.8.4 Average sentence length ....................................... 53 2.2.8.5 Passives ................................................................. 54 2.2.8.6 Prepositional phrases ............................................ 55 2.2.9 Cohesion and other global textual features as a language- and culture-specific phenomenon .................................................................... 55 2.3 Studies of cohesion and other global textual features ......................... 59 2.3.1 Studies of cohesion in the context of teaching and evaluating writing ....................................................................................................... 59 2.3.2 Studies of cohesion in the context of text comprehension ... 62 2.3.3 Studies of cohesion as a genre-specific and text-type specific phenomenon .............................................................................................. 63 2.3.4 Studies of cohesion in the context of translation studies ..... 65 2.3.5 Studies of other global textual features in the context of translation studies...................................................................................... 69 2.3.6 Cohesion and other global textual features and translation expertise .................................................................................................... 71 2.4 Conclusions ......................................................................................... 73 CHAPTER 3: METHODS AND MATERIALS ............................................................. 76 vi 3.1 Corpus linguistics as a methodology to analyze cohesion and other global textual features ........................................................................................... 76 3.2 The framework for studying cohesion and other global textual features ............................................................................................................................... 78 3.3 Materials ............................................................................................. 83 3.3.1 Corpus compilation .............................................................. 83 3.3.1.1 Literary corpus ...................................................... 89 3.3.1.2 Newspaper corpus ................................................. 96 3.3.1.3 Scientific corpus.................................................... 98 3.4 Methods and procedures ................................................................... 101 3.4.1 Corpus database ................................................................. 101 3.4.2 Corpus annotation .............................................................. 102 3.4.3 Data collection ................................................................... 103 3.4.4 Data analysis: General procedures for descriptive statistical analysis and significance testing ............................................................. 106 CHAPTER 4: TEXTUAL CHARACTERISTICS OF LITERARY, NEWSPAPER, AND SCIENTIFIC TEXTS ACROSS NON-TRANSLATED, HUMAN-TRANSLATED, AND MACHINE-TRANSLATED CORPORA ............................................................. 111 4.1 Cohesive and other global textual characteristics selected for the genre description of the corpora ................................................................................... 111 4.2 Cohesive characteristics of literary, newspaper, and scientific texts 113 vii 4.2.1 Third-person pronominal cohesive devices in literary, newspaper, and scientific texts ............................................................... 113 4.2.2 Possessive pronouns in literary, newspaper, and scientific texts ......................................................................................................... 116 4.2.3 Demonstrative pronouns in literary, newspaper, and scientific texts ......................................................................................................... 120 4.2.4 Definite article in literary, newspaper, and scientific texts 124 4.2.5 Comparative cohesive devices in literary, newspaper, and scientific texts ......................................................................................... 128 4.2.6 Reference cohesive devices in literary, newspaper, and scientific texts ......................................................................................... 131 4.2.7 Conjunction cohesive devices in literary, newspaper, and scientific texts ......................................................................................... 135 4.3 Textual characteristics