Representation of interactional metadiscourse in translated and native English: A corpus-assisted study

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the differences between translated and non-translated English texts with regard to interactional metadiscourse features, which are crucial in engaging readers in the reasoning process and establishing the credibility of a proposition. Despite numerous studies investigating lexical and syntactic differences between translated and non-translated language, little research has been conducted on the textual level in terms of metadiscourse use. To address this gap, we conducted a comparative analysis of six interactional markers across two comparable multi-genre corpora, namely, FLOB (Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English) comprising native English and the English subset of COCE (Corpus of Chinese-English) containing translated English. Our ANOVA analyses revealed that translated English exhibited a tendency to underuse stance features, such as hedges, boosters, and attitude markers, compared to native English. Furthermore, our post-hoc analysis revealed that genre modulated the use of metadiscourse features in both translated and native texts. Importantly, we found that there was greater cross-genre variation in the use of interactional metadiscourse in translated English than in native English. Our study highlights the unique characteristics of translation and emphasizes the importance of taking into account metadiscourse in the field of translation studies.