Colloquialisms in Translated Text. Double Illusion?

Abstract

In contemporary Finnish literature informal and colloquial varieties of language are widely used for stylistic purposes. This study investigates the use of colloquialisms in translated Finnish fiction as compared to non-translated texts of the respective genres. Due to the corpus-based approach on a fairly large material, the primary emphasis is on quantitative aspects, but some attention is paid to qualitative differences as well. The study is descriptive in nature and is restricted to lexical manifestations of colloquialisms, i.e., non-standard spelling and vocabulary. Based on the presumption that translations are conservative in comparison to original texts, it is hypothesised that both the extent and the frequency of colloquialisms are greater in original fiction than in translated fiction. Colloquialisms are examined using 14 groups of words established with the help of corpus-based key word lists. The analysis reveals that the colloquial features represented by these groups of words generally appear more extensively (number of works) and more often (frequency) in the original Finnish than in the translated Finnish. There are also strategic differences between writers and translators in the utilization of different means of expression. Generally speaking, the authors of the original texts tend to make better use of the different levels of language in their colloquialisation strategy than the translators do.