Functionally-defined recurrent multi-word units in English-to-Polish translation

Abstract

Abstract This study uses both parallel and comparable reference corpora in the English-Polish language pair to explore how translators deal with recurrent multi-word items performing specific discoursal functions. We also consider whether the observed tendencies overlap with those found in native texts, and the extent to which the discoursal functions realised by the multi-word items under scrutiny are “preserved” in translation. Capitalizing on findings from earlier research (Granger, 2014; Grabar & Lefer, 2015), we analyzed a pre-selected set of phrases signaling stance-taking and those functioning as textual, discourse-structuring devices originally found in the European Parliament proceedings corpus (Koehn, 2005) and included in the English-Polish parallel corpus Paralela (Pęzik, 2016). Since our goal was to explore whether and to what extent English functionally-defined phrases reflect the same level of formulaicity and regularity in both Polish translations and native Polish texts, the findings provided insights into the translation tendencies of such items, and revealed – using inter-rater agreement metrics – that the discoursal functions of recurrent n-grams may change in translation.