Chapter 3. Language contact and change through translation in Afrikaans and South African English

Abstract

Languages are constantly changing, and language contact has been identified as an important factor that contributes to language change. Even though translation is a form of language contact, it has hardly been considered as a factor in contact-induced language change. Against this background, this chapter investigates the potential role of translation in language change in Afrikaans and South African English using a bidirectional comparable and parallel corpus with synchronic and diachronic components. The investigation focuses on genitive variation – a linguistic feature that has been shown to be undergoing change in the two languages as a consequence of language contact. The results show that translation works in tandem with other factors to conventionalise change in terms of genitive preferences.