Chapter 6. The effect of directionality on lexico‑syntactic simplification in French>

Abstract

This chapter reports on an exploratory case study designed to investigate lexico-syntactic simplification in French>L1 translation) and translation from the L1 into the FL (L1>FL translation). The aim of the study is to determine whether directionality affects student translation production and, if so, how. Lexico-syntactic simplification is operationalised as mean sentence length, root lemma-token ratio, lexical density, and core vocabulary coverage. The results indicate that translation directionality exerts an effect on the distribution of lexical items (lemmas, lexical words, and high-frequency words) in the translations (as compared to their corresponding source texts), with there being more lexical simplification in L1>FL translation than in FL>L1 translation. They reveal, in addition, that student translation production is also impacted by constraints both at the macro level (translation experience) and at the micro level (students’ idiosyncrasies and individual source texts).