Motion verbs in
Crowdsourcing translation:
The differences between the translation
strategies used by professional and
non-professional translators.
Author: Mariëlle Brouwer
Student number: 10000577
Main Supervisor: Dr O.J. Zwartjes
Second supervisor: Dr E.R.G.Metz
June 2016
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Table of content
1. Introduction ... 3
2. Crowdsourcing translation ... 6
2.1 Definition of crowdsourcing ... 6
2.2 Uses of crowdsourcing translation ... 6
2.3 Impact of crowdsourcing translation ... 7
2.4 Quality assurance of crowdsourcing translation ... 8
3. Motion Verbs ... 9
3.1 Theories around motion verbs ... 9
3.2 Motion verbs in translation ... 14
4. Quality of translation – form or meaning? ... 18
5. Method ... 19
5.1 Corpus ... 19
5.2 Methodology ... 19
6. Results ... 22
6.1 Results English-Spanish ... 22
6.1.1 The mistery of a hansome cab ... 22
6.1.2 The oval portrait ... 24
6.1.3. Bartleby the scrivener ... 25
6.1.4. The angel of the odd... 27
6.1.5. Results of all English-Spanish translations combined ... 29
6.2 Results Spanish-English ... 32
6.2.1 La autopista del sur ... 32
6.2.2 Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes ... 35
6.2.3 La cueva de la mora ... 37
6.2.4 Results of all Spanish-English translations combined ... 39
7. Conclusion and discussion ... 42
Bibliography ... 45
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1. Introduction
The term crowdsourcing has been introduced at the end of the 20th century ‘to indicate a new way of getting work done, by involving the crowd’ (European Commission, 2012, p.5). It is used in many areas, including translation. Crowdsourcing translation is an ever increasing popular method of translating the internet, since it gives the large number of multilingual people around the world the opportunity to use their competences, without demanding financial compensation, as many companies currently do not have the resources to pay for all their translations needed. Nevertheless, crowdsourcing translation may also bring risks, such as the exploitation of free labour, the deprivation of a source of revenue for professional translators, and the risk of the decline of quality standards (European Commission, 2012, p.5).
Most crowdsourcing translators are not professionals and do not have a background in translation studies or linguistics. In this thesis I will investigate in what way these non-professional crowdsourcing translators use different strategies to translate motion verbs and manner while translating between languages that express manner and motion in a different way.
I chose to study the translation of motion verbs from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English, since this often creates difficulties for translators. Spanish uses a verb to encode the path of motion, whereas English uses an associated particle or satellite in order to encode the path of motion or to convey the core information of the path of movement. Therefore, Spanish is called a ‘verb-framed’ language (V-language), while English is a ‘satellite-framed’ language (S-language) (Talmy, 1991, p.486).
Furthermore, the two languages differ in the way they express manner. In English, manner is highly codable, since it is often carried by the main verb; many verbs of motions convey manner in combination with a satellite which expresses the direction of the motion (e.g. I ran into the house). Spanish has a more restricted use of non-directional verbs and prefers to use verbs with inherent directionality. In Spanish, manner can only be expressed by an adjunct to an already complete clause (e.g. Entré la casa corriendo [I entered the house running]) (Slobin, 1996, p. 196).
According to Slobin (1996, p. 205) there is a difference in rhetorical style between Spanish and English. For English speakers, more narrative attentions is devoted to the dynamics of movement, since there are many available verbs of motion which convey manner and ‘can be associated with satellites and locative prepositional phrases to trace out detailed paths in relation to ground elements’ (Slobin. 1996, p.205). In contrast, Spanish speakers often devote less attention to the dynamics and more attention to static scene-setting. Moreover, translators from Spanish to English tend to add manner descriptions when translating from Spanish. On the other hand, translators from English to Spanish tend to leave manner out (Slobin, 1996, p.205).
In order to perform this research I formulated the following research question:
What are the differences between the translations of professional and non-professional translators for the translations of motion verbs from Spanish to English and English to Spanish?
I believe I will find a difference in the way in which professional translators will deal with the translation of motion verbs compared to non-professional translators. I believe that professional
4 translators will be aware of the structural differences between the two languages and know the effect of the translation strategies used in a text, whereas non-professional translators might be unaware of the difficulties related to the translation of motion verbs.
As for the translations from Spanish to English, I expect that non-professionals will translate more faithfully; they will use more form-based strategies and will not add any additional information, whereas professional translators might find the original translations too bland and might add information to make the translation seem more like original English narrative texts. For the translations from English to Spanish, I expect that a professional translator will often make changes and reduce the full-path ground depiction as also concluded by Slobin (1996, p. 210). Nevertheless, I expect that non-professional translators will not reduce the full-path ground depiction, which will lead to more extended translations and foregrounding of information that is backgrounded in the original text.
Concerning the translation of manner, I believe to find that professional translators often omit manner when translating from English to Spanish, which will prevent them from placing too much emphasis on manner in the Spanish translation. On the contrary, I believe to find that non-professional translators from English to Spanish are more hesitant to omit manner and might therefore place more narrative weight on manner than in the original text.
If differences are found between the strategies used by professional translators and non-professionals, this will indicate a difference in the quality of texts translated through crowdsourcing translation and translations carried out by professional translators.
For this research I will use translations provided by the immersion platform of the internet app Duolingo. Duolingo is an online platform which allows people to learn a new language while translating the web. All types of texts are translated via crowdsourcing translation through this platform. Since motion verbs often occur in narrative stories I will use translation of short stories. I will use several stories on Duolingo that have also been translated by professional translators, which makes it easier to compare the results.
I will investigate the strategies used to translate motion verbs from English to Spanish and Spanish to English, since these two languages express motion in a different way. In order to investigate the translation from Spanish to English, I will use three short stories and two translations for each text: one translation carried out by a professional translator and one text translated via Duolingo:
Julio Cortazár, La autopista del sur (1966)
Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, La cueva de la mora(1871)
Gabriel García Márquez, Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes(1968)
In order to investigate the translation from English to Spanish I will use three short stories and two translations for each text: one translation carried out by a professional translator and one text translated via Duolingo:
Herman Meville, Bartleby the scrivener(1853) Edgar Allan Poe, The oval portrait (1842) Edgar Allan Poe, The Angel of the odd(1850)
5 Fergus Hume, The mystery of a hansome cab(1886)
I will investigate the translation strategies used and identify the main differences between the strategies used for the translation of trajectory and manner. I expect the non-professional translators to use more form-based translation strategies.
This thesis is divided into several chapters. The following chapter provides an introduction into crowdsourcing translation and highlights the main features and applications but also the issues related to this type of translation. The third chapter discusses the research in the field of motion verbs and the implications of the typological differences between languages for translation professionals. The fourth chapter shows the views of scholars regarding the quality of translation and the question whether translations should be form or meaning based. In the fifth chapter the method of the research is explained. The sixth chapter provides the results of the research. In the last chapters conclusions are drawn and the results are discussed.
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2. Crowdsourcing translation
2.1 Definition of crowdsourcing
In 2006, the term ‘crowdsourcing’ has been introduced by Jeff Howe, editor at Wired magazine. The word is a portmanteau of the words ‘crowd’ and ‘outsourcing. With this term, Howe defined a new phenomenon, which according to him ‘would revolutionize a wide range of fields , and primarily the way of doing business as we know it’ (European Commission, 2012, p.9). He argues that the gap between professionals and amateurs has shrunk, due to technological advances. Since most people have access to electronics nowadays, companies can take advantage of the talent of the public and no longer have to outsource specific tasks. Van Ess also proposed a definition of crowdsourcing which highlights some of the facets of the phenomenon: ‘crowdsourcing is channelling the experts’ desire to solve a problem and then freely sharing the answer with everyone’ (van Ess, 2010).
Another important aspect of crowdsourcing is the role of the community. A community of amateurs enables a distributed problem-solving and production model. According to James Surowiecki, ‘under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, often smarter than the smartest people in them. Groups do not need to be dominated by exceptionally intelligent people in order to be smart. Even if most of the people within a group are not especially well-informed or rational, it can still reach a collectively wise decision’ (Surowiecki, 2004, p. XIII).
The European Commission’s research on crowdsourcing translation names four reasons which can explain why crowdsourcing has become a trend. Firstly, the over-education of the middle class has caused that many people are not able to find a job in their field of specialization. Crowdsourcing offers these highly educated people an outlet for their talents and interests. Secondly, technological development has allowed a instantaneous flow of information worldwide, a precondition for crowdsourcing. Thirdly, the emergence of the open software movement has given people access to freely available software. Fourthly, the existence of well organized and enthusiastic communities based on affinities has made it easier for companies to get in touch with people who possess the specific skills companies need for their tasks which used to be outsourced (European Commission, 2012, p.10).
Some interesting examples of the application of crowdsourcing include Linux, the open-source software movement, Wikipedia, the first online encyclopaedia, the social media platform Facebook, and Kiva, a non-profit organization that wishes to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty (European Commission, 2012).
2.2 Uses of crowdsourcing translation
In the current day and age, the demand for translations is exploding and it is impossible for professional translators to keep up with it. Nevertheless, crowdsourcing translation can also be seen as a serious threat to the translation profession, since it blurs the boundaries between amateurism and paid work and between working and leisure time. Crowdsourcing translation is especially popular in the audiovisual sector (due to fansubbing) in journalism and in the non-profit sector (European Commission, 2012, pp.23-24).
One of the crowdsourcing platforms that will be used in this research is Duolingo. In 2011, Duolingo was created by computer science professor Luis von Ahn as an innovative platform which uses
7 crowdsourcing translation while providing people the opportunity to learn a new language. It is designed in such a way that that ‘as users progress through the lessons they simultaneously help to translate websites and other documents’ (European Commission, 2012, p.33). Since users do not translate artificial sentences that were created for learning purposes only, but sentences from real material on the internet in need of translation, this means that there is a double profit while no extra effort is demanded from the learners.
Once learners made some progress they will be asked to contribute to the translations of real texts. They will also be asked to review the translations done by other users. Once texts have been translated and revised by several users, the texts can be upload on a web page. Each learner is allotted sentences to translate according to his level of proficiency in the language, which means that the more complex sentences and texts are only available for advanced learners. In addition, the platform also includes tools, such as an online dictionary (European Commission, 2012, p.33).
Nevertheless, in order for Duolingo to make profit of the translations from its platform, it will need a very large number of advanced language learners who are able to provide good quality texts. However, the index between students who start learning and those who exit with a good level of the language learned must be higher in self-directed online learner than with normal class language tuition, since it is more likely that ‘their level of excitement will plateau once they don’t feel they advance at the same speed’ as before (García, 2013, p.22; 24).
2.3 Impact of crowdsourcing translation
Crowdsourcing translation does not only effect the practice of translation, but it will also have an impact on the way translation is perceived and it will have an effect on translation theories (European Commission, 2012, p.6).
Fansubbing can provide interesting information for translation theories. Fansubbers will try to produce a translation that is as faithful as possible to the original and that conveys all jokes, quotations, textual references etc. Since fans have the advantage of knowing a series or film very well, they appear to be privileged, which is called the ‘elitist’ approach by Lawrence Venuti (Venuti, 1995, p.127). In general, this elitist approach is considered to be less useful for commercial translation. Nevertheless, Venuti disagrees with the assumption that a translation is bad when it sounds like a translation and that it should be as close as possible to the original. Fansubbing can be considered to be a more foreignising type of translation, whereas commercial subtitling or dubbing usually tends towards radical domestication (European Commission, 2012, p.35). This means that:
‘fansubbing reverses, at least partially, the widespread idea that the easiest solution is the one favoured by the public and shows that foreignising strategies are not merely a theoretical option devoid of practical applications and unpalatable for the public. The viewers are in many cases more demanding than the industry seems to believe and open to solutions which require more effort on their part, but enhance the pleasure they get from the product they are offered’ (European Commission, 2012, p. 36).
In addition, the success of crowdsourcing has contributed to a growing interest in translation among the general public. This can help the translation profession to shed the perception of translation being an invisible and dull activity. Since crowdsourcing makes translation visible to the wider public,
8 it can help to raise awareness about the importance of multilingualism and translation and help to boost the image of translation. Crowdsourcing can make people aware that multilingualism is a ‘inescapable reality’ but it also contributes to a more multilingual web. Crowdsourcing can also make web translations possible for smaller and endangered languages (European Commission, 2012, pp. 36-37).
Nevertheless, the involvement of amateurs in the translation sector can also put a strain on professional translators. Translators fear that they will lose work, since amateurs are willing to do the same jobs for free. Many translators also worry about companies exploiting crowdsourcing translation and making profit from free labour. They have concerns about the quality of the translations delivered by crowdsourcing, since these amateur translators lack the expertise and specific knowledge necessary to translate. In addition, since crowdsourcing translation are done by unidentified persons, these persons cannot be held responsible for the work they publish on the internet (European Commission, 2012, p.37)
2.4 Quality assurance of crowdsourcing translation
Since questions about the quality of crowdsourcing translations are often raised, some mechanisms to judge the quality of a crowdsourcing translation have been developed. Different crowdsourcing translation platforms use different mechanisms in order to ensure the quality of the translations they deliver is high. For example, Microsofts’ Translator CTF uses the possibility to have a professional translator in a moderating role (Aikawa, Yamamoto, Isahara, 2012, p.5).
Another option used by the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform is to set requirements for all translators. On their website it states that only fluent speakers of both languages can participate. Furthermore, translators are not allowed to use online translation systems such as Google translate and will be rejected if they are found to do so. Translators are asked to copy any word they cannot translate into the translation as it is, but need to meet a threshold translation rate (e.g 90%) before their task is considered complete (Ambati, Vogel and Carbonell, 2010, pp.2-3).
It can also be required to pass a small test or have a minimum percentage of previously accepted submissions. Another option is a location based restriction, for example, translations into Spanish are only accepted if they are provided from Spain (Ambati, Vogel and Carbonell, 2010, p.3).
According to Zaidan and Calssion Burch (2011, pp.1220-1221), it is possible to produce quality text by non-professional translators. In order to achieve these quality results, a variety of mechanisms that increase translation quality can be applied. Without these mechanisms translations are often of lower quality and disfluent. According to Zaidan and Calssion Burch, the best way of achieving high quality translations is by soliciting multiple translations and editing those to select the best. In order to select the best translation they use a machine-learning-inspired approach that can assign a score to each translation. This score is based on different features of the translator, such as country of residence of the translator, years of speaking the target and source language, edit rate from other translations, calibration against professional translators (Zaidan, Calssion and Burch, 2011, pp.1220-1221).
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3. Motion Verbs
3.1 Theories around motion verbs
Over thirty years ago Talmy proposed an extremely successful typological classification to event constructions (Croft et.al., 2010, p.1). After his first publications in 1972 and 1975 he proposed a new typological parameter which determined the type of verb languages use in clauses to code motion and location events in 1985. Talmy argues that languages express or lexicalize different aspects of the motion or location situation on the verb (Aske, 1989, p.1). His theory can be explained in a Motion event frame (see figure 1).
Figure 1: Talmy’s Motion Event Frame (Aske, 1989, p.1)
This frame exists of a simple motion event frame and an expanded motion event frame. In order to linguistically code a motion event, the following aspects or components are relevant to form the simple motion event frame:
The (abstract) predicate of Motion
The moving entity, the Figure phrase (also known as Theme or Trajector)
The entity which acts as a spatial reference point for the movement , or Ground
The Path of the motion with respect to the Ground object (Aske, 1989, p.1).
These three factors can be schematized in the inner frame. In addition, there are two optional coding factors, which constitute the expanded motion event frame:
The circumstance event of the motion event, which is typically the activity or manner that accompanies the motion.
The event originating the motion or causation event (Aske, 1989, p.1).
With this framework Talmy developed a three way typology on how manner and path are expressed. He did so by comparing the grammatical encoding of two semantic components of a motion event, manner and path, across languages (Croft et.al., 2010, p.2). According to Talmy, ‘languages differ as to what aspect of the frame the main verb lexicalizes’ (Aske, 1989, p.1).
10 When speakers of most Indo-European languages, including English but excluding the Romance languages, talk about motion events, they conflate the manner with the fact of motion in the main verb. In this way they produce ‘manner’ verbs, such as jump, walk, skip, saunter. A similar production of manner verbs is not possible in most Romance and Semitic languages, like Spanish. In Spanish speakers will have to conflate the path with the fact of motion in the main verb, which results in the production of ‘path’ verbs, such as ‘entrar’ [to enter], ‘cruzar’[to cross] or salir [to exit] (Naigles and Terrazas, 1998, p.363).
Furthermore, the canonical lexicalization pattern in English can be observed across descriptions of many motion events, whereas the canonical lexicalization pattern in Spanish is most often observed in descriptions of motion events that highlight the moving object’s final location or its traversal of a boundary. In Spanish, it is more likely for a path beginning inside an enclosure and ending outside this enclosure to be described with a path verb (such as ‘salir’ [to exit]) than a path with an upward trajectory and no salient origin or endpoint. In English, however, both types of paths can be described by path particles, such as out, of or up, and the motion verb can describe the manner by which the paths are traversed (Naigles and Terrazas, 1998, p.363).
The sentence frame itself often covaried with the verb type. In English, manner verbs are usually produced in intransitives frames and accompanied by a preposition that encodes the path (e.g. ‘He walks into the house’). Less frequently used English path verbs are produced in transitive frames with the ground as the direct objet (e.g. ‘He enters the house’). In Spanish, these frame can also be observed, often as sentences containing prepositions such as a [to] and de [from]. This can be explained by the fact that ‘these prepositions specify that the motion event involves not only a trajectory but also a specific endpoint or origin for the moving object’ (Naigles and Terrazas, 1998, p.363).
Talmy developed three types of patterns that define what semantic component is expressed in the main verb (Croft et.al., 2010, p.2). The existence of these patterns depend on ‘whether either the path, a related circumstance and/or cause event (C-event), or the figure are lexicalized (together with the abstract predicate of motion) in the main verb’ (Aske, 1989, p.1).
The first pattern Talmy found is the ‘Manner/Cause + motion’ pattern, which can be found in most Indo-European languages, except for Romance languages, and in languages such as Chinese. Two examples given by Talmy for this type of pattern are: ‘The smoke squeezes through the opening’ (manner) and ‘I kicked the ball over the fence’ (Cause) (Aske, 1989, p.1). Talmy named this type the manner-incorporating type, since it expresses manner in the main verb and expresses the path in an element other than the verb (Croft et.al., 2010, p.2). The element that expresses the path is called a satellite (Talmy 1975, p.184, 1985, p.102). Talmy gives the following definition to a satellite:
‘[T]he satellite to the verb […] is the grammatical category of any constituent other than a nominal or prepositional-phrase complement that is in a sister relation to the verb root. The satellite, which can be either a bound affix or a free word, is thus intended to encompass all of the following grammatical forms: English verb particles, German separable and inseparable verb prefixes, Latin or Russian verb prefixes,
11 Chinese verb complements, Lahu nonhead “versatile verbs”, Caddo incorporated nouns and Atsugewi polysynthetic affixes around the verb root’ (Talmy 2000, p.222).
The second pattern found by Talmy is the “Path + motion” pattern. This pattern is often found in Romance and Semitic languages. An example given by Talmy of this type of pattern is: ‘he entered the room’ (Aske, 1989, p.1). Talmy named this type the path-incorporating type since the main verb expresses path instead of manner (Croft et.al., 2010, p.2).
The third pattern of motion found by Talmy is the ‘Figure + Motion’ type. This pattern can be found within languages such as Atsugewi and Navajo. An example given by Talmy of this type of pattern is: ‘It rained in through the bedroom window’ (Aske, 1989, p.1). Talmy names this type the ground-incorporating type, since the main verb expresses salient properties of the ground, such as consistency and shape (Croft et.al., 2010, p.3).
In his later work Talmy has included a more generalized concept of a path which is called framing. The concept of framing includes a path and aspect which delimit or frame the verbal event. This means that he leaves aside the ground-incorporating type or pattern and generalizes typology of motion events (Croft et.al., 2010, p.3). He explains this as follows:
‘[T]he world’s languages generally seem to divide into a two-category typology on the basis of the characteristic pattern in which the conceptual structure of the macro-event is mapped onto syntactic structure. To characterize it initially in broad strokes, the typology consists of whether the core schema [framing event] is expressed by the main verb or by the satellite’ (Talmy 2000, p.221).
This means that English and Spanish will have to be characterized in different way according to his later work: English is characterized as a satellite framing language, since its framing component is expressed in a satellite, whereas Spanish is characterized as a verb framing language, since the path, used as the framing subevent, is expressed in the main verb (Croft et.al., 2010, p.4). Whereas in Talmy’s original typology it was about which semantic component was expressed by the main verb, manner or path, his new typology asks the question: ‘what morphosyntactic element is the framing semantic component expressed by, the main verb or a satellite?’ (Croft et.al., 2010, p.4).
In Spanish, the translation of English complex predicates involving a verb and an additional word of phrase is often reversed. The word expressed in a satellite in English is expressed in the main verb in Spanish, while the manner is often expressed in an adverb. Examples of this reversed order are: run out ‘salir corriendo’ [go out running] or drive away ‘irse en coche’ [go away in car]
Based on Talmy’s theory English satellites can be divided in two classes: path satellites and result satellites:
Path satellites: above, across, along, apart, around, away, back, below, by, down forth/forward, in, out, on, off, over, past, up, together, through.
12 In addition, English has the possibility to combine prepositions into double prepositions, such into and onto. These prepositions combine both the direction and the results of the movement expressed in the verb.
The Spanish prepositions can also be categorized in two classes: location prepositions and path prepositions:
Locations: ante [before], bajo [under], contra [against], en [in], entre [between/among], por [about], sobre [on], tras [behind]
Path: *a [to], *de [off-of], desde [from], hacia [towards], hasta [up to] para [towards] (Aske, 1989, p.4).
In Spanish these path satellites, except for ‘a’ [to] and ‘de’ [off] can produce good sentences in combination with manners. Nevertheless, the Spanish system is less rich than the English prepositional system, which makes it harder for the language to produce ‘manner verb + path – phrase’ constructions. Furthermore, Spanish path prepositions cannot be used adverbially, i.e without a prepositional object (Aske, 1989, pp.4-5).
However, Spanish has a very rich set of path verbs, which are verbs that indicate motion-plus-path. These path verbs include:
Intransitive verbs: atrevesar [go across],avanzar [go forward/forth], bajar [get down] bajarse [get off], caer [fall] caer(se) [fall down/off], cruzar [go through], entrar [go in], ir [go], irse [leave/take-off], juntarse [get/come together], meterse [get in], pasar [go by/ past], salir [go out], salirse [get out] separarse [come apart], subir [go up], retroceder [go back], venir [come]
Transitive verbs: bajar [take down/lower], extraer [take out], introducer [put in], juntar [put together], meter [put in], poner [put (on)], sacar [take out], separar [take apart], subir [take up/lift/raise], quitar [take off] (Aske, 1989, p.4).
In addition, Spanish also has a rich set of locative and path adverbs which can take a ground complement, just as the English path adverbs and prepositions. These are:
Fuera (de), afuera [outside (of)], dentro (de), adentro [inside (of)], arriba (de) [up, above, on top of], debajo (de), abajo [underneath, below], delante (de), adelante [ahead (of), in front of], detrás de, atrás [behind, in back (of)], a través (de) [through], enfrente (de) [in front of], al lado (de) [on/to the side of, beside, next to], encima (de) [above, over(head), on top of], lejos (de) [far (away) from], cerca (de) [near(by), close to], más allá (de) [beyond], a lo largo (de) [lengthwise, along], alrededor (de) [around], juntos [together], junto a/con [next to, together with] (Whitley 1986, cited in Aske, 1989, pp.4-5).
Sometimes languages can use other patterns than the predominant one. For example, English has borrowed many ‘Path + motion’ lexical pattern, such as exit, enter, descend and ascend. However, Spanish is not capable of translation verbatim English sentences representing events of motion along a path, such as ‘she ran into the house’. This is because manner verbs cannot lexicalize motion in Spanish because the path can only be expressed on the verb. Nonetheless, there are some cases in which Spanish uses the English pattern, such as ‘El libro se dislizó hasta el suelo [The book slid down on the floor]. Furthermore, Spanish has many verbs in which a manner-plus motion verb is used with
13 a path phrase (Aske, 1989 p.3). These include manner-plus-motion verbs such as swin, dance and run. This can be seen from the following Spanish examples:
La botella flotó hacia la cueva [the bottle floated towards the cave]
Juan bailó de un lado para otro [John danced around from one place to another]
Caminó a la biblioteca tres veces por semana. [He walked to the library three times a week] (Aske, 1989, p.3)
In addition, the study of Cifuentes Feres (2010) shows that English and Spanish motion verb lexicons do contain a wide range of minor conflation pattern and that both languages do posses many other type of motion verbs. For example, ground-conflating verbs do exist in Spanish, such as ‘atajar’[to go somewhere by taking a short cut] or ‘fondear’ [to move at the bottom of the sea] (Cifuentes Feres, 2010, p. 235).
Furthermore, the lexicon of manner verbs in most languages is ‘two-tiered’ according to Slobin (1997, p.459). The first tier of the lexicon contains the everyday verbs such as run, fly, walk, run etc. The second tier contains verbs that are used less often but are more specific and expressive. They contain different ways of walking or running such as wander, stroll, sprint etc. Several researchers have documented the manner verbs for both languages (Berman and Slobin, 2004; Strömqvist and Verhoeven, 2004; Hickman and Robert, 2006), but no definitive count has been undertaken. Nevertheless, these studies show that English has a more extensive and elaborated second tier lexicon than Spanish. The Spanish manner verb lexicon mainly consist of more general motion verbs. Regarding the number of path verbs, Özçalişkan (2004, p.85) claims that both verb-framed languages and satellite-framed languages contain about the same amount of path verbs because path verbs form part of a closed lexical category. In this category there are not many options for elaboration. Nevertheless, research has focused more on the study of manner verbs than on the study of path verbs, since manner verbs are seen as the main diverging point between the different types of languages (Cifuentes Feres, 2010, p. 236).
Aske has investigated in which cases Spanish allows for English-like patterns. According to Aske (1989, p.6), there are two types of path phrases in English: one which can be translated into Spanish and another which cannot:
The locative path phrase: this type of phrase modifies the verb, or predicates a location of the whole proposition. This phrase is basically a locative which adds the location in which the activity took place, e.g. ‘I ran through the field’. This type of sentence can be directly translated into Spanish.
The telic path phrase: this types of phrase predicates an end-point location of the figure argument. This sentence ‘acts semantically as a special type of non-verbal predicate (NVP) […]. [I]t predicates, besides the path of motion, an end-of-path location/state of the figure’. E.g. ‘He swam into the lake’. This type of sentence cannot be directly translated into Spanish. Spanish does not allow this type of sentences.
According to Fillmore (1988, as cited in Aske, 1989, p.6) there are two types of non-verbal predicates (NVP) in English: primary NVPs (INVPs) and secondary NVPs (2NVPs). INVPs are adjective phrases, noun phrases or locative prepositional phrases. Both INVPs and 2NVPs can be either depictive
14 (DNVPs) or resultative (RNVPs). For their expression in English sentences these NVPs require a copula, such as ‘be’ or ‘become’. In addition, path phrases can also be used as INPVs when they are used in combination with specific motion copula verbs, such as come or go. 2NVPs are ‘parasitic on an independent verb, e.g. ‘he ate the meat raw’ (depictive, object controlled),’ John ate the meat naked’ (deptictive, subject controlled), ‘It knocked me dizzy’ (resultative)’ (Aske, 1989 p.6).
Aske suggests that ‘path phrases have a different distribution in Spanish than in English because of the fact that there are two types of path phrases, one of which is a mere locative, e.g. ‘along the fence’, and the other one of which, in addition to expressing a path, is a telic secondary NVP which predicates an end-state of the Figure argument, e.g. ’into the house, off the table’ (Aske, 1989 p.6). Spanish does not have the second type of path phrase because Spanish only has depictive NVPs, it does not have resultative NVPs at all. In English path phrases can be used a predicators of a location of the figure with respect to the ground, while this is impossible in Spanish. This location can be at the Ground itself, with goal or telic path predicates, or at the end point of a path defined with respect to the Ground, with derived goal/telic path predicates. There are no problems for the locative path phrase. Aske states that ‘[i]n Spanish the basis telic or accomplishment path predicate has to be a verb, it cannot be a non-verbal predicate’ (Aske, 1989, p.7).The goal or source location is always expressed as a complement of the verb which is preceded by one of the prepositions ‘a’ (to) or ‘de’ (off/from). In English the basic path predicate is a 2NVP (Aske, 1989, p.7). While Talmy argues that there are two closed classes of satellites, ‘path satellites’ and ‘resulting state satellites’, Aske argues that they are subtypes of the general class of telic non-verbal predicates’ (Aske, 1989, p.8). Furthermore, Aske provides some reasons why motion is expressed differently in Spanish and English. He specifically looks at the rejection of TNVPs in Spanish. The first reason he names is the fact that English relies heavily on the process by which denominal activity verbs are produced which look like they have been made for that specific construction. E.g. sail, bicycle etc. Since Spanish lacks this morphological rule, it would have less use for path 2TNVPs. The second reason named by Aske is the English information structure goes against the Spanish preferred information structure pattern. In English sentential stress is used to indicate the focus on new information, whereas this is done by word order in Spanish (Aske, 1989 p.10).
A study by Niagles, Eisenberg, Kako, Highter and McGraw (1998) also showed that English and Spanish speakers have a different preferred way of describing motion events. Spanish speakers used more path verbs in their description of motion whereas English speakers prefer to use manner verbs. Their research shows that resultative events and events which include the crossing of a boundary are more likely to elicit path verbs. However, vertical uncontrolled motions in Spanish are often described with a manner verb. In addition, they state that the Spanish lexicalisation pattern is less monolithic than the English one (Niagles, Eisenberg, Kako, Highter and McGraw, 1998, pp.541-544).
3.2 Motion verbs in translation
In 1996, Slobin investigated what influence Talmy’s typologies had on translation from Spanish to English and vice versa. Since the languages express motion in a different way, translators will have to find solutions to deal with these differences. In the first part of his research Slobin selected five novels from both English and Spanish speaking countries. From each novel he would select 20 motion events, where the protagonist ended up in a different place. He would open the book randomly and read until he would come across a motion event. When collecting results he already noticed that it
15 took him longer to find motion events in Spanish novels than in English novels. As he already concluded in his research on frog stories, he concluded that English narrators ‘rarely move their protagonists without mentioning some ground object relative to the path’ (Slobin, 1996, p. 207). Furthermore, according to Slobin’s research, English narrations tend to be richer in encoding path details. According to Iraide Ibarretxe (2003, p. 153), this can easily be explained by the fact that the path can be lexicalised as a single verb in satellite-framed languages whereas it needs to be expressed with separate verbs, which leaves less room for complex path descriptions. Basque is an exception to this characterisation. Basque can be characterized as a verb-framed language, however, it does show a peculiar tendency towards detailed and elaborated path description. This can be explained by the morpho-syntactic characteristics of Basque which allow it to compact information about the path to the verb.
Slobin also investigated how Spanish translators deal with the abundance of English locative detail and investigated if English translators will enrich their translations to Spanish when they believe the original is too bland. In the second part of his research he selected four English novels and three Spanish novels to compare the translation of motion events. He compared the results in terms of fidelity to path-ground and manner descriptions (Slobin, 1996, pp. 209-210).
Regarding trajectories, Slobin found that 76% of English to Spanish trajectory translations were faithful whereas 92% of Spanish to English translations were faithful. He concluded that the translators to English are often faithful or add a bit of extra information. However, translators to Spanish changed the English trajectories 24% of the time, while most of these changes were reductions of the full path-ground depiction. Slobin believes that this reduction is caused by the fact that faithful translations would either be too extended, would foreground information that is backgrounded in the original or that they are simply not accessible due to lexical and syntactic constraints. Spanish translators often have to choose if they want to allocate a separate clause to each path segment that is expressed in one single verb in the original. In contrast to English, Spanish does not have verbs that conflate both motion and path. If the path is not extremely important and it slows down the pace of the narration in a translation, the translator can decided to reduce the information about the journey (Slobin, 1996, pp.210-211).
Concerning manner, Slobin found that 51% of manner is translated faithfully in translations from English to Spanish, compared to 77% faithful translations of manner from Spanish to English. Translators to Spanish tend to reduce manner, whereas translators to English sometimes add manner to their translations. Since English has a tendency to avoid Latinate vocabulary it can easily add manner in translations. This can be seen in the following example:
‘Don Federico avanzó sin apresurarse’ [Don Federico advanced without hurrying]
‘Don Federico walked unhurriedly towards her’ (translation of Vargas Llosa, 1982, p.150, example from Slobin, 1996, p.213).
In a response to the results of Slobin’s study, Edwards (2001, p.21) argues that Slobin’s observations should be modified. She claims that pragmatic reasons explain that English translations often states explicitly what is implicit in the Spanish original text. Regarding translation from English to French, just as Spanish a verb-framed language, Vinay and Darbelnet conclude that French often does not
16 feel the need to specify the mode of action, whereas this is more important in English (Vinay and Darbelnet, 1995, p.105).
Spanish would be classified as a language that is ‘intellect oriented’ which allows for individual interpretation by the reader. On the other hand, English is more reality oriented and all information needs to be explicitly included in the written text (Edwards, 2001, p.23). For example, in a sentence like ‘Entré la casa’ [I entered the house], the reader can image how the person entered. In English, the writer would most likely specify the way in which he entered by saying ‘I walked into the house’ or ‘I stumbled into the house’. Therefore, Edwards claims that instead of adding manner when translating from Spanish to English, the translator adds information (Edwards, 2001, p.33).
For translations into Spanish, a translator will have to choose if he omits manner of prefers to preserve it in an adverbial clause. If a translator decides to add an adverbial clause he will add more narrative weight to the manner than the original (Slobin, 1996, p.213). This foregrounding of information has also been pointed out by Talmy:
‘[T]he degree to which a component of meaning, due to its type of linguistics representation, emerges into the foreground of attention or, on the contrary, forms part of the semantic background where it attracts little direct attention. […] [A] semantic element is backgrounded by expression in the main verb root or in any closed-class element {including a satellite […]. Elsewhere it is foregrounded.’ (Talmy, 1985, p.122)
According to Slobin (2006, p.70), ‘in translation […] manner salience follows patterns of the target, rather than source language’. This means that a translation into a path-framed language will often also be path-framed, even when the source text codes manner in the verb phrase (Egan, Graedler, 2015 p.9).
In a similar study, Iraide Ibarretxe (2003, p.164) investigates the translation strategies used by translators translating from English to Spanish and Basque. Her research shows that ‘translators generally opt for including some information about manner but with some kind of manipulation, usually they include some aspect of the original manner verb’ (2003, p.164). In addition, the translators do include all path information in their translation and also often insert new path verbs (Iraide, Ibarretxe, 2003, p.165).
The research of Cappelle (2012, pp.16-17) has shown similar results. It proved that a significantly lower occurrence of manner-of motion verbs can be found in English texts translated from French than in original English. These results can both be found for self-motion and for caused-motion. Cappelle concludes that ‘[t]he typological nature of the source language, verb-framed versus satellite-framed, is what makes translations different or similar to the target language’.
Furthermore, Alonso Alonso (2011) shows that conceptual transfer, or
‘the hypothesis that certain instances of the crosslinguistic influence in a person’s use of one language originate from the conceptual knowledge and patterns of thought that the person has acquired as a speaker of another language’ (Jarvis, 2007, p.44).
17 applies in the translation of lexicalization pattern in motion events from Spanish into English. In this study the translations from translation students from Spanish to English show a preference to follow the Spanish lexicalization pattern to code path in the main verb and manner in a separate constituent, ‘as opposed to the English lexicalisation pattern where Manner of Motion is conflated in a single lexical item and Path is indicated in a satellite’ (Alonso, Alonso, 2011, p.353).
Alonso Alonso’s research shows that in order to translate correctly, the characteristic lexicalization patterns of both the source and target language has to be understood, as well as conceptual pattern that underlies the source and target language. It is necessary to attribute more attention to the translation of motion verbs during the training of translators (Alonso, Alonso, 2011, p.364).
In addition, Slobin’s (2003) ‘thinking for translating’ hypothesis shows that translators’ attention to manner of motion depends on the number of verbs available in the target language. “[i]n brief, translations into English “up the ante” for manner expression, while translations out of English reduce the level of manner description” (Slobin 2004, p.184, note 9). This reduction of manner description can also be explained by the Unique Items Hypothesis by Tirkkonen-Condit (2002,2004) which shows that differences in the grammatical systems of languages can lead to an underrepresentation of items in translations compared to non-translated texts of the same language. Moreover, Cifuentes-Férez and Rojo (2015) investigated whether the decisions made by translators concerning the translation of motion verbs are exclusively guided by typological differences between the target and source languages or whether there are other factors that explain their choices, such as experience and/or task related factors. Their think-aloud protocol study with professional translators and translation students revealed that the translation decisions are mainly influenced by the typological differences between Spanish and English (Cifuentes-Férez and Rojo, 2015, p.273).
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4. Quality of translation – form or meaning?
In the field of translation studies there has always been a debate about whether a translator should translate the form or the content of the original text. Many scholars designed concepts in which they distinguish between a more literal translation and a translation focused on conveying the meaning of the original text, such as Nida (1964), who refers to this distinction by ‘formal equivalence’ and ‘dynamic equivalence’, Gile (1995, p.40) who distinguishes between ‘transcoding’ and ‘highlevel Translation’ and Christoffels et al.’s (2003, p.202), who refers to ‘transcoding’ and ‘meaning-based interpreting’.
In addition, Dam (2001, p.27) distinguished between a form-based approach to translation and a meaning-based approach. A form-based approach to translation can be seen ‘as a more or less direct transmission of source text structures to corresponding structures in the target language’ (Dam, 2001, p.27). In these type of translations, individual words are translated as much as possible and when available, the constructions and word order of the original text will be kept. On the contrary, in a meaning-based translation the target text is only a conceptual representation of the meaning of the source text. In these type of translations it is merely important that the target text conveys the same message as the source text. The form-based approach will lead to a text with a lexical and morphosyntactic form that is very similar to the original text, whereas a meaning-based translation will produce an essentially different product (Dam, 2001, p.28; Fabbro et al. 1990, p.75).
In general it can be seen that the literature on translation has a preference for the meaning-based strategy. In some cases a more form-based approach has been described as clumsy (Gile, 1995, p.76) or inadequate (Lorscher, 2004, p.259). Some other studies claim that a form-based translation demonstrates the difficulty of the translator to process the source texts correctly (Maier, 2009, p.73; Dam, 2001, p.28; Seleskovitch, 1976, p.112; de Groot, 1997, p.31,). Nevertheless, many translators reserve form-based translation strategies for specific situations, typically to overcome difficulties in a translation (Dam, 2001, p.28).
A previous study has investigated the differences in translation strategies used for the translation of motion verbs between professional and non-professional translators. The thinking-aloud-protocol study by Cifuentes Férez and Rojo (2015, also mentioned in the previous chapter) showed no significant difference in the translation strategies used for the translation of manner between recent translation graduates and professional translators. The only difference found was the higher level of verbalisation of the translation process for non-professional translators, which can be explained by the fact that recent graduates have a lower level of automation of their translation process compared to professional translators. Nevertheless, this lower level of automation can also cause the students to be more aware of the different problems in the texts and allow them to pay more attention to the solution to the problems. Students did seem more reluctant to omit manner information according to their comments whereas professional translators are more inclined to leave out manner information, instead they often convey path information. Another interesting finding in this study is that none of the translators explicitly mentioned the typological differences between the languages when encountering problems concerning the translation of manner. Most translators were most concerned with verb meaning (Cifuentes Férez and Rojo, 2015, pp.294-295).
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5. Method
5.1 Corpus
For this research I have identified different texts from the ‘immersion’ section of the Duolingo website. This section of the website is used by persons with good knowledge of the source language and who like to translate texts into their mother language. On this platform many different types of texts are translated. I decided to investigate short narrative stories, since I believe these texts will be dense with motion verbs. I only chose stories for which I could also find an official translation on the internet. This limited the selection to only a small number of narrative stories. The names of the selected stories are mentioned below.
5.2 Methodology
In the first stage of the research I analysed all stories in order to indentify motion verbs. I did not limit myself to a certain category of motion verbs. I decided to search for all motion verbs in English and Spanish that are mentioned in Appendix 1:Motion verbs in English and Appendix II: Motion verbs in Spanish in the work of Cifuentes Férez (2008). These appendixes also contain a lot of additional information about the main Spanish and English motion verbs that was of use for my research, such as the semantic components of the verbs, the path or manner details and dictionary definitions of the verbs.
After identifying this large list of motion verbs to investigate I went through all the narrative stories and noted down the (conjugated) motion verbs I found in the texts, the original motion verb, the semantic components and path and manner details of the motion verb.
I found the following motion verbs per text: Spanish – English translations:
Julio Cortazár, La autopista del sur: 113 path verbs, 55 manner verbs
Gustavo Adolfo Becquer La cueva de la mora: 39 path verbs, 15 manner verbs
Gabriel García Márquez, Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes: 27 path verbes, 25 manner verbs Total Spanish – English translations: 179 path verbs, 95 manner verbs
English - Spanish translations:
Herman Meville, Bartleby the scrivener: 5 path verbs, 3 manner verbs Edgar Allan Poe, The oval portrait: 8 path verbs, 6 manner verbs Edgar Allan Poe, The Angel of the odd: 19 path verbs, 22 manner verbs Fergus Hume, The mystery of a hansome cab: 16 path verbs, 22 manner verbs Total: 48 path verbs, 53 manner verbs
20 In the texts I investigated I found a higher number of Spanish motion verbs than English motion verbs from the lists in Appendix I and Appendix II from Cifuentes Férez (2008). In order to raise the amount of English motion constructions to be researched, I decided to investigate some more expressions that express motion in English, but are not constructed by a motion verb but by a verb plus a particle, e.g. get out, get in, take off. In this way I managed to raise the number of results for English - Spanish. By doing so, the sample size of the expressions analysed in English – Spanish texts is more comparable to the sample size of the Spanish – English analysed expressions, although it is still slightly smaller.
After establishing the list of encountered motion verbs, I analysed both translations, the Duolingo translation and the professional translation, and noted down how the verbs were translated. After completing the list with all motion verbs, motion expressions and their translations I encoded the different translation strategies to see if differences occur between the strategies chosen by Duolingo translators and professional translators. In order to do so, I used the strategies for the translation of motion events from Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović (2013, p.265)
Strategy M1 ‘Omission of any Manner information e.g ST bound up --> TT subir ’ascend’ ’ (Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović, 2013, p.265)
Strategy M2.1 ‘Translation of the same type of Manner information (verb) e.g. ST climb --> TT trepar ‘wander’ ‘ (Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović, 2013, p.265) Strategy M2.2 Translation of all Manner with use of separate expression
Strategy M3 ‘Substitution of a Manner of motion verb for a path verb e.g. ST rustle out --> TT salir ‘exit’ (Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović, 2013, p.265)
Strategy M4 ‘Substitution of a Manner of motion verb for a motion verb (no M-3) e.g creep --> […] continue moving’ (Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović, 2013, p.265)
Strategy M5 ‘Substitution of a Manner of motion verb for any verb (no M-3-4) e.g ST roll --> TT […] rub’ (Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović, 2013, p.265)
Strategy M6 ‘Translation of a portion of Manner information e.g ST flee --> TT […] walk really fast’ (Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović, 2013, p.265)
Strategy M7 ‘Translation of a different type of Manner of motion e.g. ST swing --> TT […] jump’ (Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović, 2013, p.265)
Strategy M8 Insertion of manner
Strategy Mx The manner of motion verb is not translated in the translation
Strategy P1 ‘Omission of some Path element’ (Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović, 2013, p.265)
21 and Filipović, 2013, p.265)
Strategy P3 ‘Translation of all Path information’ (Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović, 2013, p.265)
Strategy Px The path verb is not translated in the translation Table 1: Strategies used for the marking of translation of manner and path expressions
I slightly adapted the existing scheme with the strategies for the translation of motion events to make them more suitable for my research. I split Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Filipović’s Strategy M2 in two different categories so I can distinguish when the manner is kept because of an motion verb or because of a separate expression, such as a gerund. Furthermore, I added strategy M8 to show when a translator is adding manner which does not exist in the original version of the text and added strategy Mx and Px to show that the motion verb or expression is not translated or even substituted at all.
After marking all the different translations with a strategy, I made an overview for each text of how many times each strategy is used by which type of translators. Since the most important aspect is the difference between the strategies chosen by the two translators for the translation of a single motion verb or expression, I also marked when the two types of translators chose a different strategy for the translation of a motion verb. If this was the case, I marked which translator opted for which strategy and made graphs that show how many times each type of translator chose a certain strategy in the cases both translators did not choose the same strategy. In this way I can see which type of translator has a tendency to use a certain strategy.
Although depending on the context and the specific verb, some of the strategies show a more form-based approach to translation whereas other show a more meaning-form-based translation. With the final overview of which type of translator has a tendency towards which type of translation strategy, it will also be possible to provide some statements about the quality of the translations. In general, more meaning-based translations are seen as higher quality translations.
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6. Results
6.1 Results English-Spanish
In this section the results of the research are analysed per story and some remarkable examples are highlighted. The section concludes with the overall results of all translations from English to Spanish and states which strategies are used most often by which type of translator.
6.1.1 The mistery of a hansome cab
In ‘The mistery of a hansome cab’ the following strategies have been used for the translation of path and manner verbs from English to Spanish:
Strategies Duo lin go Pr o fe ss io n al Di ffe re n ce Du o lin go Di ffe re n ce Pr o fe ss io n al M1 2 1 2 1 M2.1 10 6 6 2 M2.2 1 1 1 1 M3 8 13 0 5 M4 0 0 0 0 M5 0 1 0 1 M6 0 0 0 0 M7 1 1 1 1 M8 1 3 0 2 Mx 1 0 1 0 P1 3 7 2 6 P2 0 1 0 1 P3 43 39 6 2 Px 2 0 2 0 Total 72 73
Table 2: Strategies used for the translation of manner and path from English to Spanish in ‘The Mistery of a hansome cab’ When it comes to the translation of manner, it can be clearly seen that the Professional translators are more likely to substitute an English manner verb for an Spanish path verb by using the M3 strategy, whereas the Duolingo translator are more likely to translate the manner more literally by using the M2.1 strategy.
In this story the verb ‘to drive’ is often used in the original story. The Duolingo translator and the professional translator generally use different strategies to translate this verb to Spanish, which is demonstrated in the following three sentences taken from the translations:
(1a) Original: ‘He won’t let me take him home,’ he said, ‘so I’ll just walk back to the city, and you can drive him to St. Kilda.’
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(1b) Duolingo translation: "No me dejaría llevarlo (P3) a casa", dijo, "así que voy a caminar de regreso (M2.1, P3) a la ciudad, y puedes conducirlo (M2.1) a Saint. Kilda". [“He doesn’t let me take him home”, he said, “so I will walk back to the city, and you can drive him to Saint. Kilda”].
(1c) Professional translation: —No quiere que le acompañe (M8, P1)—dijo—, de modo que volveré caminando (M2.2, P3) a la ciudad. Llévelo usted (M3) a St. Kilda. (p.23) [- He doesn’t want me to accompany him – he said-, so I will return to the city walking. Bring him to St. Kilda.]
In this sentence we can see how three motion verbs, including the verb ‘to drive’, are translated in a different way by the Duolingo and professional translators. The Duolingo translators chose for a more faithful translation. The verb ‘to take’ in this sentence has been translated by the verb ‘acompañar’ [to accompany] by the professional translator, which causes a loss of path detail (strategy P1), whereas the Duolingo translator has used the path verb ‘llevar’ [to take/bring/carry] (strategy P3).
For the translation of ‘walk back to’ we can see that the Duolingo translator chose to translate this literally with ‘caminar de regreso’ [walk back] (Strategy M2.1), whereas the professional translator has used the path verb ‘volver’ [return] combined with the gerund ‘caminando’ [walking] (strategy M2.2). Nevertheless, both types of translation keep the manner information.
The last motion verb ‘drive’ also has been translated faithfully by the Duolingo translators with the manner verb ‘conducir’ [drive] (strategy 2.1). However, in the professional translation we can see that the manner verb ‘drive’ has been substituted by the path verb ‘llevar’[to take/bring/carry] (strategy M3).
(2a) Original: Royston, who was glad that the friend of the deceased had come to look after him, drove as he had been directed, (…)
(2b) Duolingo translation: Royston, quien se alegraba de que el amigo del difunto hubiera venido para cuidarlo, condujo como se le había ordenado (M2.1), (…) [Royston, who was glad that the friend of the deceased had come to take care of him, drove as he had been ordered]
(2c) Professional translation: Royston, que se alegraba de que el amigo del difunto hubiera vuelto a socorrerle, siguió la dirección indicada (M3), (…) (p.23) [Royston, who was glad that the friend of the deceased had come to help him, followed the indicated direction]
In this sentence we can also see that the motion verb ‘drive’ has been translated faithfully by the Duolingo translators with the manner verb ‘conducir’ [to drive] (Strategy 2.1). However, in the professional translation we can see that the manner verb ‘drive’ has been substituted by the path verb ‘seguir’ [to follow] (strategy M3).
(3a) Original: (…), he drove to the police station at St. Kilda, and there made the above report.
(3b) Duolingo translation: (…)condujo hasta (M2.1) la estación de policía en Saint Kilda, y allí hizo el informe antes citado. [He drove to the police station at Saint Kilda and he made the earlier mentioned report]
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(3c) Professional translation: (…)se dirigió a (M3) la comisaría de Policía de St. Kilda donde declaró lo citado anteriormente. (p.24) [He directed towards the police station of St.Kilda where he declared what he had mentioned earlier]
The same strategies have also been used in sentence 3. The manner verb ‘drive’ has been translated faithfully by the Duolingo translators with the manner verb ‘conducir’ [to drive] (strategy 2.1), whereas the professional translator has substituted the manner verb ‘drive’ with the path verb ‘dirigirse a’ [directing towards] (strategy M3).
When it comes to the translation of path, the professional translators are more likely to leave out the path translation. This is especially often the case when the English verb is a manner verb combined with a satellite to indicate the direction of the motion.
An interesting example found in this text of differences in translation strategies used by the two types of translators for the translation of path information is the following:
(4a) Original: (…),he turned on his heel, and walked rapidly away down Russell Street in the direction of Bourke Street.
(4b) Duolingo translation: (…), se volvió sobre sus talones y se alejó rápidamente por (M3, P3) la calle Russell en la dirección de la calle Bourke. [he turned on his heels and went away quickly on Russell Street in the direction of Bourke Street]
(4c) Professional translation: (….), giró sobre sus talones y bajó con premura por (M3, P1) Russell Street en dirección a Bourke Street. (p.23) [He turned on his heels and went down Russell Street in the direction of Bourke Street]
In this example, it can be seen that both translators have decided to replace the manner verb ‘to walk’ with a path verb in the translation (strategy M3). The Duolingo translator chose the verb ‘alejarse’ [to go away], whereas the professional translator chose the verb ‘bajarse’ [to go down]. In this case the Duolingo translator has kept the direction ‘away’ from the original version (Strategy P3), whereas the professional translators substituted the direction ‘away’ by the direction ‘down’ (Strategy P1). This means that the path has not been translated faithfully by the professional translator, although the meaning has not really been changed.
6.1.2 The oval portrait
In ‘The oval portrait’ the following strategies have been used for the translation of manner and path expressions: Strategies Duo lin go Pr o fe ss io n al Di ffe re n ce Du o lin go Di ffe re n ce Pr o fe ss io n al M1 2 0 2 0 M2.1 1 1 1 1 M2.2 2 1 2 1 M3 0 0 0 0 M4 0 0 0 0
25 M5 1 1 0 0 M6 0 1 0 1 M7 1 2 1 2 M8 0 0 0 0 Mx 0 0 0 0 P1 1 3 1 3 P2 0 2 0 2 P3 10 4 6 0 Px 1 2 0 1 Total 19 17
Table 3: Strategies used for the translation of manner and path from English to Spanish in ‘The oval portrait'
This story is very short and does not contain many motion expressions. The strategies used for the translation of manner are spread quite evenly among all available strategies. It is hard to draw any conclusions on the translation of manner from this story, but these results will also be taken into account for the overall results from English to Spanish.
For the translation of path it is possible to see some significant differences in the strategies used. The Duolingo translators are more likely to use strategy P3 and maintain the original path information, whereas the professional translators have a tendency to use a wider variety of strategies, which causes a change or deletion of some of the path information in their translation.
An interesting example found in this text of differences in translation strategies used by the two types of translators is the following:
(5a) Original: Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by and the deep midnight came.
(5b) Duolingo translation: las horas pasaron volando (M2.2, P3) rápidamente y gloriosamente hasta que la profunda media noche llegó [The hours passed flying rapidly and gloriously until the Deep midnight arrived]
(5c) Professional translation: las horas huyeron (M7, P1), rápidas y silenciosas, y llegó la media noche.[The hours fled, rapidly and silent, and midnight arrived] (p.1)
In this sentence, the Duolingo translator has used the verb ‘pasar’ [to pass] together with the gerund ‘volando’ [flying]. The verb ‘pasar’ is used to translate the path ‘by’. In the professional translation the path information has been lost, but the verb ‘huir’ [to flee] has been used. The professional translator has used strategy M7: translation of a different type of manner of motion, by substituting the verb ‘fly’ from the original with the verb ‘huir’. This has caused the professional translation to be less faithful to the original text.
6.1.3. Bartleby the scrivener
In ‘Bartleby the scrivener’ the following translation strategies have been used for the translation of manner and path expressions:
