Linguistic variation in translated and interpreted Greek discourse
Date Issued
March 3, 2024
Type
Πτυχιακή Εργασία
Abstract
The proliferation of corpus-based approaches to translation and interpreting has enabled data-driven studies on the properties of oral and written mediated discourse. These studies have provided evidence of ‘translationese’ and ‘interpretese’ effects, showing that translated and interpreted texts have characteristics that differentiate them from original written and spoken texts, such as lower information density and lexical variety. When it comes to mode of discourse (translated vs interpreted), interpreting has been claimed to demonstrate larger similarities to original spoken discourse than written translations but also more salient features of translated texts. For instance, higher simplification effects have been reported in interpreting compared to translation, but the results seem to depend on the language pair. These studies have mostly included major European languages (Italian, Spanish, German, French), focusing on political discourse in the European Parliament. Even though Greek is an official language in the European Parliament (EP), to date there is no study on the properties of simultaneous interpreting (SI) into Greek, rendering it an under-represented language in corpus-based interpreting studies.
In this thesis, we perform an analysis of linguistic variation in Greek mediated discourse, investigating the properties of translated (TR) vs. interpreted (SI) texts from English into Greek. To this aim, we compile EPICEL, the first intermodal TR-SI Greek corpus, based on EP speeches. Using EPICEL, we explore two research questions: Do interpreted texts from English into Greek show higher simplification than translated texts in the same language pair? What are the linguistic features most distinctive of translation vs. interpreting into Greek? Our findings confirm previous research, which suggests shorter renderings and lower lexical variation in interpreting. In addition, we observe a tendency towards verbal structures and coordination in interpreting, while translation prefers nominalisation and subordination. We hope these findings will pave the way towards corpus-based interpreting research into Greek and inform interpreting training frameworks for Greek.
Subjects