Translating into a non-native dialect: A corpus-based investigation

Abstract

Traditionally, translators have been encouraged to translate only into their mother tongue; however, this premise is being increasingly challenged in the translation literature. This thesis explores the related issue of translators working not into a foreign language, but into a foreign dialect. In particular, the dual objective of this thesis is first to demonstrate that corpora and corpus analysis tools provide a viable means for investigating and describing dialects, and second to determine whether a specially designed monodialectal corpus can be a useful resource for helping translators to produce adequate target texts in a non-native dialect. To meet these goals, two different yet related experiments are conducted. The first consists of a comparison between the textbook descriptions of the bonaerense dialect used in the Buenos Aires region of Argentina and the actual linguistic features present in a corpus consisting of authentic texts written in this dialect. The results reveal disparity between the textbook descriptions and the corpus contents, proving that a corpus is a versatile resource that can be used to learn more about dialects. The second experiment consists of a comparison of two sets of translations into bonaerense prepared by a group of translators from Spain. The first set of translations is carried out using conventional non-corpus-based resources (e.g. term banks, dictionaries), while the second set is produced using the above-mentioned monodialectal corpus of bonaerense. The results of this second experiment provide evidence suggesting that a monodialectal corpus can indeed facilitate the production of a target text in a non-native dialect.