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2011 | 21 | 2 | 57-69

Article title

Any into Spanish: A corpus-based analysis of a translation problem

Authors

Content

Title variants

Languages of publication

EN

Abstracts

EN
This paper has a double aim: i) to empirically establish the functions naturally expressed by any and those of one of its Spanish counterparts, specifically cualquier(a) so as to identify possible cross-linguistic transfer; ii) to illustrate a high-performing methodological procedure. A set of tools, among them an ad hoc tertium comparationis consisting of a set of cross-linguistic labels, a parallel corpus (P-ACTRES) and a reference corpus (CREA) are used to explore: i) the uses of any in context and the resulting translation environments served by cualquiera; ii) the degree of matching between translated cualquier(a) and its non-translated usage in standard European Spanish. The corpus-based procedure follows basically Krzeszowski's contrastive model (1990) with the addition of a 'target language fit' stage (Chesterman, 2004). The analysis shows different behaviour in translated and nontranslated Spanish: Cualquier(a) is underused as a translation option for 'existential' any and acquires a new function, 'negative', which is not a possibility in non-translated language for the same contexts. The analysis also corroborates the usefulness and the replicability of the methodological procedure.

Keywords

Year

Volume

21

Issue

2

Pages

57-69

Physical description

Document type

ARTICLE

Contributors

author
  • Rosa Rabadan, Linguistica Pragensia, redakce, Ustav pro jazyk cesky AV CR, v.v.i., Letenska 4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic

References

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  • Leonetti, M. (1999): El artículo. In: I. Bosque - V. Demonte (eds), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española. Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 787-890.
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  • Rabadán, R. (2008): Refining the idea of ‘applied extension’. In: M. Schlesinger et al. (eds), Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies. Amsterdam, Benjamins, 103-118.
  • RabadáN, R. (2008a): Tools for English-Spanish cross-linguistic applied research. In: JES. Journal of English Studies, 5-6. 309-324.
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Document Type

Publication order reference

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier
11CZAAAA099227

YADDA identifier

bwmeta1.element.56414370-05de-353a-b988-07db3e1c1d4b
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