30.3539, Review: Lexicography; Semantics; Syntax; Translation: Mogorrón Huerta, Albaladejo-Martínez (2018)

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Subject: 30.3539, Review: Lexicography; Semantics; Syntax; Translation: Mogorrón Huerta, Albaladejo-Martínez (2018)

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Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2019 15:03:46
From: Pedro Ivorra Ordines [pedro.ivorra at upf.edu]
Subject: Fraseología, Diatopía y Traducción / Phraseology, Diatopic Variation and Translation

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-613.html

EDITOR: Pedro  Mogorrón Huerta
EDITOR: Antonio  Albaladejo-Martínez
TITLE: Fraseología, Diatopía y Traducción / Phraseology, Diatopic Variation and Translation
SERIES TITLE: IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 17
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Pedro Ivorra Ordines

SUMMARY

“Phraseology, Diatopic Variation and Translation”, edited by Pedro Mogorrón
and Antonio Albaladejo-Martínez, offers eighteen contributions which tackle
the study of  “linguistic, lexicographic and translational problems in the
context of language variation in general, as well as specifically related to
diatopic variation” (back cover). It is the seventeenth volume of the “IVITRA
Research in Linguistics and Literature. Studies, Editions and Translation”
collection by John Benjamins Publishing Company. In the foreword that follow
the table of contents, the editors explain the three main issues that are
dealt with in this present volume: “the interface between phraseology and
translation,” “the relationship between the translation and large group of
translators when the source text presents PUs [Phraseological Units],” and
“whether diatopic PUs and cultural differences should be translated by
searching linguistic parallelisms in other domains” (p. 1). In addition, a
short summary of each article is provided. A conceptual index can be found at
the end. 

Ladmiral starts with “From Phraseology to Dialinguistics: A programmatic
study,” in which the issue of diatopic variation in phraseology is posited, by
means of translation as a theoretical framework to shed light on the potential
problems that phraseological phenomena may pose. Given the difficulty – or
even impossibility – to find an exact equivalent, the author highlights
prioritizing its function over its meaning in most of the cases. Hence, two
tendencies arise: ‘les sourciers’ who are interested in the signifier, whereas
‘les ciblistes’ show a preference for the signified. Ladmiral concludes by
stating that diatopic variation has sociolectal nuances, consequently bringing
about a new theoretical reflection which the author coins “dialinguistique.”
Then, García-Page continues with “Phraseological somatisms of Mexican
Spanish,” in which a mainly quantitative-based study on phraseological
somatisms of Mexican Spanish is carried out. With a corpus compiled by Leroux
(2003) from Diccionario del Español de México, García-Page reaches the
conclusion that, although results are not definite considering the low number
of examples, the most prominent somatisms are those formed by the nouns
‘boca,’ ‘cabeza,’ ‘cara,’ ‘ojo,’ and ‘lengua,’ with many examples containing
lexical, morphological, grammatical, and syntactic variants. Given these
results, more studies including a greater number of somatisms are needed, as
well as surveys that offer exhaustive, representative results. Following this
research line, Corpas contributes with “Laughing one’s head off in Spanish
subtitles: a corpus-based study on diatopic variation and its consequences for
translation.” Using 19 giga-token comparable corpora of Spanish varieties,
Corpas identifies a great predominance over standardization of diatopic traits
in translated texts of the expression ‘to laugh one’s head off’ in the
audiovisual translation industry. Due to commercial reasons, out of the 74
synonymic possibilities, only four can be found in the comparable corpora of
film’s subtitles. In addition, large corpora are necessary for this kind of
study, because idioms are low-frequency items.  

Mellado then carries the reader’s attention over to “The Lexicographical
Contour in Phraseology: Features and Localization in the Microstructure of
General and Phraseological Dictionaries,” where the lexicographic concept
‘contour’, “los elementos habituales del contexto” (Seco 1987: 45),  is
examined both in general and phraseological Spanish dictionaries. Following up
on many examples of both monolexemic and phraseological units – cases where
special attention is paid to Diccionario fraseológico documentado del español
actual – Mellado concludes that in both cases information included in the
contour coincides in rough lines, even though there is some disagreement about
the location of the contour, which may entail misunderstandings in
phraseological dictionaries. 

Going back to computational approaches in phraseology, Colson pays special
attention to “Globalized phrases: methodological issues in computational
phraseology.” In this globalized world, it goes without saying that there are
plenty of loan words in English. Using a huge-dimension corpus, Colson
analyzes six phraseological units in French borrowed from English, even though
objective results cannot be obtained since the total number of phraseological
units is unknown. Hence, Colson switches to a corpus-driven approach to
demonstrate current patterns in English, French, and Spanish in order to
obtain a greater objectivity when comparing the results. Following this line
of research, Mogorrón’s particular focus is on “Influence of the indigenous
pre-Columbian languages on Spanish phraseological units.” From a corpus
(Fraseología y Traducción. Universidad de Alicante) with 14,000 verbal fixed
constructions, Mogorrón analyzes 653 expressions consisting of an indigenous
lexical item, used mainly to modify the discourse so that the necessary
expressivity is conveyed. By doing so, it can be concluded that indigenous
languages have left a mark on many common expressions, which in turn are
variants of Peninsular Spanish or diatopic alternatives of Peninsular-Spanish
variants. 

González-Rey presents a study on didactics of phraseological expressions with
“Phraseological competence and pedagogical model: the case of the method
Phraséotext-Le Français Idiomatique.” Using the method PHRASÉOTEXT – Le
Français Idiomatique, González-Rey highlights the importance of phraseological
expressions when making up the discourse during the language acquisition
process, in both a foreign language and a mother tongue. Thus, a model is
posited with the purpose of facilitating the acquisition of this type of
expression on levels ranging from basic to proficient. Adopting a different
approach, Zamora focuses on the translation of diatopically and diastratically
marked phraseological units through audiovisual means in “The translation of
‘minchia,’ a vulgar term with a diatopic dimension, when dubbing from Italian
to Spanish.” From a corpus consisting of six Italian comedies and the TV
series ‘Capo del capi,’ Zamora observes a strong tendency towards the
neutralization of both diatopic and diastratic features as a consequence of
the likely censorship imposed by publishers and film production companies,
with the exception of the TV series in which the coined equivalent technique
prevails. 

Salamanca and Suárez de la Torre shift the topic over to “The equivalence of
specialized phraseology: a contrastive analysis of the translation eventive
specialized phraseological units.” From the hypothesis that total equivalence
in specialized phraseology is unreachable at all levels, Salamanca and Suárez
de la Torre carry out three different contrastive analyses at three different
levels: morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. This study shows, by means
of detailed analyses, the complexity of translating specialized expressions,
which indicates that equivalence is understood as a ‘continuum’ in different
degrees. Hence, a top-down methodology must be adopted given that the
pragmatic level is determined by communicative, usage, and discursive factors.

Rico-Sulayes examines the documentation of Mexican Spanish in spoken corpora
in “Documenting a regional variety of substandard Spanish with general
corpora.” In his study, Rico-Sulayes argues the case for the importance of
using general corpora for the compilation of spoken language data, from which
more than 26,500 examples are extracted. Currently, the database comprises of
37,288 exemplifiable units, whose enlargement incorporating more sources –
mainly dictionaries – is expected in order to document a greater number of
examples so that further research can be carried out in the near future.
Following this research line, Albaladejo-Martínez aims to offer the current
outlook of Austrian phraseology within the German linguistic system in “Marked
phraseology: research deficits.” A lack of studies concerning these
diatopically-marked multi-word expressions is the result of, among other
factors, numerous obstacles concerning corpus delimitation or the confusion of
the standard language with substandard varieties. Therefore,
Albaladejo-Martínez emphasizes the need for theoretical contributions in order
to pave the way for further empirical studies, which would facilitate the
outlining of a geographical map concerning phraseology usages.  

With a different approach, Seghour explores the origins of some fixed
expressions to see if and how they have changed in different languages in
“Fixed expressions: between mobility and cultural blending.” By means of
idiomatic and proverbial expressions from holy texts, popular culture, as well
as national and foreign literature, Seghour analyzes in depth several
expressions in both Arabic and French. He reaches the conclusion that fixed
expressions, which help users understand the world in a better way, are of the
utmost importance for the linguistic heritage of any language. Thus, the
translation of these cultural metaphors is not altered in the target language,
given the potential difficulties that these multi-word expressions entail.
>From a mainly theoretical-based approach, Sánchez-López revisits some of the
characteristics of phraseological units in “Keys to understanding the
phenomenon of variation in phraseology.” Both variation and fixedness are
analyzed, given that these two concepts evoke epistemological issues when
describing a phraseological unit because they come into conflict. To tackle
this apparent contradiction, a diachronic approach is posited so that the
creation process of phraseological units – known as phraseologization – can
account for variation in phraseology. 

Returning to the Mexican variation, Navarro illustrates the influence of
indigenous languages on Mexican Spanish proverbs in “Spanish proverbs and
their Mexican equivalents.” With a corpus consisting of 150 proverbs from a
Mexican newspaper and 2,000 more proverbs from many different dictionaries,
Navarro demonstrates that, in 39% of the cases, a diatopic variation exists
due to the influence of Nahuatl words, with Mexican traditions, culture, and
folklore being the most predominant group. This is followed by the proverbs
with morphological variation and the suppression and enlargement variation.
Carrión continues with the subject in “Diatopic and graphic variation: limits
between Antillean regional French and the cohabitating Creole languages.” In
this study, the blurred limits between the Antillean French variation and the
Creole languages complicates the establishment of clear frontiers resulting in
the occasional lexical item being shared by both linguistic systems, which
eventually results in the consideration that these lexical items belong to the
Creole system. Carrión concludes by expressing the need for monolingual
lexicographic sources in both linguistic systems. To complete this line of
research, Villagrana offers a panoramic view of the current situation in
Mexican Spanish phraseological studies with “Phraseological variation in
dictionaries of Mexican Spanish.” With the help of ‘Diccionario de
mexicanismos,’ ‘Diccionario de americanismos,’ and ‘Diccionario del español de
México,’ Villagrana demonstrates the difficulties that a lexicographer
encounters in registering both marked and unmarked variants, since the
dialectal areas that are comprised of Mexican Spanish are not well delimited.
However, an increasing interest in this research area is yielding its first
results with ‘Diccionario fraseológico del español de México,’ which is a
precursory step towards the understanding of the heterogeneous phraseological
reality of Mexican Spanish. 

Antolí contributes with a constructivist approach in “Diachronic study of the
phrase ‘tener entendido’ in Modern Spanish and Catalan (16th-18th centuries).
Constructionalization and evidentiality expression.” The construction [‘tengo
entendido que’ Vind] and [‘tinc entès que’ Vind] is diachronically studied
following some concepts of Usage-Based Construction Grammar to see how it
emerged and evolved over three centuries. Following a semantic and pragmatic
characterization of these two markers of evidentiality, Antolí concludes that
this construction was mainly used in chancellery contexts with the sense of
‘tener conocimiento.’ The Catalan one was the genuine, whereas the Spanish
construction turned out to be the calque. Finally, Cuadrado concludes the
volume with a contribution on diatopic variation of Argentine Spanish in
“Phraseological variation in Argentine Spanish: A classification proposal.”
Two sources – lexicographical works and surveys of native speakers – are used
to compile a corpus of 1989 phraseological units so as to offer a
classification of its variation. Two main procedures are observed: on the one
hand, internal variants (lexical and morpho-lexical variants) and on the other
hand, structural variations (lexical modification or adding lexemes and
morphological modification). 

EVALUATION

The present volume, “Phraseology, Diatopic Variation and Translation. Studies,
Editions and Translation,” includes a wide variety of approaches to the field
of phraseology as a scientific framework, both in terms of theoretical and
applied studies. This volume may be of interest to those curious researchers
in the field of phraseology in general, and on diatopic variation of
phraseology in particular – with a special emphasis on diatopic variation of
Mexican Spanish, since this is the area of research which contains the most
contributions from a broad range of viewpoints. The goal is achieved in that
some of the studies tackle the issues raised by the editors in the foreword,
although more contributions would have been interesting to examine in greater
depth the relationship between translation and diatopic variation in
phraseological units, since many contributors claim that this is a research
area that requires further study. This is justified by the fact that some of
the studies mainly provide theoretical grounds to tackle such lines of
research in future investigations. Last but not least, the editors provide a
conceptual index, which may be of help to readers to look up specific
theoretical concepts within the volume. 

The lack of thematic areas and the haphazard arrangement of the contributions
do not facilitate the reading of the complete volume as a whole, given that
there is a lack of correlation between one article and the following in most
cases, which can be deduced from the structure posited in the previous section
of this review. The arrangement that I would have like to see is as follows:
first, a section of ‘Diatopic variation in phraseology,’ divided into three
subsections of ‘Theoretical approaches’ (Ladmiral, García-Page, Sánchez, and
Cuadrado), ‘Translation approaches’ (Corpas, Zamora, Salamanca and Suárez De
la Torre, and Seghour), and ‘Contrastive studies’ (Mogorrón, Colson,
Rico-Sulayes, Albaladejo-Martínez, Navarro, Carrión, and Villagrana) and a
second section titled ‘Miscellanea,’ in which Mellado (phraseography),
González-Rey (phraseodidactics), and Antolí (diachronic linguistics and
Construction Grammar) would be included, since these three contributions are
unrelated to the other subgroups. 

A remarkable feature of the previous taxonomy is the fact that it contains
numerous theoretical contributions, which prepare the grounds for further
studies, in which future analyses conducted may bring forth fruitful results.
As García-Page points out, “los estudios de fraseología en los países
latinoamericanos de habla hispana son, en términos generales, muy escasos y
poco relevantes hasta el momento” (p. 19). However, there is increased
interest in the study of diatopic variation of phraseological units, primarily
on Mexican Spanish as well as other varieties such as Argentine Spanish and
indigenous languages.

Last but not least, it is worth noting binomial sourciers-ciblistes that
Ladmiral puts forward in his contribution when translating texts in general
and phraseological units in particular. The former refers to those who
“s’attachent au ‘signifiant’ de la ‘langue’ et particulièrement de la
langue-source”, whereas the latter points to those who “prennent en compte le
‘sens’, et même l’effet, de la ‘parole’ (au sens saussurien), c’est-à-dire du
discours ou du texte, voire de l’œuvre, en mobilisant toutes les ressources de
la langue-cible” (Ladmiral 2018: 11). Notwithstanding, this differentiation is
rather old-fashioned in Translation Studies; the binomial
domestication-foreignization could have been adopted. This was posited by
Venuti to account for two translation strategies when dealing with linguistic
and cultural problems, i.e. domestication can be defined as “an ethnocentric
reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bring the
author back home”, while foreignization as “an ethnodeviant pressure on those
(cultural) values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the
foreign text, sending the reader abroad” (Venuti 1995: 20).

REFERENCES

Ladmiral, Jean-René. De la phraséologie à une dialinguistique: étude
programmatique. In Mogorrón, Pedro / Albaladejo-Martínez, Antonio (eds.),
Phraseology, Diatopic Variation and Translation. Amsterdam / Philadelphia:
John Benjamins Publishing Company, 8-17. 

Leroux, Abda. 2013. Las locuciones verbales y semioracionales según la
clasificación de Mario García-Page: análisis de una muestra del Diccionario
del español de México de Luis Fernando Lara. México DF: UNAM. 

Seco, Manuel. 1987. Estudios de lexicografía española. Madrid: Paraninfo. 

Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of
Translation. London / New York: Routledge.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Pedro Ivorra Ordines is a PhD candidate in Translation and Language Sciences
at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). He holds a degree in Translation
and Interpreting (2016) from the Universitat d’Alacant and a master’s degree
in Translation Studies (2017) from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. His research
interests include phraseology, fictional orality, contrastive linguistics and
construction grammar. His current work is on comparative structures in ''La
plaça del Diamant'' by Mercè Rodoreda, partly funded by the Mercè Rodoreda
foundation.





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