Text Types And Corpora

This book breaks new ground in translation theory and practice. The central question is: In what ways are translations affected by text types? The two main areas of investigation are: A. What are the advantages of focusing on text types when trying to understand the process of translation? How do translators tackle different text types in their daily practice? B. To what extent and in what areas are text types identical across languages and cultures? What similarities and dissimilarities can be observed in text types of original and translated texts?Part I deals with methodological aspects and offers a typology of translations both as product and as process. Part II is devoted to domain-specific texts in a cross-cultural perspective, while Part III is concerned with terminology and lexicon as well as the constraints of mode and medium involving dubbing and subtitling as translation methods. Sonnets, sagas, fairy tales, novels and feature films, sermons, political speeches, international treaties, instruction leaflets, business letters, academic lectures, academic articles, medical research articles, technical brochures and legal documents are but some of the texts under investigation. In sum, this volume provides a theoretical overview of major problems and possibilities as well as investigations into a variety of text types with practical suggestions that deserve to be weighted by anyone considering the relation between text typology and translation. The volume is indispensable for the translator in his/her efforts to become a “competent text-aware professional”.

Text Types: a writing guide for students provides a clear reference tool for students, teachers and parents to understand 30 different types of written texts, both literary and factual.This larger format Second Edition has been updated and expanded in the variety of text types and examples included. Examples presented and analysed include many electronic texts. According to the Australian Curriculum: English, students in years 7 to 10 are expected to plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts using effective vocabulary and language features appropriate for the writera s purpose and the audience. These texts may take a variety of formats for example: a an everyday explanatory text a a media report a a literary text a a point of view or an argument expressed in a letter to the editor or a debate etc. Text Types: A writing guide for students [Second Edition] provides students with examples of all of these texts and more, together with clear directions about how to write each one. The book aims to provide the scaffolding and modelling necessary for the development of writing skills. It provides teachers, parents and students with a unique tool to improve writing skills and is suitable for use by students in midprimary to mid-secondary school.

This book brings together a number of empirical studies that use corpora to study discourse patterns in speech and writing. It explores new trends in the area of text and discourse characterized by the alliance between text linguistics and areas such as corpus linguistics, genre analysis, literary stylistics and cross-linguistic studies. The contributions to the volume show how established corpora can be used to ask a number of new questions about the interface between speech and writing, the relation between grammar and discourse, academic discourse, cohesive markers, stylistic devices such as metaphor, deixis and non-verbal communication. The corpora used for text-analysis can also be tailor-made for the study of particular genres such as journal article abstracts, lectures, e-mailing list messages, headlines and titles. A recent development is to bring in contrastive data from bilingual corpora to show what is language-specific in the organization of the text.

This book is about the design of a Setswana corpus for lexicography. While various corpora have been compiled and a variety of corpora-based research has been attempted in African languages, no effort has been made towards corpus design. Additionally, although extensive analysis of the Setswana language has been done by missionaries, grammarians and linguists since the 1800s, none of this research is in corpus design. Most research has been largely on the grammatical study of the language. The recent corpora research in African languages in general has been on the use of corpora for the compilation of dictionaries and little of it is in corpus design. Pioneers of this kind of corpora research in African languages are Prinsloo and De Schryver (1999), De Schryver and Prisloo (2000 and 2001) and Gouws and Prisloo (2005). Because of a lack of research in corpora design particularly in African languages, this book attempts to fill that gap, especially for Setswana. It is hoped that the finding of this study will inspire similar designs in other languages comparable to Setswana. We explore corpus design by focusing on measuring a variety of text types for lexical richness at comparable token points. The study explores the question of whether a corpus compiled for lexicography must comprise a variety of texts drawn from different text types or whether the quality of retrieved information for lexicographic purposes from a corpus comprising diverse text varieties could be equally extracted from a corpus with a single text type. This study therefore determines whether linguistic variability is crucial in corpus design for lexicography.

The main focus of this book is the investigation of linguistic variation in Spanish, considering spoken and written, specialised and non-specialised registers from a corpus linguistics approach and employing computational updated tools. The ten chapters represent a range of research on Spanish using a number of different corpora drawn from, amongst others, research articles, student writing, formal conversation and technical reports. A variety of methodologies are brought to bear upon these corpora including multi-dimensional and multi-register analysis, latent semantics and lexical bundles. This in-depth analysis of using Spanish corpora will be of interest to researchers in corpus linguistics or Spanish language.

The history of modern European languages has been largely determined by the range of functions they have acquired, particularly after 1500. This development necessitated a notable expansion of their syntax and lexis, but is most characteristically reflected in the conventionalization of text types. Starting from the German concept of Textsorte as developed from the 1960s onwards, the present account is a first comprehensive attempt at charting the field for the history and present-day situation of the English language. In text types, a designation is linked with a more or less stable form which guides the writer’s production as well as the reader's expectation, permitting one to recognize straightforward uses as well as deliberate misuses. Some two thousand of such designations are here listed with minimal definitions and dates for first occurrences. The discussion then concentrates on selected types, which are seen as especially illustrative for English: book dedications, cooking recipes, advertisements, church hymns, lexical entries, and jokes. Their functions and development over time are treated in correlation with their specific linguistic characteristics and adaptations to different period styles and social changes in the readership. The functional range of text types in traditions outside England and the consequences of the export of English categories are exemplified by the history of Scots/Scottish English and of English in India. The arguments are accompanied by a lavish supply of textual excerpts and more than fifty pages of facsimiles, which are especially relevant for insights derived from typographical features. A full bibliography and indices are provided at the end. The book will prove useful for decisions on the constitution of representative text corpora and stimulate research into a greater number of individual text types as well as contrastive analyses at least among European languages.