Lexis and Grammar for Translation

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Lexis and Grammarfor Translation
Lingua e Traduzione Inglese I

• Dott. M. Gatto
• Lingue e Culture per il Turismo

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New words can be created through

• INFLECTION gt free morpheme suffix
• DERIVATION gt free morpheme affix
• COMPUNDING gt free morpheme free morpheme

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WORD FORMATION

• COMPOUNDING gt package holiday
• CONVERSION gt progress (N)/to progress (V)
• BLENDING gt motor hotel gt motel
• ACRONYMS gt laser (Light Amplification by
  Stimulated Emission of Radiation)
• BACKFORMATION gt to babysit ? babysitter
• CLIPPING gt bus (omnibus), fax (facsimile)
• BORROWING gt pasta, shampoo, zebra

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• One way of imposing order on the thousands of
  lexemes that make up the English vocabulary is to
  see lexicon in terms of structure.
• A well-established model of lexical structure
  makes us think of words as being related along
  two intersecting dimensions
• HORIZONTAL (i.e. SYNTAGMATIC)
• VERTICAL (i.e. paradigmatic)

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• In the vocabulary of any language words are
  linked together into a sort of gigantic spiders
  web whose organizing principles are SYNTAGMATIC
  (HORIZONTAL) relations and PARADIGMATIC
  (VERTICAL)
• Sense Relations gt paradigmatic
• synonymy/antonymy/hyponymy
• Lexical Relations gt syntagmatic
• collocation

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COLLOCATION

• You shall now a word by the company it keeps
• J.R.Firth
• Collocation can be defined as a friendship
  between words, i.e. the tendency of words to
  co-occur in language

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Collocation
MONEY
SPEND
TIME
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COLLOCATION
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Collocation gt translation problems

• lavarsi i denti
• to brush (NOT wash) ones teeth
• mangiarsi le unghie
• to bite (NOT eat) ones nails

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Translation problems

• Paesaggi aspri
• àspro, a. 1 (di sapore) sour tart, bitter
  2 (di suono) harsh rasping grating. 3 (fig.
  duro) harsh hard bitter 4 (ruvido) rough
  rugged 5 (scosceso) steep 6 (di clima)
  severe raw harsh. ? (ling.) (Il Ragazzini,
  1996)
• harsh landscapes? hard landscapes?
• rough landscapes? rugged landscapes?

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Translation problemsPAESAGGI SUGGESTIVI
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COLLOCATES of scenery(from the British
National Corpus)
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Translation problems

• Immersi nella natura
• - immeresed in nature?
• surrounded by nature?

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Surrounded by
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(No Transcript)
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surrounded by countryside
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COMPOUNDS/MULTI-WORD UNITS

• compounds gt word word ( word )
• solid
• hyphenated
• open
• multi-word units gt complete units of meaning
  which represent single lexical items
• idioms
• lexical phases

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COMPOUNDS

• SOLID gt lifeboat, honeymoon, moonlight
• HYPHENATED gt life-threatening, single-handedly
• OPEN gt life jacket, urban tourism, package tour

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COMPOUNDS

• disk operating system
• repetitive strain injury
• Dutch elm disease
• anti-lock braking system

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MULTI-WORD UNITS

• Idioms gt easily recognized because
• you cannot change the order of words
• you cannot replace a word
• you cannot omit a word
• you cannot change grammatical structure

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Bread and butter

• I have bread and butter with my soup.
• (LITERAL)
• Linguistics is my bread and butter.
• IDIOM Bread and butter issues are ones that
  affect people directly and in a very important
  way.

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IDIOMS

• To buy a pig in apoke
• The boot is on the other foot
• Bury the hatchet
• Between a rock and a hard place
• On tenterhooks
• Let the cat out of the bag
• Bad hair day
• Hammer and tongs

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• Pig in a pokeIf someone buys a pig in a poke,
  they buy something without checking the condition
  it was in, usually finding out later that it was
  defective.
• Boot is on the other footWhen the boot's on the
  other foot, a person who was in a position of
  weakness is now in a position of strength.

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• Bury the hatchetIf you bury the hatchet, you
  make peace with someone and stop arguing or
  fighting.
• Between a rock and a hard placeIf you are
  caught between a rock and a hard place, you are
  in a position where you have to choose between
  unpleasant alternatives, and your choice might
  cause you problems you will not be able to
  satisfy everyone.

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• On tenterhooksThis means that she is waiting
  impatiently and excitedly for something
• Let the cat out of the bagIf you accidentally
  reveal a secret, you let the cat out of the bag.
• Bad hair dayIf you're having a bad hair day,
  things are not going the way you would like or
  had planned.

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• Hammer and tongsIf people are going at it hammer
  and tongs, they are arguing fiercely. The idiom
  can also be used when people are doing something
  energetically.

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Lexical phrases

• By the way
• Again and again
• As far as I
• With reference to
• To all intents and purposes

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• LIBERO COME UN FRINGUELLO
• CIECO COME UNA TALPA
• UN MARE DI VOLTE/MIGLIAIA DI VOLTE
• SANI E SALVI
• SANO COME UN PESCE
• GIRARE A VUOTO
• DI TANTO IN TANTO

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To sum upTHE LEXICAL SYSTEM

• WORDS
• SENSE RELATIONS
• LEXICAL RELATIONS
• MULTI-WORD UNITS
• and WORD CLASSES!

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• More about affixes at
• http//www.affixes.org
• More about idioms at
• http//www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms