Article,
Is there interference of usage constraints?: A frequency study of existential there isand its French equivalent il y ain translated vs. non-translated texts
Target: International Journal on Translation Studies, (2013)
Abstract
We examine the possible impact of frequency differences between a construction in L1 and its equivalent in L2 on translations. Our case is that of existential therein English and existential il y ain French. Using corpus evidence, we first confirm previous claims that existential thereis used more freely in English than existential il y ais in French. Drawing on extensive counts conducted in available corpora and self-compiled samples of translated English and French, intra-language comparisons of translated and non-translated language use show that existential thereis under-represented in English translated from French while existential il y ais over-represented in French translated from English. It is suggested that source-language interference is responsible for these differences. In addition, counts of existentials in individual novels and their translations show that inter-language frequency shifts systematically occur in the direction of target-language norms, most clearly so for translations into French, which suggests that the observed usage constraint on il y astill applies to a noticeable extent in translated French. Methodologically, we argue the need for a large corpus of translated French.
