Domains, text types, aspect marking and English-Chinese translation

T. McEnery, R. Xiao

    Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

    Abstract

    This paper uses an English-Chinese parallel corpus, an L1 Chinese comparable corpus, and an L1 Chinese reference corpus to examine how aspectual meanings in English are translated into Chinese and explore the effects of domains, text types and translation on aspect marking. We will show that while English and Chinese both mark aspect grammatically, the aspect system in the two languages differs considerably. Even though Chinese, as an aspect language, is rich in aspect markers, covert marking (LVM) is a frequent and important strategy in Chinese discourse. The distribution of aspect markers varies significantly across domain and text type. The study also sheds new light on the translation effect by contrasting aspect marking in translated Chinese texts and L1 Chinese texts.
    Original languageEnglish
    Publication statusPublished - 2002
    EventICAME 2002: The Theory and Use of English Language Corpora - Gothenburg, Sweden
    Duration: 22 May 200226 May 2002

    Conference

    ConferenceICAME 2002: The Theory and Use of English Language Corpora
    Country/TerritorySweden
    CityGothenburg
    Period22/05/0226/05/02

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