Abstract :
[en] Register variation has increasingly been observed in Translation Studies (Baker, 1992/2011; Granger, 2016; Hansen-Schirra et al., 2012; Lapshinova-Koltunski, 2013, 2014; Lefer & Vogeleer, 2016; Neumann, 2012, 2016, 2021; Schäffner, 2002). In fact, the importance of analyzing registers before translating texts has been recently emphasized (Gledhill & Kübler, 2016). As Neumann (2021) indicated, “if they [translators] are not aware of register conventions or deem it fit to depart from them, we might be able to observe dilution of register features in translated texts” (p. 66).
This paper focuses on register analysis in translations made by Master students translating from English into French. Studies have shown that students may find register transposition difficult when they translate non-literary texts because of the differences between English and French registers (Chuquet & Paillard, 1987/1989; Gadet, 1996; Vinay & Darbelnet, 1958). Even if students may often feel that language needs to be adapted according to register variables (such as the audience or the function of the target text), many of them fail to do this successfully (Fawcett, 1997; Gile, 2005; Vandaele, 2015).
Our analysis was conducted on impersonal verbs (IVs) in French, which modify the message organization. In fact, they “rearrange” the communication (Riegel et al., 2018, p. 666), since the real subject is postponed (Bottineau, 2010) and does not introduce the theme of the sentence, which leads to its depersonalization. IVs (such as “il y a” (“there is”) or “il semble que” (“it seems that”)) may also be a stylistic marker, a genre-specific feature, since, regarding academic texts, “impersonality [i.e. the use of formal, detached language, avoiding reference to the author] is seen as a defining feature of expository writing as it embodies the positivist assumption that academic research is purely empirical and objective” (Hyland, 2002, p. 1095, in Cigankova, 2016, p. 100). Therefore, IVs seem to depend on the language variety in which they are used, or “register” as defined by Biber and Conrad (2009), to whom a register is “language variety associated with both a particular situation of use and with pervasive linguistic features that serve important functions within that situation of use” (p. 31).
This paper shows the results of a study carried out on the students’ use of IVs in translations in comparison with the use of IVs in non-translated texts. In fact, a variation between natural language (of non-translated texts) and translated language can be hypothesized (Zanettin, 2013, in Kruger, 2018). The two research questions of this paper are the following:
1) Is the use of IVs in French by translation students different from the authors’ use in non-translated texts?
2) To which extent does register have an influence on the use of IVs in natural and translated language in French?
A corpus-based study was conducted following three steps: (1) an analysis of the use of IVs in non-translated texts considered comparable to the students’ translations; (2) an analysis of their use in the students’ translations in comparison with their source texts; and (3) a comparison between the results of the first two steps. Since a register analysis implies the analysis of at least two registers (Neumann, 2021), two registers, that are taught to Master students at University of Mons, Belgium, were under scrutiny: press article and popular science article.
Four corpora were thus compiled: two comparable corpora (one per register) of 30 French non-translated texts, and two corpora (one per register) of 14 translated texts written by students in French (i.e. translations of a press article from The Economist (TT1) and translations of a popular science article from New Scientist (TT2)). It should be noted that those translation corpora contain 14 translations of a same source text and can therefore be referred to “multiple translation corpora”, which are of great interest since that type of corpus “allows for comparison of translation solutions [for a same linguistic unit] used by various students rendering the same text” (Granger & Lefer, 2020, p. 1186). IVs were extracted in our corpora by searching for the words “il” and “ça” (which are the subjects of IVs in French by definition) in the Sketch Engine concordancer (Kilgarriff et al., 2014).
Results of the comparable corpora show that there is a significant difference in personal and impersonal verb use according to the registers of natural language (χ2 (1) = 14.865, p < 0.05, Cramér’s V = 0.058). IVs are more frequent in the popular science articles. Some IVs in press articles tend to imply readers in the message (e.g. “il faut supposer” (“we must suppose”)), while IVs in popular science articles tend to provide readers with new information (e.g. “il est question de” (“it is a matter of”)) or expose the scientists’ points of view (e.g. “il est prématuré” (“it is too soon”)). Besides, some IVs do not make texts impersonal because they express opinions (e.g. “il est déplaisant” (“it is unpleasant”)).
Results from the multiple translation corpora show that there is a significant difference in personal and impersonal verb use according to the registers of translated language (χ2 (1) = 6.3364, p < 0.05, Cramér’s V = 0.081) as well. There was, however, no significant difference in the use of those verbs between the students’ texts (p > 0.05 in TT1 and p > 0.05 in TT2). Results also show that 50% of the students used IVs in their TT1, while 100% of them decided to include IVs in their TT2. It should be noted that 75% of IVs in TT2 were literal translations, while 30% of IVs in TT1 were spontaneously added by the students. Finally, the analysis of each occurrence of IVs compared to the source text units shows that 40% of IVs in TT1 and 2,5% of IVs in TT2 led to meaning mistakes.
From a qualitative point of view, results of the comparison between non-translated and translated texts globally show that students tend to use IVs in a similar way than authors do in natural language. In our corpora, IVs seem more problematic to students when they translate press articles.
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