Учебное пособие 1860

Conclusion.

The study shows that fulfilment of a translator’s lexical need through dictionary queries is a preferred way to develop lexical competence and personal lexical space. Studies of lexical need facilitates formation of professional space through targeted testing, development of adaptive programs, optimization of team members’ workload by volumes and types of work and selection of translators to be included in the team. To meet the professional lexical need special dictionaries shall be required [12, p. 120-122].

As a potential solution for addressing the lexical need, the authors developed a new version of the online dictionary LexSite that produces information on translation of lexical units with the most efficient way. It also features quick return to translations found earlier, reverse translation without losing direct translations, recognizes homoforms and queries for words entered in non-basic form, detects typos and misspelled words in the user’s queries and offers corrections, provides examples of the usage of retrieved translations. The team of developers keep working on improvement of LexSite features. The scope of work includes studies aimed at optimization of visualization of translations within a dictionary unit [13]. Besides, research of mechanisms and methods for studies of dictionary users’ lexical needs are underway.

References

144

Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 1 (20), 2018 ISSN 2587-8093

[1] Webster F. The Information Society Theories / F. Webster. – New York: Routledge,

2006.

[2]European Commission, Directorate-General for Translation. Studies on Translation and Multilinguaiism. – Kingston-upon-Thames: The Language Technology Centre Ltd., 2009.

[3]Translation Dictionary LexSite. URL: http://lexsite-dictionary.com (vremja obrashhenija – 27.02.2018).

[4]Zipf George K. Human Behavior and the Principle of least Effort. – Cambridge, MA, Addison-Wesley, 1949.

[5]Mandelbrot B. Information theory and psycholinguistics: a theory of words frequencies. // Lazafeld P., Henry N. (Eds.), Readings in Mathematical Social Science – Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. – 1966. – P. 503-512.

[6]Montemurro Marcelo A. Beyond the Zipf–Mandelbrot law in quantitative linguistics.

–. Cordoba, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Ciudad Universitaria, Facultad de Matematica, Astronomia y Fisica, 2001. http: //statweb .stanford. edu/~ owen /courses /306a/ Zipf And Gutenberg.pdf (vremja obrashhenija – 27.02.2018).

[7]Goulden R., Nation P, Read J. How large can a receptive vocabulary be? // Applied Linguistics, 11(4), 1990, p. 341-363. http: //www .victoria .ac.nz/ lals /about/ staff/ publications/paul -nation/1990-Goulden-Voc-size.pdf (vremja obrashhenija – 27.02.2018).

[8]British National Corpus. URL: https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ (vremja obrashhenija – 27.02.2018).

[9]Corpus of Contemporary American English. URL: https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ (vremja obrashhenija – 27.02.2018).

[10]Kit M., Berg E. Sense Ranking in Dual-Language Online Dictionaries. // The 10th In-ternational Conference ICT for Language Learning. Conference Proceedings. – Florence, Italy: Libreria Universitaria, 2017. URL: https://conference.pixel-online. net/ ICT4LL /files/ict4ll/ed0010/FP/3051-ETL2667-FP-ICT4LL10.pdf (vremja obrashhenija – 27.02.2018).

[11]Berg E., Kit M. Cognitive Approach to Compilation of Test Materials for Evaluation of Translator’s Skills. // Cognitive Studies / Ètudes Cognitives. – Warsaw: Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 2016. – P. 100-106.

[12]Kit M., Kit D. On Development of «Smart» Dictionaries. // Cognitive Studies / Ètudes Cognitives. – Warsaw: Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 2013. – P. 115–127.

[13]Kit M., Berg E. Online Bilingual Dictionary as a Learning Tool: Today and Tomorrow. // The 9th International Conference ICT for Language Learning. Conference Proceedings.

–Florence, Italy: Libreria Universitaria, 2016. URL: http://conference.pixel- online.net/ICT4LL/files/ict4ll/ed0009/FP/3051-ETL1930-FP-ICT4LL9.pdf (vremja obrashhenija - 27.02.2018).

145

Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 1 (20), 2018 ISSN 2587-8093

UDC 81’33

CORPUS BASED DATA ANALYSIS FOR TRANSLATORS: TRAINING AND PROFESSIONAL WORK (BASED ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE MATERIALS)

T.I. Bolshakova, A.V. Varushkina

____________________________________________________________________________

Military Educational and Scientific Centre of the Air Force

«N.E. Zhukovsky, Y.A. Gagarin» Air Force Academy.

Candidate of philological sciences,

assistant Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages Tatyana I. Bolshakova

e-mail:tatiana197813@gmail.com

Military Educational and Scientific

Centre of the Air Force «N.E. Zhukovsky, Y.A. Gagarin» Air Force Academy.

Candidate of philological sciences,

assistant Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages Anastasia V. Varushkina

e-mail: nastzher@yandex.ru

____________________________________________________________________________

Statement of the problem. The article deals with the issue of corpus based data application for considering combinative selectivity of English military aviation terms.

Results. Types and properties of language corpus, their application in translation, namely with the purpose of developing future translators prognostic skills are considered. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the nearest position of adjectives “aerial” and “airborne”, the noun “fighter”, the verbal predicates “overfly” and “crash”, given in the British National Corpus. Lexical units mentioned above are analysed in different syntactical positions in order to reveal their collocation potential, formal and semantic valency.

Conclusions. Developing anticipating language skills is concerned with preparation of special materials showing how language units collocate with each other. Preparation of such materials requires corpus based data analysis, for which lexical-syntactical analysis has been applied. This analysis involves eliciting collocation dependence on the syntactic position of the lexical unit. Thus the analysis allows formation of lexical-syntactical paradigms. The word combination level analysis has shown the differences in collocation potential of such close in meaning adjectives as “aerial” and “airborne”; the collocation paradigm of the noun “fighter” in different syntactical positions. The syntactical whole level analysis has revealed representations of different parts of a sentence, set by the verbal predicates “overfly” and “crash”. The necessity of identifying and learning such syntactical wholes is determined by the cliche characteristics of speech, the mechanism of linguistic forecasting is based on. The authors point out the necessity of employing the results of lexical-syntactical analysis for developing the translators’ anticipating language skills.

Key words: language national corpus, mechanism of probabilistic anticipation, lexical-syntactical analysis, corpus based analysis, professionally oriented translation, statistic data, word collocations, collocation potential.

For citation: Bolshakova T.I., Varushkina A.V. Corpus based data analysis for translators: training and professional work (based on the English language materials) T.I. Bolshakova, A.V. Varushkina // Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-didactic Researches”. – 2018. - №1 (20). – P. 146

– 155.

Introduction.

____________________________________

© Bolshakova T.I., Varushkina A.V., 2018

146

Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 1 (20), 2018 ISSN 2587-8093

Competent military translator necessarily refers to modern electronic linguistic data bases; National Language Corpora are among the most important ones. Highly qualified transla tion specialists cannot be trained without a language corpus. Therefore, the given article focuses on the issue of corpus data application for lexico-syntactical analysis of military aviation lexicon and interpretation of results obtained.

Research methology.

The given article research object is the adjectives “aerial” and “airborne”, the noun “fighter”, the verbs “overfly” and “crash” and their collocations found in the British National

Corpus. The subject of the research is the collocation potential of the mentioned above lexical units, revealed by means of language corpus data, their formal and semantic valency. Studying of collocation potential of lexical units of military aviation terms is based on BNC (British National Corpus) data. BNC data characterize “aerial” and “airborne”; “fighter”; “overfly” and “crash” lexical units collocation potential. The choice of given lexemes is determined, first of all, by their frequent use in description of combat actions, supported from the air. Given lexical units possess manifold lexico-semantic paradigm, which presents interest for lexico-syntactic analysis.

Methods of lexico-syntactic analysis, distributive analysis, general scientific inductivedeductive method, descriptive-analytical method have been used during the research.

Results of research.

The definition of language corpus can be found in many modern studies devoted to the problems of corpus linguistics and its results used in translation (V. V. Ryikov, V.N. Shevchuk, T.M. Chirko , M.A. Egorova, O.Yu. Semina, Yu. A. Volosnova, Yu. A. Retsker, L.A. Nefedova, N.N. Kozlov, V.P. Zaharov, S. Yu. Bogdanova, J. Sinclair, Т. McEnery, A. Wilson and other Russian and foreign researchers). We will quote the definition, given by V.P. Zaharov and S. Yu. Bogdanova in the textbook “Corpus linguistics”: “linguistic or language corpus of texts is a large set of language data, presented in a machine-readable form, unified, structured, marked, philologically competent, intended for performing of particular linguistic tasks” [1, p.7]. Tony McEnery and Andrew Hardie suggest that a language corpus is the set of machine-readable texts, on the basis of which specific scope of research problems is solved [2, p.1-3]. According to Nadja Nesselhauf, a corpus represents a set of texts systematically processed by computer [3, p. 2].

V. V. Ryikov, referring to the research of T. McEnery, A. Wilson (1999), points out the main corpus features: “1) the placement of a corpus on a machine-readable medium 2) standard representation of the verbal material on the machine-readable medium, allowing application of standard software programs of their processing 3) limited size 4) representativeness as a result of specific selection procedure” [4]. T. McEnery in his recent study “Corpus linguistics. Method, theory and practice” (2012) adds such necessary requirements to “ideal corpus” as balance and comparability [2, p.10]. According to the opinion of T. McEnery, a corpus should possess the features of linguistic homogeneity in order to demonstrate the distinctions in the semantic value, functioning and etc.

The most developed and authoritative corpora are the following: British National Corpus (450 million words), Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (450 million words), the corpora of modern German language (COSMAS corpora) (1610 million words), the corpus of modern Chinese language (LIVAC Synchronous Corpus) (720 million words, 150 million hieroglyphs) and others [1, p.153], [5, p.337]. Today neither explanatory dictionary, nor serious study is done without a reference to national language corpora.

Among the advantages of corpus-based approach foreign and Russian scientists emphasize data adequacy, linguistic factors objective studying, the opportunity of representation of diversity of a language (genres, dialects, special features), as well as language units functioning particularities in modern natural speech. As Т. MacEnery and А. Hardie say, corpus-based ap-

147

Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 1 (20), 2018 ISSN 2587-8093

proach allows “to interpret data of language used for communication, in the form, it is used, and in the context, it appears in the structure of human consciousness [2, p.168].

There are various types of corpora: monolingual, bilingual, multilingual. Parallel corpora, that are, bilingual corpora are highly valued by translators. Such corpora have a series of advantages when compared with other electronic resources. They demonstrate language phenomena which are not given in translation dictionaries, as well as provide more extensive coverage of translation equivalents. Used together with special software programmes, capable to extract concordances (for example, Shortcut to wordsmith), corpora allow to solve many translation problems, such, for example, as search of translation equivalents. Computer-based corpus possesses representativeness, therefore it allows to carry out a statistical analysis of data which are needed for “establishing of translation equivalence not being translation of verbal word signs”

[6, p.86]. Parallel corpora are also necessary for conducting terminological studies in particular subject area [6, p.87].

The ability to develop “autonomy" (independence) of a trainee that promotes translational competence development is the advantage of monolingual, bilingual and multilingual language corpora. It has been realized that a teacher ceases to play the role of the single source of knowledge and information; he \ she just assists a trainee in sorting out information and conducting independent research [7, p.90]. Frequently a translator works in particular subject area and needs highly specialized corpus-based data. Such special language corpora are underdeveloped, so besides general national language corpora of particular (having divisions in functional styles and sources of texts), practical translation activity and lexicon research electronic encyclopedia and directories of special references can be used additionally. Resources of Aviator Slang, Air Force Magazine and others can serve as examples of such sources for cadets, who are future specialists in military translation.

Taken in complex these means assist in solving the following problems. First, as V.N. Shevchuk suggests, they are used for selection of correct Russian equivalents of rare terms; second, for the designation of a vehicle in the NATO classification, verification of meaning of terms-paronyms, aviation slang, radio traffic communication translation, as well as varying the same type of syntactical constructions, providing syntactical diversity while translating technical texts, for example, the performance of armament and etc [8, p.107-108].

Corpora have given new perspectives to linguists-researchers, including translators and teachers, involved in development of educational-methodical literature for translators training. Corpora-based data have even allowed to formulate new approaches to the language as phraseology. The concept of a language as phraseology has evolved in foreign (English-speaking) linguistics. The concept that “meaning is a property of sequences reproduced in speech, instead of their constituents - words or grammatical forms” is now considered the main achievement of corpus linguistics by many scientists [9, p.258].

In our opinion this approach is particularly fruitful for the theory and practice of translation. In the recent decades the concept of “the importance of comparison not (crosslanguage) of separate grammar forms or syntactic construction, rather than structural-semantic units, making uniform conceptual whole” has been approved for translators [10, p.95].

Corpus-based data allow translators to get insight into combination of language units a researcher takes interest in, in different types of contexts (minimum, textual, the set of texts) [11, p.57]. A huge amount of contexts allows to see a left-hand and right nearest position of a lexical unit and enables the translators to be aware not only of grammatical, lexical and stylistical, that is, formal valency, but also of the semantic one.

The results of collocation study can be successfully used in educational-methodical materials intended to form translators’ word usage skills. As it is known, “the knowledge of dictionary meaning is substantially depreciated by the ignorance of word usage rules” [12, p.106]. In authors’ opinion, the development of future military translators’ probabilistic anticipating ability is the most important of all aspects of this highly important work.

148

Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 1 (20), 2018 ISSN 2587-8093

According to I.M. Feygenberg , it is the ability that allows a person to percept a verbal or a written text, not only “to look ahead”, that is, to anticipate a further development of information in a text, its most probable development, but also “to be prepared to adequate actions”

[13, p.8]. Probabilistic forecasting in translation is based on previous experience, in this case, language forecasting is substantially hindered during the perception of “not enough familiar” foreign language. Therefore, linguistic forecasting depends on the knowledge of “standard set of word collocations and verbal expressions, as well as functional binding of language elements” [14, p.118]. As even very authoritative collocation dictionaries do not always contain

“information on the actual language trends” [5, p.337], translators have to refer to language corpus to reveal the real laws of word collocability in modern foreign language speech. A researcher and a translation teacher can use corpus-based resources as empirical basis for identifying syntagmatic properties of language units, their collocation preferences in the conditions of natural communication.

As for the method of analysis of words collocations within phrases, constructions and broader – within statements, a researcher can apply the tested procedures of distributive method. As Yu.A. Volosnova suggests, corpus-based data take it to a whole new level, because language units are presented in their “natural position”, namely, in the context which can be extended up to necessary limits. If earlier distributive analysis was used to reveal distribution (that is, all possible positions) of a particular units of a language level (phonemes, morphemes, lexemes) and limitations to their combination among themselves, now it is possible to study the collocation potential of the particular word forms in the speech flow. One cannot but agree with Yu.A. Volosnova that distributive analysis today has the ability “of forecasting elements in speech (or in a text) on the ground of knowledge of others” [15, p.48].

Therefore, the given method of linguistic analysis is appropriate for achieving of the goal of future military translators forecasting abilities formation. The research potential of the distributive analysis method grows, if a syntactic position of collocations within syntactic whole is taken into account. Our study will adhere to this method, called “lexicon-syntactic” after T.M. Chirko and Т.М. Lomova [16]. At the training on discipline “Professionally-oriented translation” the cadets of the Air Force academy, future translators, deal with lexical units, very close in meaning, and should realize a subtle distinction in their semantics and their collocation potential.

Synonymous words presented by one lexical unit in native language, may enable the translators-beginners to replace one of the synonyms with other without any reason or to exclude one of them. So, two adjectives “aerial” and “airborne” are frequent in English military aviation texts, having the common Russian dictionary equivalent “авиационный”. Two other equivalents given by bilingual and monolingual dictionaries are very close in meaning; they have no grounds for their differentiation (compare: «связанный с воздухом» for the “aerial” and «перевозимый по воздуху» for the “airborne”). We’ve made analysis of these adjectives in attributive position on the basis of BNC, which has revealed lexico-syntactical paradigms of their nominal section representatives.

Table 1 Lexico-syntactical paradigm of the adjective “aerial”

warfare

defense

battle

combat AERIAL attack

offensive

barrage

bombardment

149

Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 1 (20), 2018 ISSN 2587-8093

interdiction

reconnaissance

supervision

inspection

patrol

So, in a right-hand position of the adjective “aerial” a lot of event nouns referring to air combat operations are found: aerial warfare, aerial defense, aerial battle, aerial combat, aerial attack, aerial offensive, aerial barrage, aerial bombardment, aerial interdiction, as well as other military operations: aerial reconnaissance, aerial supervision, aerial inspection, aerial patrol, aerial escort and others.

Corpus-based analysis of “airborne” lexeme use has given us a more complex picture. According to the definition of English-English dictionary, the word “airborne” means “located in the air”, “transported by the air”.

Table 2 Lexico-syntactical paradigm of the left-hand position of the adjective “AIRBORNE” in a predicative position

be

become

get AIRBORNE stay

keep

Compared to “aerial”, the adjective “airborne” is used not only in an attributive, but also in a predicative position. It is the meaning of the predicative “airborne” that has become the source and determined the usage of two other sememes of the given lexeme. Predicative “airborne” together with linkers acts, as a rule, as nominal predicate with the meaning “to take off, to mount to the air”, “to be, to remain, to keep in the air”. As linkers the verbs “to be”, “to become”, “to receive” are regularly used. The nouns, referring to the types of aircraft or pilots who operate them, serve as their subject in a majority of cases: aircraft, plane, fighter, bomber, jet, shuttle, paraglider, Hurricane, Bristol Blenheim etc. For example:

All 181 aircraft w e r e a i r b o r n e within fifteen minutes, something of a record. …some P-40s were trying t o g e t a i r b o r n e , many were shot down before they were able to take off» [1*].

Table 3 Lexico-syntactical paradigm of the right-hand position of the adjective “AIRBORNE” in an attributive function

Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 1 (20), 2018 ISSN 2587-8093

attack

assault

operation

fight

In an attributive function the given sememe is combined with the nouns referring to the Airborne units of all levels. Airborne forces; airborne troops; airborne corps; airborne division; airborne brigade; airborne regiment; airborne formation; airborne unit; airborne HQ; airborne command posts etc. constitute the given paradigm. The names of airborne personnel can be also included there: soldiers of the airborne; airborne soldiers; airborne men / lads / guys / blokes and so on.

The meanings of word combinations, in which given adjectives have the same meanings of combat actions, such as attack, battle, assault, fight, operation and etc., are not equal. Word combination containing “aerial”, refer to actions in the air or from the air, and word combinations containing “airborne”, refer to combat actions committed by airborne troops on the ground, earlier landed from the air. The analysis of collocation potential of the nouns is more difficult, as in the English language the words of the given part of speech are not only used in syntactical positions requiring substantives (being a subject, a direct or a indirect object), but also in attributive position to other nouns, when noun acquires the meaning of property.

Table 4 Lexico-syntactical paradigm of the left-hand position of the noun “FIGHTER”

long-range

night

stealth

ground-attack

air-combat FIGHTER tactical

naval

Lockhead YF-117A stealth

The noun “fighter”, selected for the corpus based analysis, refers to the type of aircraft in its left-hand position and reveals features relating it to any type of aircraft on different grounds. Compare: a long-range fighter; a night fighter; a stealth fighter; a ground-attack fighter; an air-combat fighter; a tactical fighter; a naval fighter etc. The plane models, for example, Lockhead YF-117A; stealth fighter; the European fighter etc. are frequent in an attributive position to the given noun.

Table 5 Lexico-syntactical paradigm of the right-hand position of the noun “FIGHTER” in word combinations

plane

bomber FIGHTER jet

helicopter

spacecraft

command

defense aviation

wing

In a right-hand position there are the common designations of aircraft such as fighterplane; fighter-bomber; fighter-jet; fighter-helicopter; fighter spacecraft as well as structural

151

Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 1 (20), 2018 ISSN 2587-8093

semantic roles of components, the positions of replacing and semantic types of lexical representatives of appropriate roles and positions” [16, p.29]. The verb “overfly”, frequent in the air military lexicon, will serve us an example. English-English dictionaries define its meaning as

“to fly over an area or country in an aircraft”. Russian-English dictionaries give the following

Russian equivalent: «пролетать, совершать полет над каким-либо районом, пересекать границу государства или территории».

Nouns referring to aircraft or people, operating the aircraft are found in a left-hand position. For example: US B52 bomber; the British and US forces; US military aircraft; helicopter gunship; supply aircraft; spy satellites etc.

The verb analyzed is transitive, its position as a direct object is intended for substantives, performing semantic function of the locative (places of action). The paradigm of lexicophraseological representatives of this functionally-semantic chain is not diverse. its structural components are lexemes: airspace; territory; area; country; border; city; village; farmland; VOR and other appropriate geographic names: the Indian subcontinent; Teheran and the holy city of Qom etc.

At the sentence level our lexico-syntactic analysis cannot be limited only to the same components which express the propositional content of the statement, reflecting the structure of a nominated situation. As a sentence is a communicative unit of a language, the components which express a pragmatic aspect of its content combine with the verbal predicate. So, in our corpus of examples with verbal lexeme “overfly” the expressions making a modal frame of the statement are found regularly. As it turned out, the verb “overfly” in most cases serve the situations, in which the presence or absence of a right to perform a given action by the air forces of one country over the territory of the other and, respectively, the issue of permission is discussed.

… the government allowed US troops and supplies in unarmed planes t o o v e r f l y Austrian territory en route for the Gulf [1*].

Modal frame with the meaning “to fly above the territory of countries, having the permission of its authorities either without one by agreement or illegally / without the appropriate permission” is presented in the following contexts: to obtain diplomatic clearance to overfly Israel; to enter into a legal agreement to end overflying of villages.

The lexico-syntactic analysis can extend beyond a separate statement, for example, when a verbal predicate dominates a manifold structure of knowledge, including not only basic characteristics of a situation, but also information of the ways of conducting an action, its direction, nature, temporary and spatial location.

So, the verb “crash” (to have an accident in a car, plane etc. by violently hitting something else; to hit something or someone extremely hard while moving, in a way that causes a lot of damage or makes a lot of noise) is frequent in the military texts, describing the performance of operation by various aircraft.

Conducting a lexico-syntactic analysis of the parts of speech bigger than a statement, not only the nearest collocations of the verb “crash’, such as aircraft; helicopter; pilot; passengers; place and the time of an aircrash, but also “distant”, itinerary, time in the air before an accident, the amount of the victims or their absence, the pattern of destruction, weather conditions, direct reasons of a failure and its circumstances.

…a RAF Hercules plane c r a s h e d in the Scottish highland last month [1*].

…an Afghan army helicopter c r a s h e d between Bagram and Kabul, killing 26 soldiers

[1*].

It c r a s h e d into the peak and flipped over [1*].

153