Underspecification in the translation of discourse markers: A parallel corpus study of the treatment of connective functions of indeed in Polish translations

Highlights

• Connective functions of indeed are misinterpreted in translation.

• Connective functions of indeed are generalized onto its Polish equivalents.

• Different connective functions trigger different underspecification techniques.

Abstract

Indeed is a polyfunctional item which functions both as an epistemic adverbial and a connective discourse marker (cf. Traugott and Dasher, 2002; Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijmer, 2007). This paper focuses on the treatment of its connective functions in Polish translations. By examining the transcripts of EU parliamentary proceedings in an English-Polish parallel corpus, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the polyfunctionality of indeed and a higher degree of grammaticalization it shows in comparison with its Polish equivalents provide a challenge to translators, and affect their interpretation of its connective functions. The problems result in the employment of various underspecification techniques (cf., Crible et al., 2019) in translation. The analyzed translations reveal frequent omissions of indeed, cases of functional mismatch, generalization and particularization of its meanings, as well as the use of double equivalents. They also indicate the tendency for the connective functions of indeed to be overgeneralized onto its Polish epistemic equivalents which are not sufficiently grammaticalized to perform them.

Introduction

Polyfunctional items which, like indeed, are used as epistemic adverbials and connective discourse markers (cf. Traugott and Dasher, 2002; Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijmer, 2007), rarely have straightforward cross-linguistic equivalents in both the epistemic and textual domain. Their translation requires correct pragmatic inferences and careful selection from a wide range of potential functional equivalents in the target language. The complexity of the process results in the employment of various underspecification strategies (cf. Crible et al., 2019) by translators. This paper focuses on the treatment of connective functions of indeed in Polish translations. By examining the transcripts of EU parliamentary proceedings in an English-Polish parallel corpus, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the polyfunctionality of indeed and a higher degree of grammaticalization it shows in comparison with its Polish equivalents provide a challenge to translators, and affect their interpretation of its connective functions. It also shows that some of the connective functions of indeed are overgeneralized onto its Polish epistemic equivalents which are not sufficiently grammaticalized to perform them. The treatment of connectives in translation has been demonstrated to depend on the type of coherence relation they express in the original text (e.g., Hansen-Schirra et al., 2007; Meyer and Webber, 2013; Hoek et al., 2017; Crible et al., 2019). In a similar vein, this study attempts to show that the translation of different connective meanings expressed by indeed involves the employment of different underspecification strategies. It also makes a contribution to English-Polish contrastive research concerning discourse markers and their treatment in translation – an area which remains relatively understudied.

This paper is arranged into eight sections. Section 2 focuses on the functions of indeed as a discourse marker; Section 3 describes Polish equivalents of indeed based on bilingual dictionaries and earlier studies; Section 4 presents an overview of research concerned with the treatment of discourse markers in translation; Section 5 describes the material and methods used in this study; Sections 6 Results, 7 Discussion discuss the underspecification techniques identified in the Polish translations of indeed in the analyzed material. Section 8 provides a summary of the findings, and offers some conclusions.