Comparing original and translated Spanish: A corpus-based analysis of adjective position

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that translated texts present a number of peculiarities which distinguish its language from the one found in texts produced originally. Many studies have tried to name some of these phenomena, which are usually grouped together under the umbrella term of ‘translation universals’. It has been demonstrated that translations do share a number of features irrespective of the source or target languages involved. Other divergences between original and translated texts are due to source language interference and are, therefore, language-dependent. This paper is a corpus-based study of several highly frequent Spanish adjectives in original texts and in texts translated from English. The unmarked position of attributive adjectives is the premodifying one in English and the post-modifying one in Spanish, though. Spanish also allows for the pre-modifying position with certain connotations. The aim of this study is to identify differences in behavioral patterns with respect to adjective position in original and translated Spanish and explain these differences in terms of translation universals and/or source language interference. The results have revealed cases of simplification, unique item under-representation and untypical collocations in Spanish translations of English source texts.