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Polysemy in Translation

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Investigating the Complementary Polysemy of the Noun ‘Destruction' in an English to Arabic Parallel Corpus

Hammouda Salhi
University of Carthage, Tunisia hammouda_s@hotmail.com Abstract: This article investigates a topic at the interface between translation studies, lexical semantics and corpus linguistics. Its general aim is to show how translation studies could profit from the work done in both lexical semantics and corpus linguistics in an attempt to help ‘endear’ linguists to translators (Malmkjær, 1998). The specific objective is to capture the semantic and pragmatic behavior of the noun ‘destruction’ from its different translations into Arabic. The data are taken from an English-Arabic parallel corpus collected from UN texts and their translations (hereafter EAPCOUNT). While it seems that ‘destruction’ is monosemous, it turns out, after exploring its occurrences, to be highly polysemous and shows a case of complementary polysemy, where a number of alternations can be captured. These findings are broadly in line with the results reached in recent developments in lexical semantics, and more particularly the Generative Lexicon (GL) theory developed by James Pustejovsky. Some concrete suggestions are made at the end on how to enhance the relation between linguists and translators and their mutual cooperation.

Key words: Lexical semantics, corpus linguistics, translation studies, complementary polysemy, coercion, parallel corpora, lexical ambiguities

Résumé: Le présent article aborde un sujet à la croisée des études de traduction, de la sémantique lexicale et de la linguistique de corpus. Son objectif général est de montrer comment les études de traduction pourraient tirer profit des travaux de la sémantique lexicale et de la linguistique de corpus, également afin de faire se « rapprocher » linguistes et traducteurs

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