Homework discussion
• in procinto di / sull’orlo di:
• on the brink of
• on the verge of
• on the cusp of
• Which differences between the three expressions?
• Unusual animal sounds
•
•
•
•
penguins?
kangaroos?
pandas?
toads?
• Groups/sets of animals/fruits?:
•
•
•
•
fish(es)?
birds?
bananas?
blueberries?
On the brink of
On the cusp of
• recession
• (political, litter, IT) crisis • (a stunning) recovery
• change
• collapse
• (house price) crash
• a new industrial
• war
• A nervous
revolution
• (nuclear)
breakdown*
• (becoming) UK
armageddon
number one
• Resigning
• bankruptcy
• innovation
•
Civil
war
• ruin
• greatness*
• (financial) disaster • Recession
• takeover
• economic crisis • Collapse
• (major) growth
• extinction
• a new era
• Extinction
• destruction*
• “a popular revolt
• A 4-0 whitewash
against this soulless
• “ becoming the • Exporting
cult”
most pitiless right
• “retaking major ISIS
• Re-appraisal
wing nation in
stronghold of Mosul”
Europe ”
• “ eradicating polio ”
negative
collocates
On the verge of
mixed
collocates
mainly positive
collocates
Homework discussion
• in procinto di / sull’orlo di:
• on the brink of
• on the verge of
• on the cusp of
• Which differences between the three expressions?
• Unusual animal sounds
•
•
•
•
penguins?
kangaroos?
pandas?
toads?
• Groups/sets of animals/fruits?:
•
•
•
•
fish(es)?
birds?
bananas?
blueberries?
Call?
Squawk?
Bark? Honk?
Google search: “how do penguins” | “what do you call penguins”
Google search: “hear penguins”
call
• Penguins have excellent hearing and rely on distinct calls to identify
their mates when returning to the crowded breeding grounds
• Most often you'll be surprised to hear penguins calling to each other
• in Antarctica you might hear penguins or seals barking
bark
• From outside, I could hear penguins calling to each other.
Google search: penguin sound|noise
• According to the Smithsonian Magazine, penguins in Africa have at
least three distinct calls:
squawk
(“Hey! I’m here. Where are you guys?”)
(“Watch it, buddy!”), agonistic or threat calls
(“Heyyy”) songs directed towards mates, chicks and parents
African “Jackass Penguins” squawk or bray like a donkey.
• English verbs for animal sounds:
honk
http://www.writtensound.com/verbs_for_animal_sounds.php
• Wikipedia List of animal sounds
Croak
(OP: ribbit)
Call?
Search: kangaroo sound is called
• “Kangaroos make a variety
of sounds, including hissing,
grunting and coughing, ”
• List of animal sounds: chortle
• «Tut-tut»
• There is no specific name for
the sound a kangaroo makes
• Every now and then, pandas bleat
[=sheep, goats] or squeal [=pigs];
and they can even make a noise
like a high-patched bark.
Homework discussion
• in procinto di / sull’orlo di:
• on the brink of
• on the verge of
• on the cusp of
• Which differences between the three expressions?
• Unusual animal sounds
•
•
•
•
penguins?
kangaroos?
pandas?
toads?
• Groups/sets of animals/fruits?:
•
•
•
•
fish(es)?
birds?
bananas?
blueberries?
Bunch
Hand
Shoal
School
Bunch
Punnet?
«a group of fish»
«a group of birds»
«a * of birds»
«a * of doves»
«a * of bananas»
"a * of blueberries" –cup -handful
Flock
Other names for gatherings of birds:
• Fleet, flight
• Dule (of doves)
• Murder (crows)
Spin doctors (exercise 8)
• Who is a “spin doctor”, and what does s/he do?
• define: spin doctor
• In politics, a spin doctor is someone who is skilled in public relations and
who advises political parties on how to present their policies and
actions. (Collins)
• a person (as a political aide) responsible for ensuring that others
interpret an event from a particular point of view. (Merriam Webster)
• a spokesperson employed to give a specific interpretation of events to
the media, especially on behalf of a political party.
• In what field does the phrase “spin doctor(s)” seem to be most
often used?
• How did the expression originate?
• SPIN doctor' developed in the jargon of US politics. The phrase was first
used in print in October 1984 in an editorial in the New York Times about
the aftermath of the televised debate between US presidential
candidates Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale.
• "A dozen men in good suits and women in silk dresses will circulate smoothly
among the reporters, spouting confident opinions. They won't be just press
agents trying to impart a favourable spin to a routine release. They'll be the Spin
Doctors, senior advisers to the candidates."
• In US politics 'spin' is interpretation, the bias or slant put on information
when it is presented to the public or in a press conference; all
information can have positive or negative 'spin'. 'Doctor' comes from the
various figurative uses of the verb 'to doctor', ranging from 'patch up' or
'mend' to 'falsify'.
Spin doctors
• Who was Tony Blair’s spin doctor, during his tenure as PM?
• Alastair Campbell
• Who is President Donald Trump’s current spin doctor?
• Sean Spicer (officially ‘press secretary’), after 2 people turned down the job
• EN Press secretary – IT?
•
•
•
•
WordReference? Responsabile dei rapporti con la stampa
Linguee? Responsabile stampa
IATE? Spin doctor
Sean Spicer su google.it pagine in italiano  portavoce
• Is the expression used in Italian too? By whom/which kind of web
pages?
• “spin doctor” su google.it, pagine in italiano
• online newspapers (Il Giornale, La Stampa, il Fatto Quotidiano, L’Eco del Sud,
…), blogs
• Compare "spin doctor" site:repubblica.it | site:corriere.it |
site:ilsole24ore.com
• Try “spin doctor” site:governo.it
Summary on using the Internet
for specialised translation
• What the Internet (and Google) can and cannot do for translators
• We have used the Web
to look for linguistic information (patterns), mono/bilingual dictionarystyle
o to check/verify culture-bound facts, encyclopaedia-style
o for specialised translation, as a quick-reference tool for technical
translators
 and a range of language professionals, e.g. interpreters, revisers, etc.
o
• We have used the Web to solve a variety of different problems
linguistic: understand meaning, uses and associations of words/phrases
o translational: attested loans, confirm hypotheses on candidate
equivalents
o cultural: items/references familiar in SC, unknown to translator and TC
o
Conclusion on using the Web
for specialised translation – Main advantages
• massive amount of texts and multi-source information can be searched
• content is constantly “refreshed” (i.e. updated and extended)
• a lot of sources, text types and domains/topics are represented
• many languages (English is dominant, good presence of Italian)
• replicable search techniques across (your working/target) languages
• it is available at any time, at virtually no cost!
Main disadvantages and problems
need to differentiate good/reliable sources from questionable information
 for facts (limited control over user-generated content like Wikipedia)
 for linguistic usage (badly translated, non-native texts, poor authors)
 it may be difficult to identify differences between expert/non-expert use
o data/results still need to be interpreted
o Google focuses on content/information, rather than linguistic forms
o
e.g. difficult to find the collocates of the word “gore” (in “blood” sense),
as there is a lot of noise, coming from “Al Gore”, “Gore-Tex”, etc.
it is a commercial search engine: we have no control over it!
 its internal search algorithms are only partially transparent
- the ranking and sorting of results are performed according to criteria like
“popularity” of the websites, or geographic relevance
- the same search can yield different numbers of hits, depending on
unpredictable and uncontrollable factors as the time of the day, or the
location from which the query is made -- word counts are not reliable + it is
difficult to compare frequencies to verify translation hypotheses
- data on which searches are performed is unstable/changes
Main disadvantages and problems (cont’d)
Particularly relevant to linguists/translators:
 no possible/meaningful sorting of hits/results (esp. L/R-hand collocates)
- e.g. alphabetical sorting of collocates, from least to most frequent, etc.
- think of e.g. the “a * range/array of”, “on the verge of” exercises
 punctuation and upper case (capitals) are ignored, e.g. “aids” vs. “AIDS”
 impossible to search parts of words, e.g. start with “geo…”, end in “-itis”
 no lemmatised searches
- hard to calculate frequencies of specific word combinations
- e.g. to calculate how frequent is the combination “tirare l’acqua al proprio
mulino”, all inflected forms must be searched for
 no POS-sensitive searches
- e.g. to search for ‘spot’ as a noun vs. as a verb
 no possibility to specify the span occuring between two search terms
- i.e. the * wildcard can include zero to n words
«Googleology is bad science» (Kilgarriff 2007)
Suggested Readings
- Five chapters from Austermühl, F. (2001) Electronic Tools for Translators.
Manchester, St. Jerome Publishing, i.e.
+ 1 “Translation in the information age”, pp. 1-17
+ 2 “Translator-client communication and information transfer”, pp. 18-36
+ 3 “Translation and the Internet”, pp. 38-50
+ 4 “Searching the web”, pp. 52-67
+ 5 “Translation resources on the worldwide web”, pp. 68-89
The information contained in these chapters is useful background reading, as
the concepts and issues are explained in a highly accessible style. However, the
book was published in 2001, so most of the information and resources that are
discussed in it are now very dated.
- Anke Lüdeling, Stefan Evert and Marco Baroni (2007) “Using web data for
linguistic purposes”. In Corpus linguistics and the Web. John Benjamins.
- A. Kilgarriff 2007. “Googleology is bad science”. Computational Linguistics
33: 147–151.
- Ferraresi A. 2009 “Google and Beyond: Web-As-Corpus Methodologies for
Translators”. Tradumatica 7.