ИСТИНА

In this research we investigate the impact of language mode on the properties of translations. The study is based on written and spoken popular scientific texts and focuses on the frequency distribution of two types of discourse markers (DMs): connectives (however, so) and epistemic markers of doubt and certainty (presumably, perhaps) in English-to-Russian translation. Frequency of DM is a known register and translational feature. It is usually targeted in studies on register variation, including in cross-linguistic contexts (Liu 2008, Biber 1999). Besides, DMs are useful indicators of translational tendencies, because they are less structurally obligatory than other lexemes (Cartoni et al 2011). We assume that dealing with DMs is indicative of the overall strategy adopted in translation: it shows how translators react to cross- linguistic contrasts and cognitive constraints of translation. We hypothesize that translations would demonstrate similar tendencies regardless of the mode, due to ‘leveling out’ (Baker 1996). In particular we expect translations to combine trends to normalization and interference revealed in our previous research on connectives (Kunilovskaya 2017). To account for the properties of translations empirically we built two parallel and two reference corpora. Written texts are represented by 10 popular scientific books in a range of topical domains and 21 original Russian books (around 1mln tokens each). Spoken discourse is represented by transcripts of 100 popular scientific lectures and their translations from the TED-talks Science category and 100 transcripts of lectures by Russian scientists from the comparable Postnauka site (around 250K tokens each). Frequencies of DMs are extracted based on predefined search lists, which were compiled from grammar references, dictionaries and research papers for each language. We use cross- linguistic, intralinguistic and parallel corpus analyses to characterize current stanceal norm for different language modes of pop-sci with the respect to DM frequency distribution in the given direction of translation.