A Corpus-based Analysis of the Translation of Political Jargon Between Dutch and English

Abstract

With the aim of finding possible translation strategies, a corpus-based analysis was performed of the translation of political jargon in Dutch and English. Four categories of political jargon were selected: technical words, imprecise words, euphemisms and metaphors. A preliminary list of items in Dutch and English was drawn up and using the Europarl parallel corpora available in SketchEngine, a keyness analysis was performed to determine whether these items are typical for political texts (SketchEngine “Keywords and Terms”). Because multi-word selection was not available in the corpora, metaphors and euphemisms could not be investigated further and only technical and imprecise words were selected for a parallel concordance analysis. Translation strategies were classified using Andrew Chesterman's taxonomy (Chesterman 85). The results show a difference in the translation of technical and imprecise words, and in the translation direction. Although the corpus-based research method demonstrates limitations, this exploration proves political jargon to be an interesting subject for study within Translation Studies.