The English-Chinese translation of the discourse marker use of 'actually': a parallel corpus approach

Abstract

This study explores the translation of pragmatic effects from English to Chinese through a parallel corpus analysis of the discourse marker use of 'actually'. The investigation focuses on whether translators differentiate the various functions of 'actually' as a discourse marker and the strategies they use to replicate 'actually'’s functions and pragmatic effects. To achieve these objectives, a parallel corpus retrieved from OPUS containing English transcripts and their Chinese translations of TED presentations from the month of July in 2020 is analysed. The results show that while there is a high rate of translation for 'actually' as a discourse marker, translators often employ word-for-word structural translation strategies which are unable to account for the functions and pragmatic effects of 'actually' in the source text, resulting in translations that are appropriate on the word level, yet unsuitable as devices to replicate the functions and pragmatic effects of the discourse marker use of 'actually'.

Keywords: English-Chinese translation, discourse marker, actually, parallel corpus, pragmatic effect, pragmatic functions