“Translationese” (and “post-editese”?) no more: on importing fuzzy conceptual tools from Translation Studies in MT research (2023)

Abstract: During recent years, MT research has imported a number of conceptual tools from Translation Studies such as “translationese” or “translation universals”. These notions were the object of intense conceptual debates in Corpus-Based Translation Studies (CBTS), and number of seminal publications and conference forums recommended substituting them by less problematic terms such as “the language of translation” or “typical” or “general features of translated language”. This paper critically analyses the arguments put forward in the early 2000’s in CBTS to against the use of these terms, and whether the same issues apply to current MT re-search using them. Here, the paper will discuss, (1) the impact of the negative or pejorative nature of the term “translationese” on the status of professional translators and translation products in academia and society (2) the danger of over-generalizations or overextending claims found in specific and very limited textual subsets, as well as (3) the need to reframe the search of tendencies in translated language away from “universals” towards probabilistic, situational or conditional tendencies. It will be argued that MT re-search would benefit from clearly defined terms to deal with notions related to language variation in specific new variants of translation, proposing neutral terms such as “NMT translated language” or “the language of NMT”, as well as “general features/ tendencies in NMT / PE translations”. A proposal will be made in order to reach a “convergence” of MT and TS research and the probabilistic and descriptive study of features of (NMT or human) translated language.

## introduction during recent years, conceptual constructs that emerged in translation studies (ts), or more precisely in its sub-branch corpus-based translation studies (cbts), have made their way into machine translation (mt) research. this paper deals with the recent adoption of the conceptual apparatus of cbts related to "translationese" and "translation universals" in mt publications. 1 both theoretical constructs received extensive scrutiny in ts in the early 2000's, primarily in terms of (1) their pejorative or negative connotations that could potentially impact the status of professional translators in academia and society at large, (2) the tendency to overgeneralize results obtained using limited textual subsets given the wide range of text populations, production conditions, language directions, etc., and (3) the need to reframe these "universal" terms towards probabilistic, situational or conditional tendencies. these tendencies could then be framed as more or less likely in certain textual subsets (genres, registers, domains, etc.), translation conditions (professional, non-professional, language combinations, use of technology, modality, etc.). the paper is structured as follows. it first critically analyzes how epistemological discussions evolved in the early 2000's in ts, as well as the reasons why scholars proposed to abandon these conceptual tools in ts. it will be argued that mt research could avoid unnecessary debates over conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues if different proposed terms in cbts were adopted, such as the "language of translation", "translated language" or the language of mt/ nmt / post-edited mt (pemt). in addition, the paper argues that the term "universal" represents no more than "the rebranding of the basic notion of a (widespread) tendency" @xcite . therefore, it could be reframed as "general features" or "general tendencies" in translated language (human, nmt, pemt, etc.). ## ts and mt research: different objectives behind the study of the "language of translation" and general tendencies ts is often perceived as a "borrowing" discipline (o'brien, 2013), where conceptual tools, theoretical constructs and research methodologies are imported and integrated. nevertheless, ts is generally less of an "exporter" towards related disciplines, and its body of theoretical and applied knowledge rarely has an impact, even in areas in which ts research would be suited to do so @xcite . this is the case "translationese", a phenomenon that encompasses a number of specific features often referred to as "translation universals" in mt research. in this disciple, seminal publications by @xcite , @xcite @xcite or @xcite are often cited. nevertheless, baker and toury have admitted to making poor terminological and epistemological choices when formulating those terms over 20 years ago (e.g., @xcite . already in 2004, gideon toury indicated in his seminal 2004 paper "universals-or a challenge to the concept?" that the question that was facing the discipline was not whether "universals" existed. he proposed that studies should focus on proposing probabilistic hypotheses with clearly defined production and contextual conditions in what he referred to as "general norms" or "hypotheses". he also questioned "[…] whether recourse to the notion is in a position to offer us any new insights" @xcite . of course, the origins of these two constructs were key to the consolidation of ts as a "scientific" discipline @xcite . both concepts emerged in ts at a time when the discipline was moving towards the so-called "empirical turn" in its descriptive branch @xcite . large computerized corpora had revolutionized researched methodologies, and the search from an empirical and descriptive perspective of norms-laws @xcite , hypotheses @xcite , general tendency of translation @xcite , features @xcite or "translation universals" @xcite helped consolidate ts away from a more prescriptivist and humanistic approach, towards a more "scientific" discipline. mt and computational linguistics, on the other hand, are consolidated disciplines with a strong descriptive and empirical foundations. here, the objectives of pursuing research on features of translated language beyond mere description can be broadly summarized as: (1) improving training datasets to achieve higher quality and the naturalness of the output (e.g., @xcite , and (2) improve evaluation methods. of course, and as mauranen indicates while discussing these terms, "the explanatory power of any given concept is relative to a particular research programme" @xcite . both disciplines have different goals and research agendas, but transferable conceptual tools between both of them would be beneficial to all. ## why the notion of "translationese" was put to rest in translation studies the much-maligned notion of "translationese" was originally proposed by @xcite while studying translated children literature. his work is consistently cited in mt literature to refer specific features of translated language (e.g., @xcite . back then, other scholars referred to it as "third language" @xcite or "third code" @xcite . in an era of "human" translation (ht), the notion of "translationese" acquired negative connotations. to some extent, it overlapped with negative perceptions of "literal translations", "interference" or "shining through", the fact that the source text or the source language patters (lexical, syntactical, discursive, etc.) made translated texts less "natural", rigid or even awkward then originally produced ones. it was defined in the 2008 "companion to translation studies" as: a pejorative general term for the language of translation […] often indicating a stilted form of the tl resulting from the influence of st lexical or syntactic patterning @xcite . since the early 2000's, the notion of "translationese" was firmly rejected by cbts scholars due to these negative connotations, even when some scholars continued to use it as a "zombie concept" @xcite . these negative connotations even led chesterman, in his seminal 2004 paper on the edited volume "translation universals: do they exist?" @xcite , to describe a trend in the study of translated language that he referred as the "pejorative route". he described this route the following way: that is, an attempt is made to characterize a set of translations in terms of certain negative features. @xcite : 36/37) [emphasis own] this negative connotation implied that translation was perceived, received or evaluated as less natural or naturally-sounding than non-translated texts, the holy grail of fluency and naturality. as such, "translations are recognizably different from other texts […] sounding unnatural" @xcite . the reasons why they sound less natural is that they exhibited linguistic properties that "distinguish them from texts that are not translations" (hansen-schirra and nitzke, 2021: 416). methodologically, cbts used mostly comparable corpora, that is, comparing corpora of translated language with nontranslated texts or texts that were originally produced in the target language and not the result of a translational act. "translationese" was seen as the "deviation of translations from the tl [target language] originals" @xcite in a range of parameters or linguistic features. all in all, with time the notion of "translationese" fell out of use in cbts and ts and was replaced by more neutral terms due to "the criticisms of unnaturalness" of translations "made in the pejorative approach" @xcite . in fact, the latest edition of the "encyclopedia of translation studies" @xcite , the "routledge handbook of translation and technology" (o'hagan, 2020) or the older "handbook of translation studies" @xcite do not mention this term. the following two sections explore more in depth the arguments put forwards to eliminate the terms "translationese".