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Who's afraid of false friends? Cognate ratios in translated and non-translated Dutch

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Abstract
This paper presents an empirical study on the proportion of cognate words (cognate ratios) in translated Dutch texts, compared to cognate words ratio in texts originally written in Dutch. To this end, we compiled a gold standard with manually verified cognate pairs for both studied language pairs, viz. English-Dutch and French-Dutch. In this study, we propose three hypotheses about how translators deal with cognates: (1) translators use the high degree of formal and semantic overlap between cognate translations to their advantage so as to produce the "easiest and fastest" translation (default translation hypothesis), (2) the higher the level of cognateness between a source and target language, the higher the cognate ratio in translated texts will be (cognate facilitation effect), (3) the higher the level of cognateness between the two languages, the more translators will be hesitant to use cognate translations (fear of false friends hypothesis). The results show a mixed picture: whereas not much evidence has been found for the first two hypotheses (depending on the respective language pair), the third hypothesis was confirmed. Further evidence, however, is needed from other language pairs, as cognate-receptiveness appears to be language-specific.
Keywords
cognate translations, cognate ratios, translation studies, false friends, corpus -based approaches, CORPUS

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MLA
Vandevoorde, Lore, and Els Lefever. “Who’s Afraid of False Friends? Cognate Ratios in Translated and Non-Translated Dutch.” ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES, vol. 24, no. 1, 2023, pp. 73–84, doi:10.1556/084.2022.00204.
APA
Vandevoorde, L., & Lefever, E. (2023). Who’s afraid of false friends? Cognate ratios in translated and non-translated Dutch. ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES, 24(1), 73–84. https://doi.org/10.1556/084.2022.00204
Chicago author-date
Vandevoorde, Lore, and Els Lefever. 2023. “Who’s Afraid of False Friends? Cognate Ratios in Translated and Non-Translated Dutch.” ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES 24 (1): 73–84. https://doi.org/10.1556/084.2022.00204.
Chicago author-date (all authors)
Vandevoorde, Lore, and Els Lefever. 2023. “Who’s Afraid of False Friends? Cognate Ratios in Translated and Non-Translated Dutch.” ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES 24 (1): 73–84. doi:10.1556/084.2022.00204.
Vancouver
1.
Vandevoorde L, Lefever E. Who’s afraid of false friends? Cognate ratios in translated and non-translated Dutch. ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES. 2023;24(1):73–84.
IEEE
[1]
L. Vandevoorde and E. Lefever, “Who’s afraid of false friends? Cognate ratios in translated and non-translated Dutch,” ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 73–84, 2023.
@article{01HBZC3YVJKVC1WSDGZW6CRDJG,
  abstract     = {{This paper presents an empirical study on the proportion of cognate words (cognate ratios) in translated Dutch texts, compared to cognate words ratio in texts originally written in Dutch. To this end, we compiled a gold standard with manually verified cognate pairs for both studied language pairs, viz. English-Dutch and French-Dutch. In this study, we propose three hypotheses about how translators deal with cognates: (1) translators use the high degree of formal and semantic overlap between cognate translations to their advantage so as to produce the "easiest and fastest" translation (default translation hypothesis), (2) the higher the level of cognateness between a source and target language, the higher the cognate ratio in translated texts will be (cognate facilitation effect), (3) the higher the level of cognateness between the two languages, the more translators will be hesitant to use cognate translations (fear of false friends hypothesis). The results show a mixed picture: whereas not much evidence has been found for the first two hypotheses (depending on the respective language pair), the third hypothesis was confirmed. Further evidence, however, is needed from other language pairs, as cognate-receptiveness appears to be language-specific.}},
  author       = {{Vandevoorde, Lore and Lefever, Els}},
  issn         = {{1585-1923}},
  journal      = {{ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES}},
  keywords     = {{cognate translations,cognate ratios,translation studies,false friends,corpus -based approaches,CORPUS}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{1}},
  pages        = {{73--84}},
  title        = {{Who's afraid of false friends? Cognate ratios in translated and non-translated Dutch}},
  url          = {{http://doi.org/10.1556/084.2022.00204}},
  volume       = {{24}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}

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