Does Menzerath–Altmann Law Hold True for Translational Language: Evidence from Translated English Literary Texts

ABSTRACT

Menzerath–Altmann Law (MAL) is regarded as one of the fundamental laws of language due to its extensive validity for different languages at various linguistic levels and applicability for register differentiation. However, whether MAL holds true for translational language remains to be answered. Translational language, different from both the source language and target original (non-translated) language, is viewed as ‘the third code’. This study delves into the validity of MAL for translated English literary texts and its comparable original texts by exploring the relationship between the sentence length (in number of clauses) and the clause length (in number of words). Results of the study corroborate that MAL held true for both original and translated texts. In addition, both a and b, the fitting parameters of MAL formula, could differentiate the translational language from the original, thus justifying the uniqueness of translational language as ‘the third code’ in its own right. This finding suggests that the fitting parameters might be viable indicators for typological differentiation in translation studies. Further, exploring the dynamic relations between a language construct and its constituents may shed some light on the translating process.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their insightful comments and valuable suggestions that helped strengthen this paper. We are also grateful to those people who have assisted us with their helpful advice to this paper. Special thanks also go to Junqing Wang from Xi’an Jiaotong University for his assistance with data processing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Software

NLREG. Nonlinear Regression Analysis Program. Phillip H. Sherrod. Copyright © 1991–2004. http://www.nlreg.com

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant [No. 17BYY007]