Kontrastivní lingvistika a paralelní korpusy

Abstract

The article presents a brief survey of English-Czech contrastive studies based on original texts and their translations from the beginnings in the mid-fifties of the last century to the present. Until the first decade of the present century, excerption was done manually, which limited the research to a small number of samples. The early studies of English largely concentrated on sentence condensation and nominal tendencies in the expression of the predicate, as compared with the verbal character of Czech. In connection with the development of the theory of functional sentence perspective other topics were found in this sphere, especially as regards word order. While the former studies can be currently pursued on the basis of InterCorp at a qualitatively higher level, research into FSP topics remains restricted to issues involving variables with formalizable realization forms. The main part of the paper focuses on some of the fallacies involved in using translation counterparts as the basis of contrastive research. One of them is the possible influence of the original; others appear in such areas as the choice of translation counterparts with respect to the issue under investigation, the assessment of their adequacy, including the possibility of misrepresentation by the translator, the validity of the translation counterpart (which is in most cases limited, as alternatives are possible) and others.