The role of metadata for translation and pragmatics in language documentation
- Henrik Bergqvist
Abstract
It is stating the obvious to say that translation relies on contextual information as much as it does on mapping the basic meaning of a word in one language, onto a corresponding word in another. An important portion of the vocabulary in any language also depends directly on the context in order to be accurately understood since it makes reference to certain aspects of the speech situation itself.
The problems faced in translating under-documented and sometimes endangered languages make a discussion about how the context of the speech situation can be included in documentation practices both necessary and urgent. What is needed is a format for including large amounts of explicitly stated information about the speech situation that can be accessed together with the archived digital resources that make up the primary data of the documentation. The natural label for this sort of attachable information is of course metadata, since it in fact is ‘data about data’.
In the following section, the deficiencies of descriptive linguistics and how it contrasts with documentation practices are summarised with regard to providing sufficient contextual information for translation. In section 2, the concept of metadata is discussed with suggestions regarding a wider definition of...
Keywords: language documentation, translation, pragmatics, metadata, context, descriptive linguistics, situational metadata
How to Cite:
Bergqvist, H., (2007) “The role of metadata for translation and pragmatics in language documentation”, Language Documentation and Description 4, 163-173. doi: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd266
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