Sociophonetics & Translation: the social meaning of loanword pronunciation

Lauren Hall-LewWolfson Resarch Fellow &

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Linguistics & English

Translation & Pronunciation

• In translation, how are source language names & culturally-specific concepts pronounced?– Is the source language phonology

retained, or is it nativized?

• Phonetic Nativization– the process of adapting a loan word to

the phonology of the target language

Translation & Pronunciation

• Examples: Sarkozy Sarkozy or

Sarkosy genre [ʒɑ̃-ʀ] or /

dʒɑ̃nrə/ Mexico [mexiko] or

/mɛksɪkoʊ/ karaoke [kaɽaoke] or

/kærioʊki/ Xhosa [ǁʰɔsɑ̃] or

[kʰɔsɑ̃]

• The choice between these carries social meaning about the speaker

Translation & Pronunciation

• When speakers (attempt to) retain source language phonology, it communicates something about their social identity - i.e., it ‘indexes’ social meaning (Silverstein 2003)

the speaker is bilingual the speaker is educated the speaker is upper class the speaker is well-traveled the speaker identifies with speakers of that

language etc.

Translation & Pronunciation

• Source Language vs. Target Language isn’t the only level of phonology that carries this social meaning

• You might think that there’s usually a single way to nativize loan words, but often there are different choices in nativization, & these carry different social meanings, too

The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable

• Loan words into English that have an (a) (Boberg 1997; 1999; 2000; 2009)

alibi bonanza Havana soprano plaza

• Choice: the vowel in TRAP /æ/ or LOT /ɑ̃/?*

bravado Nevada drama façade garage

pasta spa tabacco

Afghanistan Pakistan

*Older loan words have an /ey/ vowel, leading to, e.g. potato: /pətejtoʊ/ v. /pətatoʊ/

The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable

• Dictionary Analysis (Boberg 1997)– 10,000+ English words are foreign-(a) if

historical loan words are included– British & American English agree on

72% of nativizations– Among the remaining 28%:• British English generally favors /æ/• American English is more variable

Boberg2009

Boberg2009

The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable

• Language Attitudes Survey (Boberg 1999)

– 59 undergraduates at Penn– Questions:

• Which vowel would you use in each of the following words?

• Which do you think is correct?• Which sounds more “educated” or

“sophisticated”? • Would the following pronunciations likely

come from a native speaker of American English?

The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable

• Language Attitudes Survey: Results

– The indexical meanings of the /ɑ̃/• ‘correct’• ‘educated’ or ‘sophisticated’• ‘more nativized’

– The indexical meanings of the /æ/• incorrect, uneducated, less nativized

The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable

• Why?– “The use of /ɑ̃/ attracts overt social

comment in words like aunt, rather, and vase. Americans invest this use of /ɑ̃/ with the stereotypical social attributes of speakers of dialects in which it does occur, most notably British Received Pronunciation and the speech of Boston “Brahmins.” This ascribed social symbolism of /ɑ̃/ may account for its superior evaluation as a nativization of foreign (a).”

The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable

The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable

• Language Attitudes (Hall-Lew et al. in press)

– Iraq with /ɑ̃/ in the second vowel seems to be perceived as more correct than Iraq with /æ/

– Online blogs, etc., are evidence of these different social meanings:

“Having lived in the Middle east for six-plus years and been a Middle eastern Studies graduate student to boot, i can assure you it is pronounced ear-ROCK, not eye-RACK, ear-RACK, or any other way. Listen to Cheney say it, with the emphasis on the RACK, and you know he is deliberately mispronouncing it just to be the prick we all know he is.”

[http://keyissues.mu.nu/archives/051679.php, Nov. 7, 2005]

The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable

• Production Experiment (Hall-Lew et al. in press)

– The U.S. House of Representatives• 435 members

– Speeches about the ‘surge’ given in 2007• 259 speakers, of the 304 who gave speeches

(152 Democrats, 107 Republicans)• every utterance of Iraq coded for vowel

production

–Hypothesis:• Democrats favor /ɑ̃/, Republicans favor /æ/

The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable

• Example productions– an /ɑ̃/ speaker: Nancy Pelosi

– an /æ/ speaker: Tom Tancredo

– a flip-flopper: Ron Paul

a consistent /ɑ/ speaker: Nancy Pelosi

a consistent /æ/ speaker: Tom Tancredo

a (strategic?!) flip-flopper:Ron Paul

Results

(Hall-Lew et al. in press)

The /a/ in ‘Iraq’ & Social Meaning

U.S. House of Representatives (2007)

/ɑ̃/

/æ/

The /a/ in ‘Iraq’ & Social Meaning

U.S. House of Representatives (2007)

MostlyDemocrats

MostlyRepublicans,

also someDemocrats

Translation

• The overall point:– This is not just about loan words…– Every pronunciation of every word in any

language carries social meaning in the way that it’s pronounced

– Different social meanings hold different prestige values for different communities

– Affects perceived trustworthiness, etc.– The issue for translation is how much, i.e.,

what levels, of meaning get translated?