A corpus-assisted SFL approach to individuation in the European Parliament: the case of Sánchez Presedo’s original and translated repertoires

Calzada-Pérez, María

doi:https://doi.org/10.7202/1073640ar

1. Introduction

For decades, discourse analysis (DA) has been one of the most potent resources to explore “how language works in our engagements with the world and our interactions with each other” (Hyland and Paltridge 2013: 1). And it has done so with a reasonably ample gamut of theories and methods, from conversational analysis (CA) to multimodal studies (MMS). Among these, systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is widely used by researchers.

With its focus on context, function, and texture, SFL has had an enormous impact on the description of language, including the examination of translated products. Seminal translation studies (TS) scholars, such as Baker (1992), Hatim and Mason (1990), and House (1977), were among the first to explore, explain, and teach translation with a strong SFL inspiration, thus setting an example that has been followed and enriched by numerous studies, such as those reviewed and presented in Munday and Zhang (2017). The vast majority of these studies have been and still are qualitative, highlighting the strength of manual analysis and the robustness of SFL inspiration to spot translational shifts and their consequences.

Quantity, however, also matters in the study of language, and corpus linguistics (CL) has been gaining visibility as an efficient source of data (and patterns) that are elusive to the human eye. This has occurred in translation studies, especially since Baker (1993), which arguably marks the onset of an almost unstoppable proliferation of corpus-assisted translational work, to which various volumes testify (for instance, Kruger, Wallmach, et al. 2011; Laviosa 2002; Mikhailov and Cooper 2016; Olohan 2004; Zanettin 2013).

Coming from different (qualitative/quantitative) ends of the research spectrum, there are nevertheless multiple forms of collaboration between DA (at large, with its variegated approaches) and CL (see, for example, Baker and McEnery 2015; Partington, Duguid, et al. 2013; Taylor and Marchi 2018). This collaboration is, as per Taylor and Marchi (2018: 1), “long-standing and natural […] based on their individual goals and foundations.” The specific combination of SFL-DA and CL is less pervasive and “relatively recent” (Bednarek 2010: 237), yet nonetheless existent and influential (Hunston 2013; Yan and Webster 2013; among others), leaving its mark upon a group of TS research (for example, Hansen-Schirra, Neumann, et al. 2007, 2012; Steiner 2001; Teich 2013). The SFL-CL synergies are entirely logical, since they also share goals and theoretical foundations, including the description of actual and potential meaning along the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes. Its functions in real-life contexts are particularly noticeable.

These shared goals and common foundations have led us to develop the belief that there is still further room for collaboration between SFL-DA and CL within TS. It is also our belief that such collaboration may be fruitful in exploring what Taylor and Marchi (2018: 9) have labelled the “dusty corners of research,” which they define as “both neglected aspects of analysis and under-researched topics or text-types.”

Inspired by this twofold belief, the present paper resorts to traditional methods in corpus linguistics (via monolingual keywords and parallel concordances) to examine one of SFL’s dustiest corners: individuation (and the related notions of realisation and instantiation). The study is set in the European Parliament, one of the most decisive multilingual chambers of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, where collective, linguistic, and ideological behaviours intertwine with individual stances. After a brief presentation of foundational SFL notions, especially some of SFL’s most neglected aspects of analysis (Section 2), the paper discusses the methodological path that is followed in describing the representation of one case of individuation/instantiation in the EP (that of Spanish Social-Democrat Sánchez Presedo) (Section 3). In a largely qualitative use of CL, this paper examines the profile of the speaker’s individuation, stemming from his published/instantiated original interventions in EP proceedings (Section 4). It then identifies the similarities and differences of this published profile and its translated re-instantiation (Section 5), ultimately drawing conclusions after an analytical venture (Section 6).

2. SFL as a multiperspectival view on original and translated language

According to SFL, original language is, in a nutshell, a system of meaning potential that is exchanged in particular contexts with specific functions. Translated language, in turn, is “the recreation of meaning in context through choice” (Matthiessen 2014: 272). This complex, multi-layered conception of both original and translated language turns SFL into “a multi-perspectival stance in which theory deploys complementarities to illuminate our object of study – so we can observe the humanity of our communication processes, not just their form” (Martin 2010: 1-2). There are three main kinds of complementarities (here perspectives) from which language may be inspected: realisation, instantiation, and individuation.

2.1. SFL realisation

Realisation is the most developed SFL perspective. Since this paper focuses on some of SFL’s dustiest corners, it will not be dwelt upon here. For a more detailed discussion of realisation, there exists informative introductions, notably Halliday (1985/1994) and Matthiessen (2014). Suffice it to say that realisation is closely related to stratification and has been defined as “a scale of abstraction” (Martin 2010: 21). For the sake of clarity, however, one realisational notion presented here, that of ideational metaphor, may be described as “a transference of meaning from one kind of element to another kind” (Martin and Rose 2003: 104). Ideational metaphors construe processes as things (“It will be necessary to correct distortions”) or convey qualities as things (“[…] to make progress on sustainability”). Ideational metaphors may be used as a powerful ideological tool because they tend to increase the level of abstraction and blur communicants’ direct contact with reality. They can be used to provide more intense, possibly subjective, qualification of states (“long-term sustainability”), as well as to hide important bits of reality like agency to avoid attributing responsibilities (we do not know who distorts in distortion).

2.2. SFL instantiation

While realisation (with its abstract strata) is SFL’s best-documented perspective, instantiation “is relatively under-developed,” according to Martin:

[…] in part because it is severely under-theorized, in part because of the difficulty of computing meanings in quantitative analysis […] and […] in part because suitable theories and visualizations of instantiation, whether digital or figurative, have not been proposed […]
Martin 2010: 19

In brief, instantiation examines the connection between the system at large (that is, the meaning potential studied from the viewpoint of realisation) and the text in particular (or the actual instance), which is precisely why instantiation has been described as “a scale of potentiality” (Martin 2010: 17).

Bednarek (2010: 243) gives a brief but very clarifying explanation of this relatively unexplored notion when she says that it “relates to how a text is different from the system.” Martin (2010: 17) provides an illustrative snapshot of the instantiation prism (see Figure 1):

Figure 1

**Instantiation according to Martin (2010: 18)**

As we see from Martin’s graph, the meaning potential constituting the system ultimately materializes in texts (and their readings) through a variety of intermediate sub-stages (namely, genre/register, text type).

To understand instantiation better, Martin (2008) draws on two basic concepts: coupling and commitment. The former refers to meaning combinations across strata and other simultaneous systems (even other modalities). Martin exemplifies the concept in an analysis of Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, where judgement about a certain character (Motholeli) is built upon a combination (or coupling) of different decisions concerning affect and graduation from the appraisal network (Motholeli’s character is simultaneously seen as clever, ordinary, and brave; these descriptions are presented with varying degrees of higher or lower force). This, in turn, is further coupled with a variety of choices made in the ideational realm and conveyed via a gamut of lexicogrammatical resources so that Motholeli is presented as the main node in a nominal group (such as ordinary girl), the possessive deictic of the nominalised judgement (for instance, the girl’s courage) and modifier of a relational attribute (like in very lucky of me). These forms of couplings (and many more that Martin identifies in his analysis) result in the instantiated text, at large.

Commitment, for its part, is defined by Martin as:

the amount of meaning potential activated in a particular process of instantiation – the relative semantic weight of a text in other words. Essentially this has to do with the degree to which meanings in optional systems are taken up and, within systems, the degree of delicacy selected.
Martin 2008: 45

As Martin (2010: 20) illustrates, a text may be referring to roughly the same meaning with a wider or narrower range of possibilities. In this way, for example, when talking about money, one or more options can be activated: the cash; That accidental $10 from a faulty ATM; Three $10 notes from a faulty ATM; etc.).

In sum, coupling and commitment are two relevant tools to study instantiation, which allow us to understand that:

It is not just that realisation materializes in instantiation, it is also that the latter is the source from which realisation emerges, “out of the innumerable instances of language use through which we live our lives” (Martin 2008: 43);
Instantiation is more that the selection of language features at different levels; it is the combinations in which these features are presented and the degree and form of meaning activation that occurs in each text.

2.3. SFL individuation

Individuation – the perspective in which meaning potential is specialised according to people – is the most recent and least explored SFL perspective. It is mainly discussed by Martin, drawing on Basil Bernstein. As with instantiation, and according to Martin (2010: 25), it suffers from under-theorization, a lack of corpora to be studied, and a deficiency of current visualisation tools. Martin (2010: 25) also attributes its limited impact on research to a fourth reason: “In addition, there is the problem of political sensitivity of the issues involved. For liberals in modernity, the idea that deep down people are different flies in the face of their conception of equality.”

At any rate, the individuation viewpoint foresees a meaning potential, which is contained in a community’s reservoir and which is made specific in an individual’s repertoire containing that particular set of meaning potential activated by specific people. Bednarek (2010: 243) describes it in a particularly illuminating manner: “Simplifying the matter greatly we can say that […] individuation relates to how an individual is different from the community.” Martin, as usual, clarifies it visually in the form of a reservoir-repertoire cline, with various sub-stages (system, coding orientation, personality type, individual) (see Figure 2):

Figure 2

**Individuation according to Martin (2006: 296)**

If realisation is a compound of various systems of signs, and instantiation is best understood with coupling and commitment, individuation is complemented by the concept of a bond that is formed when communicants share couplings of experience and evaluation. Sharing bonds (establishing similarities or connections with others) makes individuals align (or affiliate) with a community (as part of a mechanism that runs in the opposite direction to individuation).

3. A corpus-assisted methodology for an SFL multi-perspectival exploration

In this paper, we propose and apply a corpus-assisted methodology to explore some of the possibilities of an SFL multi-perspectival stance such as the one briefly sketched out above. As noted in the introduction, the majority of SFL-inspired research is manual. However, there are indeed scholars (see above) who have already combined corpus-assisted methods to examine SFL notions within translation studies. While we are following in their footsteps, to the best of our knowledge, there is no prior work within TS specifically and consciously on individuation. This is – to use Taylor and Marchi’s metaphor (see Section 1) – one of SFL’s “dusty corners.” Based on what has been sketched out above, notice, however, that an analysis of individuation is impossible without delving into notions associated with realisation and instantiation. Individuated repertoires are the result of the narrowing specialisation of systemic (realisation-related) reservoirs. Futhermore, these repertoires are only appreciated in texts after processes of instantiation and re-instantiation (in the case of translating processes), related among others to coupling and commitment.

3.1. Context of the study

This particular study of individuation focuses on (original and translated) linguistic production carried out at the plenary of the European Parliament (EP), one of the most decisive multilingual political institutions in the world. The EP is the only directly elected body in the European Union and represents around 500 million EU citizens. Collectively, it aims to foster “economic cooperation, the idea being that countries that trade with one another become economically interdependent and thus more likely to avoid conflict.”[1] Additionally, as an institution, it tackles a series of tasks around legislative and internal issues.

Together with these basic functions, the EP as a whole assigns itself the elevated role of “a guardian of liberties, human rights and democracy, both in Europe and beyond.”[2]

The EP is not just a united body of EU governance, though. As of June 2019, it comprised 751 Members of Parliament (MEPs) with 28 different nationalities, grouped in a handful of political parties, the largest of which are the Conservative EPP and the Social-Democratic S&D. MEPs are individuals with their own repertoires and bonds. This paper explores the individuated linguistic production at the plenary of one such MEP, Antolín Sánchez Presedo, focusing in particular on Sánchez Presedo’s original speeches in Spanish and translated interventions into English as published in the Spanish and English versions of both the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) and the EP’s official website, from 2004 to 2011. These texts make up some of the most important (and far reaching) of Sanchez Presedo’s linguistic representations as an MEP.

Antolín Sanchez Presedo is a Spanish politician from Galicia, on the northwest coast of Spain. He was a MEP for a decade (from 2004 to 2014). Due to his long participation in the Euro Chamber, he is one of the Spanish Socialists who have spoken the largest amount of words – see above – in the EP from 2004 to 2011 (the date when the EP stopped systematically translating MEPs’ interventions from and into Spanish). This fact was decisive for our interest in him. According to his EP website,[3] as an MEP, Sánchez Presedo served on the Committee of Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Special Committee on the Financial, Economic, and Social Crisis. He was also concerned with fisheries and acted as a substitute on the Committee on Fisheries. Both these roles seem logical if we take into account his socialist political affiliation and his Galician origins (a region where fishing is a bastion of the regional economy).

3.2. Corpora and stages of the study

To carry out a corpus-assisted study of Sánchez Presedo’s (original and translated) linguistic production in the EP, we will be using a set of four corpora from the European Comparable and Parallel Corpus (ECPC) Archive.[4] Compiled at the Universitat Jaume I (Castellón, Spain), this archive contains transcribed speeches and writings from (i) the European Parliament (EP) in (original and translated) English and Spanish, (ii) the UK House of Commons (HC), and (iii) the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados (CD). The specific corpora selected for this research are as follows:

ECPC-ES: All linguistic production exchanged in the EP from 2004 to 2011 (as published in the Spanish version of both the OJEU and the EP website). This corpus, as it is used here, amounts to 27,842,252 tokens and 112,313 types.
ECPC-EN: All linguistic production exchanged in the EP from 2004 to 2011 (as published in the English version of both the OJEU and the EP website). This corpus, as it is used here, amounts to 27,173,080 tokens and 66,762 types.
SP-ES: Sánchez Presedo’s original linguistic production in Spanish from 2004 to 2011 (as published in the Spanish version of both the OJEU and the EP website). This corpus, as it is used here, amounts to 28,592 tokens and 4,425 types.
SP-EN: Sánchez Presedo’s translated linguistic production in English from 2004 to 2011 (as published in the English version of both the OJEU and the EP website). This corpus amounts, as it is used here, to 28, 654 tokens and 3,557 types.

Notice that ECPC-ES and ECPC-EN contain exactly the same EP speeches, only in two different languages. These two corpora can be used independently as two separate monolingual compounds. However, they can also be queried together, as a parallel corpus, since they have previously been subjected to automatic alignment (with InterText Editor[5]), followed by a manual process of refining. The same applies to SP-ES and SP-EN.

The method we will be using to perform our exploratory study revolves around the CL tools of keywords (as generated by WordSmith Tools 7.0[6]) and parallel concordances (as generated by AntPConc 1.2.1[7]). Keywords, described by Baker (2010: 134) as a “somewhat more sophisticated” means of research, result from the statistical comparison of two corpora: Corpus A and Corpus B. Keywords are items of unusually high frequency in Corpus A, as opposed to their presence in Corpus B. They can therefore be seen as clear pointers to dissimilarity between two corpora. As such, they can be a good starting point for the study of individuation – “how an individual is different from the community” (Bednarek 2010: 243) –, if the two corpora under comparison contain the linguistic production of an individual (here, with SP-ES and SP-EN), on the one hand, and the linguistic production of the community to which s/he belongs (here, with ECPC-ES and ECPC-EN), on the other.

Concordances, for their part, are lines of words extracted from a corpus around a node and its immediate co-text (and further linked to the larger context). They can be monolingual (when there are lines in just one language) or bi-/multilingual (when there are lines in different versions connected around the same node).

In our exploration, we follow 6 steps:

STEP 1: We identify Sánchez Presedo’s original keywords in Spanish by comparing SP-ES to ECPC-ES. To do so we employ both Log Likelihood (p<001) and Log-R (>2) to extract those statistically significant terms that appear at least 4 times more often in SP-ES than in ECPC-ES.
STEP 2: We identify Sánchez Presedo’s translated keywords into English by comparing SP-EN to ECPC-EN. Again, to do so we employ both Log Likelihood (p<001) and Log-R (>2) to extract those statistically significant terms that appear at least 4 times more often in SP-EN than in ECPC-EN.
STEP 3: We map Sánchez Presedo’s original individuated territory (in Spanish).
STEP 4: We map Sánchez Presedo’s translated individuated territory (in English).
STEP 5: We compare Sánchez Presedo’s original and translated individuated territories to explore what happened with individuation during the translation process. We resort to concordances, when necessary.
STEP 6: We draw conclusions.

Without further ado, we shall proceed with our analysis.

4. Analysis of Sánchez Presedo’s original individuation

The comparison of SP-ES to ECPC-ES produces a keyword list of 57 terms. This list contains those items that distinguish Sánchez Presedo’s linguistic production from the overall communication exchanged at the EP plenary, as instantiated in the OJEU in Spanish (one of the most important representations of the speaker’s communicative activity). As stated above (in Section 3), since the statistical measures used for keyword generation are Log Likelihood (p<001) and Log R (>2), all terms in the keyword list are not only statistically significant but also at least 4 times more frequent in Sánchez Presedo’s production than in the (original/translated) Spanish EP production at large. In other words, these key items can be seen as the most prominent part of Sánchez Presedo’s repertoire (in contrast with the EP’s reservoir).

First resorting to lexicogrammatical categories, we split these 57 keywords into basic groups to ease analysis. In this way, we separate key nouns, key adjectives, key verbs, and other key terms.

4.1. Sánchez Presedo’s original key nouns

Table 1 contains all (33) SP-ES key nouns, ordered by Log-R, which gives us an idea of where differences in frequency between SP-ES and ECPC-ES are particularly strong:

These key nouns point to the most common areas of ideational interest in Sánchez Presedo’s repertoire. Of these 33 key nouns, the vast majority (22) are largely associated with economic and monetary affairs. Of this subgroup of 22 key nouns, 7 are specialised items directly related to this ideational realm (namely banca, finanzas, sostenibilidad, bancos, competencia, banco, and mercados), while the remaining 15 (clemencia, distorsiones, desequilibrios, preferencias, calificación, entidades, supervision, daños, regulación; ayudas, agencias, riesgos, transparencia, impacto, and estabilidad) can undoubtedly be associated with this same field once we generate concordances around these nodes. For example, ayudas (help, aid[8]) can be granted in all areas of governance. However, a quick look at parallel concordances demonstrate that the term is used overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) in an economic/financial sense, as shown in Figure 3:

Together with key nouns relating to economic and monetary affairs, Sánchez Presedo’s key repertoire in the original Spanish also contains the following (11) items:

2 key nouns (6%) relating to Galicia, Sánchez Presedo’s homeland, in Table 1: Galicia, pesca (fisheries);
1 key noun (3%) corresponding to a widely used buzzword in the field of international organisations: gobernanza (governance);
1 key noun that is particularly affective (in the appraisal system): colegas (colleagues);
7 key nouns (21.2%) that are general linguistic items: vocación (vocation), divergencias (divergencies), complejidad (complexities), tratamiento (treatment), funcionamiento (functioning), acciones (actions), and carácter (nature).

Regarding point (a), the key noun Galicia is primarily used when Sánchez Presedo acts as a liaison between regional and EU authorities, as in the following cases where reference is made to Galicia’s government (Xunta de Galicia) or parliament (Parlamento de Galicia):

In passing (due to space constraints), we note only that the key noun pesca refers to one of Galicia’s strongest economic sectors, amounting to over 2% of the region’s GDP.[10]

As part of his key repertoire in the original Spanish, Sánchez Presedo also includes gobernanza, point (b) above, defined in the Eur-Lex Glossary of Summaries[11] as “el conjunto de normas, procedimientos y prácticas relativos a la manera en que se ejercen los poderes en la UE”[12]; the term has been “an EU imperative”[13] at least since the publication of the European Governance White Paper (European Commission 2001)[14], three years before Sánchez Presedo’s first parliamentary term. The White Paper shows that European governance or good governance covers a wide (signifying) terrain (associated with commitment) of five ambitious principles (openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness, and coherence) at “all levels of government— global, European, national, regional and local” (European Commission 2001: 10). In short, for the EU community at large (according to the European Commission), governance basically concerns all (legislative, political, economic, cultural, etc.) areas whereby “[d]emocratic institutions and the representatives of the people […] can and must try to connect Europe with its citizens” (European Commission 2001: 3).

Sánchez Presedo’s original individuation of gobernanza, however, is much more limited in its commitment, as Figure 4 shows:

Sánchez Presedo thus restricts gobernanza in two main ways. First, he refers to economics/finances (rather than other areas mentioned in the White Paper) through couplings such as gobernanza económica (economic governance), gobernanza contable (accounting governance), gobernanza empresarial (business governance), and gobernanza financiera (financial governance). Of the 25 instances of his use of the term, 12 are used in this way. Second, gobernanza is applied to the European or international levels (but not to other national, regional or local levels possible in the EU description of the term), with couplings such as gobernanza europea (European governance), gobernanza internacional (international governance), and even gobernanza global (global governance). Hence, Sánchez Presedo not only uses gobernanza significantly more frequently in his EP speeches than do other MEPs in their Spanish speeches, but also in a particularly individuated sense.

Turning to point (c) above, Sánchez Presedo’s use of colegas is also significant. Apart from line 3 in Figure 5, it is always used as a part of the salutation queridos colegas (dear colleagues):

Regarding (d), Sánchez Presedo also indulges in the use of 7 general nouns covering a vast range of linguistic territory (activating a large area of meaning potential, associated with commitment). For example, Figure 6 presents concordances of the key noun complejidad (complexity) and its associated meanings: jurídica (judicial), financiera (financial), sistémica (systemic), técnica (technical), etc.:

Figure 6

**Concordance of complejidad**

These 7 general key nouns are often devoid of meaning or serve as cohesive/textual linking, as in the following examples; notice both originals and translations are extracted from our ECPC archive and are inserted here for the sake of clarity:

Sánchez Presedo’s key noun repertoire merits a final comment with regard to ideational metaphor. Note that 16 of his 33 key nouns (48.4%) are built upon verbal processes (namely divergencias, distorsiones, desequilibrios, preferencias, calificación, supervisión, daños, finanzas, gobernanza, tratamiento, funcionamiento, regulación, ayudas, acciones, competencia, riesgos). Furthermore, 4 of his key nouns (12.1%) are built upon adjectives (that is, complejidad, sostenibilidad, transparencia, estabilidad). Sánchez Presedo’s instantiated repertoire is thus bound to be particularly metaphorical (in an SFL use of the term; see Section 2.1 above) and thus to lack important pieces of information, such as agency. Here are two illustrative examples, where the underlined key nouns present processes as states without hinting at agency or other details:

In sum, key nouns contribute greatly to mapping Sánchez Presedo’s ideational repertoire in a fairly illustrative manner. They also point to some interpersonal (appraisal-related) behaviour (like colegas). Moreover, together with the concordances, they hint at areas of realisation and instantiation interest, such as ideational metaphors, commitment, and couplings. In other words, key nouns and their concordances constitute an informative starting point for a further qualitative, manual analysis of an individual’s repertoire.

4.2. Sánchez Presedo’s original key adjectives

Table 2 contains all (14) SP-ES key adjectives, ordered by Log-R.

These 14 key adjectives point to those qualities and classes in Sánchez Presedo’s repertoire with which he characteristically qualifies and specifies the ideational participants of his interventions. In the case of Sánchez Presedo’s key adjectives, the majority (9, or 64.3%) directly and openly qualify or specify meaning within the speaker’s main areas of interest: economic and monetary affairs (sectorial, supervisores, privadas, monetaria, financieros, públicas, fiscal, financiera, and financieras). Among the remaining 5, there are:

a)	1 key adjective (7.1%) bonding with Sánchez Presedo’s homeland: pesquera (fishing-related);
a)	2 key adjectives (14.3%) corresponding to the specialised field of law: regulatoria (regulatory) and legislativa (legislative);
b)	1 key adjective (7.1%) closely associated (among others) with bonding key noun gobernanza: global (global);
c)	1 key adjective (7.1%) that contributes to a strengthening affect: queridos (dear), used in queridos colegas.

In effect, for their very own function in the sentence, adjectives in general are important pointers of couplings (since they are overwhelmingly coupled with nouns). Key adjectives, then, become an important piece in the speaker’s repertoire of couplings. For example, of the 15 times privadas is used by Sánchez Presedo, the word modifies acciones 11 times and the other four hits appear in combination with acciones públicas y (see examples below).

Adjectives are not only normally coupled with nouns (clarifying further the speaker’s map of ideational repertoire), they also serve to link linguistic behaviour within different levels, as in the case of the key adjective queridos, which always collocates with colegas and produces a coupling of affect + graduation/force (within the system of appraisal) + genre (queridos colegas is one form of salutation in the plenary).

In sum, adjectives are another important lead for further manual analysis by pointing to interesting phenomena of discussion, especially in the realisation and instantiation of an individual’s repertoire.

4.3. Sánchez Presedo’s original key verbs and others

Table 3 contains all (9) SP-ES key verbs, ordered by Log-R. It also includes in its final line Sánchez Presedo’s other keyword: the adverb positivamente (positively).

The most prominent verbs in Sánchez Presedo’s repertoire suggest two interesting instantiation patterns. The first pattern is genre-related and is conveyed through the characteristic use of three verbs of saying or sensing in the first person: finalizo (I conclude), valoro (I value), and felicito (I congratulate). With these verbs, the speaker introduces three optional genre-stages in his speeches. He assesses the benefits of the topics discussed (and most often of the report that sets off the discussion in the EP) and values them positively (creating a coupling with the key adverb in his repertoire), as represented by Figure 7, below.

He congratulates his colleagues on the work performed (most often as rapporteurs within the committee drafting the report discussed), as in Figure 8.

He concludes his interventions on a formal note, as in Figure 9.

The second pattern in Sánchez Presedo’s repertoire is semantic and can be associated with the way in which meaning is activated (as part of a commitment configuration). It concerns four infinitives from the same realm of meaning: impulsar (to boost), incrementar (to increase), avanzar (to advance) and corregir (to correct). These verbs may be seen to belong to the same realm of meaning because, just as they convey a material process, they all come to add a positive value to the action performed: impulsar can be defined as push forward; incrementar, to make larger; avanzar, to move further; and corregir, to make better. It may be seen that, among the limited number of verbs that distinguish Sánchez Presedo from the EP, there are four infinitives that expand other processes with positive degrees of attitude and graduation, as seen in the examples below:

In sum, Sánchez Presedo’s repertoire is further clarified through the analysis of his key verbs, which point to data associated with the genre in which he participates and the semantic choices he makes while participating in it. As with the other two cases, the analysis of key verbs is a potentially fruitful beginning for further manual discussions on the realisation and instantiation features of an individual’s repertoire.

5. Analysis of Sánchez Presedo’s translated individuation

So far, keywords and concordances have revealed what we believe is illuminating information about Sánchez Presedo’s most prominent repertoire. However, the question remains about what happens when his interventions are translated into English. In other words, what happens when his repertoire is re-instantiated?

The comparison of SP-EN with ECPC-EN produces a second keyword list (of 37 items), this time in translated English. It can be regarded as the re-instantiation (or translation) of Sánchez Presedo’s original repertoire and is also the first step towards answering these questions.

If we again separate keywords into groups of key nouns, key adjectives, key verbs, and others (note however that there are no key others in SP-EN), we will have a first glimpse into Sánchez Presedo’s translated repertoire, which we can compare to his original profile.

5.1. Sánchez Presedo’s translated key nouns

Table 4 contains all (23) SP-EN key nouns, ordered by Log-R:

Of these 23 translated keywords, 19 (82.6%) coincide with direct equivalents in the source text keyword list and are thus present both in Sánchez Presedo’s original and his translated repertoires (for example: daños/damages, distorsiones/distortions, desequilibrios/imbalances, etc.). Notice that, after a concordance analysis, the Spanish key noun pesca is rendered by fisheries and fishing, two direct equivalents, in the SP-EN keyword list. Thus, 19 target text key nouns really refer to 18 source text key nouns. Of these 19 key nouns, a total of 15 can be classified within the economic or monetary field, either before or after a concordance analysis: damages, distortions, imbalances, supervision, preferences, rating, bankingfinances, banks, competition, agencies, risks, bank, stability, and markets. Remember that the original repertoire had in store 22 items from this specialised field. This means that 68.2% of the key nouns from this area get transferred from the original to the translated repertoire.

A total of 4 items (omnibus, securities, stress, and field) out of the 23 translated keywords (17.4%, in Table 4) are additions with regards to Sánchez Presedo’s original repertoire. By examining concordances carefully, we can spot a major centripetal trend. In other words, we see that different Spanish items are translated by the same word in English, which modifies the commitment configuration or the way in which meaning potential is activated. For instance, securities translates valores and títulos, specialised near-synonyms in Spanish. The noun stress, for its part, translates both the (non-specialised) verbal processes destacar, resaltar, and recalcar, as well as the economic term resistencia. Furthermore, field translates the non-specialised terms materia, terreno, ámbito, campo de juego, terreno de juego, and campo. It may even be inserted without a direct equivalence in the Spanish original, as in the following example:

Of special interest is the case of omnibus, which in Spanish is spelt in various ways (namely omnibus, Omnibus, Ómnibus), indicating some sort of negligence on the part of the transcribers. This negligence is corrected in English and the translation improves on the original.

Finally, of the 33 original key nouns (see Section 4.1), 15 (45.5%) are not present in the re-instantiated table above: ayudas, carácter, clemencia, colegas, complejidad, divergencias, entidades, funcionamiento, Galicia, impacto, regulación, sostenibilidad, transparencia, tratamiento, and vocación. These are pieces of Sánchez Presedo’s original repertoire that lose prominence in translated re-instantiations, and the associated linguistic patterns (in other words, couplings) identified in the original repertoire are also bound to be affected.

The keyword colegas illustrates this point. As seen in Figure 5 above, Sánchez Presedo uses this key noun in his original speeches as part of his most frequent salutation: queridos colegas. This salutation is especially affective when compared with señorías, señores y señoras, señores y señoras parlamentarios or señores y señoras diputados (all present in the subset of original speeches in the ECPC-ES corpus). However, of the 30 times Sánchez Presedo addresses fellow MEPs as queridos colegas, all 30 are rendered in English as ladies and gentlemen (a much less affective form of salutation), despite the fact that the ECPC-EN corpus reveals other possibilities, including the closest (and equally affective) dear colleagues, as shown in Figure 10:

Concordances of dear colleagues in original speeches from the ECPC-EN corpus — Figure 10

**Concordances of *dear colleagues* in original speeches from the ECPC-EN corpus**

A second example of change in individuation may be seen in the translation of general items such as cáracter (see Section 4.1), which are used as links devoid of meaning. When re-instantiated in English, these items are often (though not always) omitted or shifted, whereby their individuated (cohesive only) function loses prominence.

On the whole, deletions are explained by two major kinds of such translational shifts. On the one hand, some original key nouns are rendered with a wider range of translated items. The translation, so to speak, is lexically diversified, with a different kind of meaning activation (or commitment configuration). This shift in individuation is optional since the original Spanish had other alternatives to these key nouns and English translations could have been chosen to converge on a single keyword. Here is one set of examples:

There are other original key nouns that are translated into different types of grammatical structures. In this case, the translation is grammatically diversified, which is particularly noteworthy when it brings about (slight/important) shifts of ideational metaphors, as in the following examples:

In the cases above, the conversion of ideational metaphors into actual (material) processes increases the visibility of agency. Use of a noun (such as tratamiento) implies no agency (since states or objects have their own autonomy), and receivers do not look for one (consciously or unconsciously). In contrast, processes expressed via verbs (even in the passive) tend to be unleashed by agents, which is something that the use of a verb might evoke. Example 26 is particularly illuminating. The original sentence in Spanish does not hint at any agent responsible for the action. However, the English translation may be seen to transfer responsibility to the pronoun us (in “enable us to [..] decide how to deal with it appropriately”). But even when there is no pronoun in the co-text, one might still consider a process to be something likely unleashed by an agent about which communicants may wonder. At any rate, and most importantly, the loss in prominence of Sánchez Presedo’s ideational metaphors brings about a change in his preferred way of expressing himself; that is to say, a change in individuation.

To sum things up, original and translated repertoires mainly overlap with regard to the speaker’s main area of specialisation (that is, economic and monetary affairs). The few cases of additions to the translated repertoire may be seen to alter the commitment configuration or the way meaning potential is activated. The majority of cases of deletions from the original repertoire occur with non-specialised nouns, that are either general items or words charged with affective or bonding input. These losses have an impact on the configurations of couplings, commitment, and metaphors.

5.2. Sánchez Presedo’s translated key adjectives

Similar sifts are spotted with (11) translated key adjectives, captured in Table 5.

In this case, a total of 8 (sectoral, monetary, supervisory, fiscal, private, fishing, financial, and legislative) out of 11 translated key adjectives (72.7%) are mirrored transfers from the original corpus. They are all directly associated with the economic and monetary field (apart from legislative, which is more comprehensive, and fishing, whose Spanish equivalent pesquera has been classified as a source of bonding in Section 4.2). Note that after a concordance analysis, fishing is found to function as a key noun (12 occurrences) and key adjective (10 occurrences), which explains why it is counted twice and appears in both Sections 5.1 and 5.2.

There are 3 additions in Sánchez Presedo’s translated repertoire (Galician, compatible, and judicial), which are largely the result of a convergence caused by the structural differences between English (whose adjectives are not marked for gender nor number) and Spanish (whose adjectives are). Because of space constraints, compatible is used to illustrate this in the examples below:

The case of Galician is slightly different. The following examples show the original equivalents to the English translated adjective Galician:

Structural reasons account for the convergence and greater frequency of Galician, except for the case where the names of regional institutions (such as Xunta de Galicia or Parlamento de Galicia; see Section 4.1) are transferred as Galician modifier + common noun (as with Galician authorities), which always happens when these institutions are mentioned in Spanish. Replacing (local, specialised) terminology with general descriptions undoubtedly yields a translational shift in commitment, resulting in a loss of precision and, most importantly, different bonding with the text.

There are also 4 original key adjectives from the original repertoire (global, públicas, queridos, and regulatoria) that are absent from the translated repertoire. Without them, the couplings associated with these adjectives also lose prominence in SP-EN. Incidentally, only públicas was classified as an open economic or monetary term in Section 4.3. As in the previous section, the main reason for these losses is lexical and grammatical diversification, resulting in shifts in commitment and metaphorical configurations:

global: globally, global, worldwide, comprehensive, overall, world level, globalisation;
públicas: public, State subsidies, treasury departments (from haciendas públicas);
regulatoria: of regulation, bound by the rules, regulatory.

The most interesting of these is global, because it reveals a case of translational hypercorrection (possibly motivated by language interference). In Spanish, until recently, global meant only comprehensive. It was incorrect (though popular among speakers) to use this adjective to mean worldwide. Sánchez Presedo does not follow contemporary norms and uses the it with both meanings. However, while both comprehensive and worldwide are correct synonyms of the English global, the translator often marks the difference explicitly:

Of interest also is the disappearance of an English equivalent for públicas from the translated keyword list. Sánchez Presedo uses this adjective on 24 occasions, mainly with 3 nouns: finanzas, acciones, and ayudas. Regarding the latter, as seen in Figure 3 above, Sánchez Presedo prefers ayudas públicas (public aid; with 5 hits) over alternatives such as ayudas estatales (state aid; with 4 hits) or subsidios estatales (state subsidies; with 0 hits). This usage contravenes ECPC-ES practice, where ayudas estatales is overwhelmingly more frequent (632 hits in ECPC-ES and 10 hits in the original subset of ECPC-ES) than ayudas públicas (155 hits in ECPC-ES and 12 hits in the original subset of ECPC-ES) or subsidios estatales (12 hits in ECPC-ES and 0 hits in the original subset of ECPC-ES). When translated into English, the original ayudas públicas is lexically diversified as: state subsidies (2 hits), public aid (2 hits), and state aid (1 hit), which not only contravenes the original practice, but also diverges from overall totals in ECPC-EN, where state aid (1185 hits in ECPC-EN and 441 hits in the original subset of ECPC-EN) is preferred over public aid (106 hits in ECPC-EN and 11 hits in the original subset of ECPC-EN), and state subsidies (58 hits in ECPC-EN and 7 hits in the original subset of ECPC-EN ). This in fact serves to show that translators do not just face the reductionist, binary option of (i) veering towards the original text or (ii) opting for the receiver’s culture, for one might argue that state subsidies does neither. Furthermore, this translational choice (where the translator chooses subsidies or aid in English) has consequences for translated appraisal, since, according to Sentiwords,[15]aid is a more positive item (with 0.37100 punctuation of polarity) than subsidies (with 0 punctuation of polarity).

In short, key adjectives within the economic and monetary realm tend to be transferred from the original to the translated repertoire. The few cases of key adjective additions can be largely attributed to structural differences between English and Spanish. The larger number of deletions from the original repertoire are again the result of lexical and grammatical diversification, impacting the configurations of couplings, commitment, and bonds.

5.3. Sánchez Presedo’s translated key verbs and others

The translated key verb list is clearly shorter than the original counterpart, as noted in Table 6. Moreover, there are no other key items in the list.

Out of the 9 key verbs present in Sánchez Presedo’s original repertoire, only two are transferred to his translated repertoire (evitando and felicito as avoiding and congratulate). The coupling of valoro + positivamente loses prominence in translation (notice that positively or equivalents are not present in the target text keyword list). Most importantly, the two trends identified in the original SP-ES corpus (three forms of genre-stage verbal processes and a gamut of verbs with inherently positive semantic expansions; see Section 4.3) are also weakened in translation. In sum, key verbs seem to be greatly affected by translation.

6. Conclusions

The present paper aims to contribute to synergies between and among SFL, CL, and TS. It examines the concept of individuation (and the related notions of realisation and instantiation), which to the best of our knowledge has not been studied (specifically and consciously) from the perspective of corpus-assisted translation studies. In SFL, individuation points to the areas in which individual production (repertoire) differs from systemic production (reservoir). In CL, such individual/systemic comparisons may be performed with the aid of keywords. It is of course untrue that the notions of repertoire and keyword list overlap perfectly. However, it is indisputable that keywords are prominent pieces of an individual’s repertoires. Moreover, individuation in SFL is examined via realisational networks and their instantiation in texts. In CL, one of the best tools to delve into instantiation is the concordance line. It is again untrue that concordances exhaust the notion of instantiation. However, it is also indisputable that concordances are prominent pieces of instantiation that are worth the attention of linguists and translation scholars. The use of keywords and concordances to delve into individuation do not provide the whole picture of original and translated communication but, as seen throughout this paper, they do provide informative tools that contribute to the discussion.

Sánchez Presedo’s individuation profile, as presented in the Spanish version of the OJEU and its English translation, was explored. In this particular case, the synergic methodology proposed shows that the MEP’s contextual/biographical areas of interest coincide with their instantiation in texts. We have discovered a speaker who is particularly interested in economic and monetary affairs and in his homeland (Galicia). He is a speaker of his time who makes governance and other related legislative matters a focal point in his repertoire. We have also found characteristic pieces in his repertoire, such as his indulging in general (rather than specialised) terms covering large areas of commitment and with cohesive textual functions. We have spotted the prominence of ideational metaphors. We have also pinpointed Sánchez Presedo’s preference for certain linguistic couplings at various levels

When this repertoire is translated, the vast majority of individuation elements are transferred, especially those from the economic and monetary field. However, some (a few) pieces were added to Sánchez Presedo’s translated individuation. These additional items can be the result of unavoidable structural differences between English and Spanish (as is largely the case of newly acquired key adjectives). Furthermore, they can bring to the fore potential areas of negligence in the original texts, which are repaired through translation. As well, they can point to a handful of optional shifts, normally associated with general words or terms outside the most prominent area of specialisation (in our case that of economic and monetary affairs). More important (in number) are the cases where part of the original repertoire loses prominence (due to lexical or grammatical dispersion), impacting the speaker’s profile of couplings, commitment, metaphors, and semantic/generic patterns.

All cases identified here through Log R-based quantitative analysis are worth studying further, with the aid of triangulation and clarification from more detailed manual work. These will provide yet other perspectives on individuation.

A corpus-assisted SFL approach to individuation in the European Parliament: the case of Sánchez Presedo’s original and translated repertoires[*]

Abstract

Résumé

Resumen

1. Introduction