False cognates in translation
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | False cognates are usually discussed mainly in connection to language teaching/learning. The paper will look at scholarly oriented views of the topic, and emphasize its importance in translator training. The material is partly based on a corpus of students’ translations. The corpus reveals that inexperienced translators are surprisingly prone to errors induced by false cognates; the paper will briefly compare their production with that of professional translators. Cognate pairs that cause errors in translations differ from those causing problems to learners of English, as especially partial cognate pairs manifest a sort of “directionality” issue. As a result, a typical textbook of false friends tailored to the needs of Czech learners of English may not meet the needs of a (Czech) translator into Czech: the latter would better profit from a textbook intended for an English-speaking learner of Czech. Drawing on a previous article by the author, the paper proposes a flexible on-line form of presenting an existing dictionary of false cognates, designed to meet the needs of a wide scale of potential users. It also points out the problems of categorizing some cognate pairs as “false” that result from the increasing influence of English on Czech. |
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