Investigating Explicitation of Discourse Connectives in Translation using Automatic Annotations

Frances Yung; Merel Scholman; Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski; Christina Pollkläsener; Vera Demberg

doi:10.18653/v1/2023.sigdial-1.2

Investigating Explicitation of Discourse Connectives in Translation using Automatic Annotations

Frances Yung
, Merel Scholman
, Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski
, Christina Pollkläsener
, Vera Demberg

ILS - Language and Communication

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Discourse relations have different patterns of marking across different languages. As a result, discourse connectives are often added, omitted, or rephrased in translation. Prior work has shown a tendency for explicitation of discourse connectives, but such work was conducted using restricted sample sizes due to difficulty of connective identification and alignment. The current study exploits automatic methods to facilitate a large-scale study of connectives in English and German parallel texts. Our results based on over 300 types and 18000 instances of aligned connectives and an empirical approach to compare the cross-lingual specificity gap provide strong evidence of the Explicitation Hypothesis. We conclude that discourse relations are indeed more explicit in translation than texts written originally in the same language. Automatic annotations allow us to carry out translation studies of discourse relations on a large scale. Our methodology using relative entropy to study the specificity of connectives also provides more fine-grained insights into translation patterns.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue
Publisher	Association for Computational Linguistics
Pages	21-30
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.sigdial-1.2
Publication status	Published - Sept 2023
Event	Proceedings of the 24th Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue - Prague, Czechia Duration: 1 Sept 2023 → 1 Sept 2023

Conference

Conference	Proceedings of the 24th Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue
Period	1/09/23 → 1/09/23

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10.18653/v1/2023.sigdial-1.2Licence: CC BY

2023.sigdial-1.2Final published version, 306 KBLicence: CC BY

https://aclanthology.org/2023.sigdial-1.2

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Yung, F., Scholman, M., Lapshinova-Koltunski, E., Pollkläsener, C., & Demberg, V. (2023). Investigating Explicitation of Discourse Connectives in Translation using Automatic Annotations. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (pp. 21-30). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.sigdial-1.2

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title = "Investigating Explicitation of Discourse Connectives in Translation using Automatic Annotations",

abstract = "Discourse relations have different patterns of marking across different languages. As a result, discourse connectives are often added, omitted, or rephrased in translation. Prior work has shown a tendency for explicitation of discourse connectives, but such work was conducted using restricted sample sizes due to difficulty of connective identification and alignment. The current study exploits automatic methods to facilitate a large-scale study of connectives in English and German parallel texts. Our results based on over 300 types and 18000 instances of aligned connectives and an empirical approach to compare the cross-lingual specificity gap provide strong evidence of the Explicitation Hypothesis. We conclude that discourse relations are indeed more explicit in translation than texts written originally in the same language. Automatic annotations allow us to carry out translation studies of discourse relations on a large scale. Our methodology using relative entropy to study the specificity of connectives also provides more fine-grained insights into translation patterns.",

author = "Frances Yung and Merel Scholman and Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski and Christina Pollkl{\"a}sener and Vera Demberg",

year = "2023",

month = sep,

doi = "10.18653/v1/2023.sigdial-1.2",

language = "English",

pages = "21--30",

booktitle = "Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue",

publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",

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note = "Proceedings of the 24th Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue ; Conference date: 01-09-2023 Through 01-09-2023",

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Yung, F, Scholman, M, Lapshinova-Koltunski, E, Pollkläsener, C & Demberg, V 2023, Investigating Explicitation of Discourse Connectives in Translation using Automatic Annotations. in Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue. Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 21-30, Proceedings of the 24th Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue, 1/09/23. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.sigdial-1.2

Investigating Explicitation of Discourse Connectives in Translation using Automatic Annotations. / Yung, Frances; Scholman, Merel; Lapshinova-Koltunski, Ekaterina et al.
Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue. Association for Computational Linguistics, 2023. p. 21-30.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

TY - GEN

T1 - Investigating Explicitation of Discourse Connectives in Translation using Automatic Annotations

AU - Yung, Frances

AU - Scholman, Merel

AU - Lapshinova-Koltunski, Ekaterina

AU - Pollkläsener, Christina

AU - Demberg, Vera

PY - 2023/9

Y1 - 2023/9

N2 - Discourse relations have different patterns of marking across different languages. As a result, discourse connectives are often added, omitted, or rephrased in translation. Prior work has shown a tendency for explicitation of discourse connectives, but such work was conducted using restricted sample sizes due to difficulty of connective identification and alignment. The current study exploits automatic methods to facilitate a large-scale study of connectives in English and German parallel texts. Our results based on over 300 types and 18000 instances of aligned connectives and an empirical approach to compare the cross-lingual specificity gap provide strong evidence of the Explicitation Hypothesis. We conclude that discourse relations are indeed more explicit in translation than texts written originally in the same language. Automatic annotations allow us to carry out translation studies of discourse relations on a large scale. Our methodology using relative entropy to study the specificity of connectives also provides more fine-grained insights into translation patterns.

AB - Discourse relations have different patterns of marking across different languages. As a result, discourse connectives are often added, omitted, or rephrased in translation. Prior work has shown a tendency for explicitation of discourse connectives, but such work was conducted using restricted sample sizes due to difficulty of connective identification and alignment. The current study exploits automatic methods to facilitate a large-scale study of connectives in English and German parallel texts. Our results based on over 300 types and 18000 instances of aligned connectives and an empirical approach to compare the cross-lingual specificity gap provide strong evidence of the Explicitation Hypothesis. We conclude that discourse relations are indeed more explicit in translation than texts written originally in the same language. Automatic annotations allow us to carry out translation studies of discourse relations on a large scale. Our methodology using relative entropy to study the specificity of connectives also provides more fine-grained insights into translation patterns.

U2 - 10.18653/v1/2023.sigdial-1.2

DO - 10.18653/v1/2023.sigdial-1.2

M3 - Conference contribution

SP - 21

EP - 30

BT - Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue

PB - Association for Computational Linguistics

T2 - Proceedings of the 24th Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue

Y2 - 1 September 2023 through 1 September 2023

ER -

Investigating Explicitation of Discourse Connectives in Translation using Automatic Annotations

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