Phraseological translation of specialized speech: contrastive analysis of sports press in Russian and Spanish

Рамирес Родригес Pablo Assistant, Department of Theory and Practice of Foreign Languages, RUDN Institute of Foreign Languages 117198, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Miklukho-Maklaya, 7, kab. 312 pabloatanasev@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Introduction

Today we are aware of the problems that exist in the study of phraseological units, but the features that define this linguistic phenomenon are still being discussed. If we return to the research that has been conducted in this area, we can see that it is not easy to distinguish the concept of phraseological unity due to the wide variety of stable expressions observed in real usage.

The language used in sports discourse is designed to meet the human need to express feelings and efforts during sports conflicts. Therefore, it is important to emphasize the expressive form of language, characterized by its spontaneity and expressiveness. The problem lies at the literary level, since the vocabulary used to reflect colloquial speech with a predominance of expressive functions that convey the emotional feelings of the text may differ from formal speech due to cultural factors. In addition, with regard to the development of specialized dictionaries in the field of sports in the Spanish-speaking sphere, contrasting lexicographic works with other languages are not very numerous, since they were achieved only as a monolingual dictionary. For this purpose, it was calculated on the presence of several buildings of the Russian language (Ruskell, NKRYA) and the Russian sports press (Sport-Express, Championat and Sport.ru ), with the help of which the basis of this contrast study was built in Russian and Spanish. 

Similarly, in order to investigate the nature of collocations to establish similar models in both languages, collocations of numerous articles from three popular sports sources were analyzed: Sport-Express, Championat and Sport.ru taking into account the three favorite sports of Russian society: football, ice hockey and basketball. This work will focus on the publications of Corpas ^{[1, p. 32]}, a pioneer in the construction of a global study on Spanish phraseology, which the author will compare with the Russian language, as well as with other important works of researchers of Spanish phraseology, such as Ruiz-Gurillo ^{[2, p. 262]} or Zuluaga ^{[3, c. 64]}.

 In order for the reader to know what a linguistic collocation is, the term "collocation" is considered as a stable combination of words that corresponds to a certain meaning. So, in Russian they say to make a speech, and not to give a speech as it will be in Spanish dar un discurso. Another example: in Spanish, red wine is called vino tinto (lit. colored wine) instead of the expected vino rojo (lit. red wine). They are clear examples of unmotivated stable collocations in both languages, which are known to native speakers, but at the same time are not so obvious to non-native speakers.

The term collocation comes from the Latin words "con", which means "with" and "locare", which etymologically means "connect", so they are combinations of words with a certain frequency that can be found in any language. The choice of the topic is related to the interest shown in recent years in this discipline in the behavior of stable units and their semantic and syntagmatic relations with other lexical units in both Spanish and Russian. Nevertheless, it is known that conducting a global study of phraseology is a difficult task due to its greater expansion, which leads to the fact that the object of research was divided, choosing the use and appearance of collocations in the written press, which serves as the basis for being able to build a real comparative study of Spanish and Russian.

Thus, we chose the Russian sports and news press, as we consider it to be the appropriate type of discourse for the scope of this study. The language used in sports news is characterized by a balance of accuracy and informativeness, on the one hand, and the ability to capture a story in detail without losing emotional charge at any time, on the other.

This is often a metaphorical language that disposes to the formation of phraseological units. Sport itself is an aspiration established in the subconscious of a person, in other words, it is a living part of human reality expressed through metaphorical language. Similarly, we are no longer faced with a simple game, but rather with the necessity of today's society, which constantly requires the renewal of a common social language for the transmission of social and cultural values.

Research material

Meanwhile, numerous phraseological studies published in recent years (Yagunova, E. V., & Pivovarova, L. M., ^{[4, p. 30]}; Zakharov, V. P., & Khokhlova, M. V., ^{[5, p. 137]} 2010; Vlavatskaya, M. V., & Korshunova, A. V., ^{[6, p. 21]}; Chernousova, A. O., ^{[7, p. 134]}), have shown and continue to demonstrate a growing interest in stable combinations, as evidenced by various conferences, meetings and seminars dedicated to this field, the results of which are published in the form of dictionaries and monographs, both bilingual and and monolingual, which confirms the relevance of this mature discipline.

Collocations are often unpredictable and not deducible from the basic rules of the language: in Spanish they say "dar un paseo" (take a walk) or "dar una vuelta" (take a trip), but "hacer una excursions" (take an excursion). In Russian, a model with the verb commit is productive for such nominations, while in Spanish different verbs are used: the first two examples are built on the model with the verb dar (to give), and the second example with the verb hacer (to do).

In this study, we will focus on collocations with nouns and verbs in the sports field. According to the chosen line, the basis of our research was contrastive linguistics, and the working languages were Russian and Spanish.

To solve the task, working with a complex case is a mandatory and important condition. Russian Russian sports magazines, with the help of which we have built the basis of our goal of comparative study in Spanish and Russian, in addition to the fact that we have used DRAE ^[8] and other Spanish phraseological dictionaries, such as DiCE ^[9] and REDES ^[10].

Thus, we analyzed numerous articles from three Russian journalistic sources in order to consider the main topic devoted to collocations in Russian and Spanish, as well as their behavior in this type of press. As for the journalistic sources taken into account for this study, these are the three most popular sources of Russian-speaking readers in sports: Sport-Express, Championat and Sports.ru . As sports, we have identified three favorites of the Russian-speaking society, such as football, ice hockey and basketball. During 2019-2020, a sports news corpus was assembled, consisting of three subcorps corresponding to each subject area - football, hockey and basketball, respectively. Next, the self-assembled corpus was analyzed using the AntCorc tool for the most frequent words and n-gramm.

The main reason I brought this line of research in the first place was to identify the existing translation problems between these units due to the cultural factor that differs between both languages, as we will focus on the richness and diversity in creating lexical collocations existing in Spanish and Russian. The problem arises due to the lack of a combinatorial bilingual Russian-Spanish dictionary.

 Recently, modern sport has been a complex reality around which its own jargon is being formed. Due to the growing popularity of sports, the interaction of specific sports vocabulary with a commonly used language is becoming more and more close, and for this reason sports vocabulary has interested linguists, including due to the need to reflect new vocabulary in dictionaries. The effect of the popularization of sports is manifested through the influence on other language areas and, of course, a media phenomenon in the commercialization and wider dissemination of sports in society. The problem lies in the literary level of sports, that is, in the sports vocabulary used to reflect the external and internal reality of the author with a predominance of expressive and poetic functions that may differ in language due to the cultural factor. As for the development of dictionaries specializing in sports, they were created only at the monolingual level, and at the same time it is worth noting the presence of two unifying trends for the terminology used: selective inclusion of terms and the tendency to create a single dictionary without differences in sports fields.

Nowadays, modern sports have become a discourse in which feelings and efforts are ambiguous, and are able to seduce all kinds of audiences through the exchange of their forms and cultures for life through communication and global dissemination, in other words, the language used in sports discourse meets the human need to express feelings and efforts in a dramatic situation of sports conflict, when several factors are amplified to emphasize the importance of language. It is important to emphasize expressive forms based on a humorous capture of reality, satire and ridicule in official culture, as well as on the use of spoken language, preferably for its spontaneity and expressiveness. At the lexical level, we can distinguish several phenomena that may not coincide depending on the cultural situation, such as: rhetorical use, the presence of figurative language, abuse of the technique of modifying discourse with colloquial units for the synthesis of moods, metaphorical creations or the formation of neologisms as a consequence of a wide variety of sports and expressions of general speech.

According to Cowie ^{[11, p. 230]}, phraseology is a young linguistic discipline that studies stable idiomatic phrases in one language. The term "phraseological units" refers to stable phrases that are distinguished in different classifications, and they can manifest themselves as idioms, collocations, proverbs and sayings, although in traditional approaches a group of winged words is also distinguished, which are known to us under the name "syntactic phraseological units". Today, due to the well-known problems that exist in the study of phraseological units, since the features defining this linguistic category are still being discussed, the classification mentioned below has not been fully developed, but is intuitive, so it is used in phraseological and dictionary works.

The concept of V. V. Vinogradov determined the development in Soviet times, however, when describing the phraseology of other languages, other classifications based on other principles and their own phraseological theories were proposed. I. E. Anichkov ^{[12, p. 66]} proposed his classification based on structural parameters without resorting to motivation. He also distinguished these units into three types: 1) phrases that have one full-valued and one incomplete word, 2) combinations that have two full-valued words, and 3) and phrases that have three or more full-valued words. Nevertheless, for another reason, the classification proposed the allocation of two more classes: collocations and idioms.

Basically, one of the most important aspects of Russian traditional phraseology is that phraseological units are not purely linguistic, but also a cognitive phenomenon in one language, and the hypothesis of the semantic reality of the internal form determines the selection of aspects and their interpretation. In formal approaches to the study of the language system, the idea prevailed that the position for the linguistic theory of the 50-80's had changed and it seemed that the semantics of phraseological units differed from the semantics of words and phrases. In addition, it should be mentioned a series of works by A. Vezhvitskaya ^{[13, p. 28]}, in which it was shown that the linguistic categorization of the world largely depends on culture.

As native speakers intuitively separate idioms from phraseological units, there is no exact definition in this. The definition of idioms boils down to three main ideas: ambiguity, stability and idiomaticity. Idiomatic speech requires knowledge of such rules of speech behavior that may be unique in one communication situation. The text that contains implicit information will also be idiomatic.

It can be argued that all definitions of idiomaticity are reduced to three main ideas: reinterpretation (in a figurative meaning/metaphor), opacity and complication of the way to indicate the denotation. And also note that in any language, the principle of iconicity operates according to Lakoff and Johnson ^{[14, p. 202]}, according to which a more complex expression is more complex in form and semantically arranged. A good example for this would be the expression "letting a goat into the garden" in which there is a metaphorization mechanism. On the other hand, the phraseology "to talk forty barrels to someone" is idiomatic from the point of view of opacity, since in modern Russian it is impossible to calculate the meaning of individual components.

The stability of collocations is primarily related to the arbitrariness of the semantically selected element. For the collocation "to make a decision", it is difficult to explain why it is the verb to accept, and not to take, do or commit. It should be emphasized that the main typological comparisons show that different verbs are used in other languages in the same case. To take a decision/tomar una decisi?n/eine Entscheidung treffen. The irregularity of collocations lies in this arbitrariness. As for the irregularity of collocations, a well-known apparatus of lexical functions is used, i.e. with the help of a limited set of lexical functions, it is shown that the degree of irregularity is actually small compared to the irregularity of idioms. This indicates the presence of some irregularities in the semantically motivated choice of a collocator (verb). For example, the verb to lead can act as a colocator only with the nouns of activity: to negotiate, investigate, act, but the verbs to experience and nourish only with the nouns of the state: to experience hunger, hunger, fear, shame and to nourish trust, hope, disgust (mental and emotional state of a person) (Apresyan, ^{[15, p. 68]}).

In connection with the Spanish tradition, phraseology, as a linguistic discipline, originated in the former USSR in the 50s with the works of V.V. Vinogradov. One of the most important works in Spanish by Julio Casares dates from that time. Since then, progress has been made only with respect to one of the characteristics of these phraseological units, idiomaticity. The current panorama does not seem to have changed too much, judging by the content of recent lexicographic works, since not only shortcomings are observed in general dictionaries, but also criteria for inclusion and classification of these units are not required, which hinders work in other related disciplines, such as language teaching or in the field of translation.

Therefore, the written corpus extracted from articles from the Russian sports press was analyzed, analyzed by a computerized text corpus in Russian, since there is no suitable one in Spanish yet. To date, there are only small or sectoral dedicated to a specific topic of the corpus (DiCE).

As for the concept of collocations in Spanish philology, traditionally little attention has been paid to it, since the first references are given in the late 70s. In the 80s, there was timid progress, which was not consolidated until the 90s. This term was first introduced by Seco ^{[15, p. 70]}, and it did not appear in dictionaries until 1982 thanks to Downing's works. The fundamental concept encompassing collocations is the property of languages by which speakers tend to produce certain combinations of words among a large number of theoretically possible combinations. Depending on the grammatical category and the existing syntactic relationship between the collocates, we will create a taxonomy of their valid ones for both Romance and Slavic languages.

According to Alonso-Ramos ^{[16, p. 65]} from the field of second language teaching, it is believed that traditionally collocations create problems in coding, since they are transparent in decoding. As a rule, the candidate represents a semantic specialization that limits his ability to communicate “fruncir el ce?o” (frown-frown eyebrows), abstract or figurative meaning “sofocar la revuelta” (extinguish rebellions) or grammatical meaning “dar comienzo" (give a start). Therefore, we can say that the meaning of collocations is partially compositional.

The metaphorical dimension was noticed when she divided into basic and extended English and Indian collocations. The former distinguish their central meaning, and the latter - their translation in accordance with the rules of interpretation associated with the metaphors that make up our concept of the world. Both mental acts and speech acts are considered as journeys through space "llegar a la conclusi?n" letters. come to the conclusion, "alcanzar un acuerdo" letters. reach an agreement. The equivalence of metaphorical collocations in several languages is explained by the presence of conceptual images shared by languages.

Research results

The results show that the first nouns found in three areas are associated with the most common words that are in the lexicon of any person, even if he does not understand the field of sports, i.e. match, team, game, championship, national team, etc. Then the names of the players, the most important figures who need to own the ball, such as a forward, defender or striker. And then the rest of the words are event nouns related to the match, such as goal, victory, transfer, defeat, etc. Regarding adjectives, it should be noted that very rarely they are negative. They are all related to the preliminary receipt of the victory, such as the main, the first, the best. As for verbs, it is interesting to know that "score" is used in three areas due to the influence of football. After comparing all the data, we came to the conclusion that all possible collocations found in the subcorpus appear in the general list of the most frequent words when combining lists of nouns, adjectives and verbs, such as: to hold a match, score points, take a place, win, etc.

The second part of this study was to identify the systemic relations of the new vocabulary in the modern sports field. To do this, it is necessary to use the lexicographic tool of the Russian language RuSKeLL in order to find synonyms and make lexical relationships between common frequency words in sports vocabulary.

It follows from this that most synonyms that are used in sports discourse in Russian are gradually being replaced by English words, i.e. they are borrowed words from English. For example, such as: fanatic, halfback, opponent, goalkeeper, favorite, season, etc.

 Currently, as you know, English has become the most important international language. It is actively used in all spheres of life, including in the sports field. Also, the use of new communication technologies has led to the appearance of neologisms in speech, i.e. the appearance of borrowed words. In sports, the names of many sports are familiar to everyone, such as tennis, basketball, football or hockey, but not only are the names of sports borrowed, as well as sports players, as we have already seen, and terms such as save, pass, block, etc.

In connection with the study of sports collocations, we again used the AntConc corpus in order to analyze all possible fixed combinations of words from our subcorpus for each sport. Since we focus on the most frequent collocations that manifest themselves in Russian, i.e. verbal and adjectival collocations, we conducted a study using the n-gramm analysis method. This method will help us divide frequency combinations into a group of combinations of two words for which bigrams were used in order to find adjectival [head coach] and verbal collocations [to win], and into a group of combinations of three words for which trigrams were used in order to find verb collocations that are combined with a preposition in Russian language [to fight for the title], [to hit the bar].

According to the data obtained in the table, it can be confirmed that the most frequent collocations in three sports areas, which consist of two words, and collocations of three components are less frequent. Also note that verbal collocations occur most often, since action dominates in terms of events, and adjectives have the function of decorating discourse.       

From the table it can be concluded that the frequency of collocations appears in order during the match. The very first frequency verbal collocations are always associated with the beginning of the game [to hold a match], then the process of the game [to be defeated, to win, to score points] and only then the end of the game, i.e. the result [to win a title / trophy / medal], and in this order.

Regarding verbal collocations, we present the last task of this study. The task was to find and compose lexical relations between the received frequency verbs [collocative] and nouns [keyword]. To do this, the RuSKeLL corpus is used in order to find which other keywords, besides data, require the same collocative. In other words, the task is to identify which words form productive collocations and which do not.

If you pay attention, we immediately note that according to RuSKeLL, there are no sports collocations under the verbs commit, reflect, although both verbs are very often found in discourse as a synonym to do [make an interception], [make a block shot] or as a synonym to parry [reflect the puck]. If we look at the verb conquer, we will always meet the following collocations without exception. [win a title], [win a medal], [win a trophy]. This feature is due to the metaphorical expansion of the language, it is curious that all the proposed examples in the corpus are related to the metaphor of competition, and not to the direct meaning of the verb and military actions, for example, to conquer a country.

If we check the verb formalize, then most of the words that the corpus will give out are associated with bureaucratic collocations. [get insurance], [get a visa], [get a document]. This is due to the fact that there is an influence of bureaucratic discourse on sports discourse. Also, the corps will issue sports collocations [make a double], [make a hat trick].

Regarding the verb to score, it is interesting that its appearance extends to three sports areas due to the influence of football. It should also be said that its appearance depends on the sport. In the field of football, [to score a goal], [to score a ball] or simply the verb to score are often found. In the field of hockey, the collocation [to score a goal] is often found, but not [to score a ball], and in the field of basketball, only to score is used. The idea of using the verb to score in order to determine an effective or successful kick at the goal can also appear with the direct meaning of the verb - to score a nail. In favor of this semantic transition, the collocations to hit the ball, which were not identified in our subcorpus, testify.

The verb to hold also turns out to be interesting, since it is often used to make it clear that the game will take place, but instead of repeating the verb to take place, we meet with collocations [to hold a match] or [to hold a game]. Regarding the verb to win, it is interesting to know that when combined with a noun in the field of sports, nothing more has been found than [to win]. Also in this case, the metaphorical factor plays an important role, since victory can only be achieved, and in collocation in the sense of overcoming or prevailing. In connection with the verb to suffer, you can immediately notice that all the surrounding words have a negative connotation, which also affects sports discourse. In any sports discourse, the verb to suffer can be found if it is followed by the word defeat.

In the last section, a comparative analysis of sports vocabulary with Russian and Spanish is made in order to create a small combinatorial dictionary in the field of sports, as well as to emphasize the importance of studying collocations not only in the sports field, but also in other areas from the very beginning of the process of learning one language. This is the only way to avoid mistakes that are not easy to fix later. In the following tables we have collected all the collocations for each sport and their translation.

It should be noted that more collocations were found in the field of football than in other areas. This is due to the fact that football is currently the most popular sport and more attention is paid to it. Regarding the translation, it is interesting to know how word combinations are combined, especially in cases of verbal collocations, where a literal translation does not fit and consistently leads to errors.

If we take the verb to score, the literal translation into Spanish is [Clavar/hincar]. We see that its first meaning is not related to sports, but to hammer a nail, an alarm, or even an expression to hammer something into your head. The same thing happens in Spanish, the verb to score is not related to sports in its first meaning, although in the sports field the meaning changes. [Clavar/hincar ? marcar (mark)]. Both in Russian and in Spanish, a metaphor is manifested in sports discourse.

It should also be added that in Russian there is variability, you can say whether to score a goal or score a ball, and in Spanish only a goal. Regarding the verb to formalize, as it was said earlier, a bureaucratic style is manifested, which affects the sports discourse. In Spanish, it will be [formalizar] and is not used in this context, but only in a bureaucratic one. Spanish sports speech is simple, so a simple verb to do (hacer) is used. It is also an interesting collocation [to end a career], since in Spanish you can say (concluir su carrera), but it does not quite fit in this context. In sports discourse, collocation is not used, but simply "stop playing" (dejar de jugar).

In connection with the verb to complete, the same thing happens as with the verb to formalize. Although in Spanish it will be (realizar), which is rarely used in the sports field. Spanish discourse prefers the use of the simple verb to do (hacer). The verb to hit is often found in the discourse: [to hit the target], [to hit the bar] or [to get into the national team]. In Spanish (caer) is rarely used in discourse, as the verb is perceived very colloquially. Therefore, it is preferred to use other options like: give (dar) or enter (entrar).

Assigning a penalty is also a very interesting collocation. In Spanish, we do not assign a penalty, but blows the whistle (pitar). Regarding adjectival collocations, it is necessary to mention [the head coach], who is not the main coach in Spanish, but the title coach, and [the return match], which is also not a response in Spanish, and not a collocation, but simply the word revenge (revancha).

In the field of hockey, it can be seen that a lot is repeated from the football field, although there are special collocations such as: [to throw the puck], [to win a medal] or [to make a shutout]. In the field of basketball, there are also special collocations such as: [make a double double / triple], [make an interception / block shot] or [win a title], which differ from other subject areas. In the field of football, it is most common to win a trophy or a cup, in the field of hockey to win a medal and in the field of basketball to win a title. In the field of basketball, attention is drawn to the productivity of collocations with the verb commit/ commit, for example: [make an interception], [make a block], etc.

Conclusion

The result of the observed processes is that even native speakers of the Russian language find it difficult to read and understand sports news, and for foreigners interested in sports, these features of the sports press can present insurmountable difficulties, since the actual sports vocabulary is present in textbooks and dictionaries is quite limited.

In this paper, the task was to analyze the lexical properties of modern sports and news journalism based on the material of its own corpus, created on the basis of sports news of the three most popular team sports - football, hockey and basketball. The corpus was assembled for the 2019-2020 academic year and analyzed using the AntCorc program, which allows analyzing the frequency of words and collocations. The analysis of the frequency lists showed that the lexical core of the collected sports news was made up of general sports vocabulary describing players, stages of championships, outcomes of sports competitions. There are relatively few highly specialized vocabulary describing the elements and techniques of the game: a double, a blockshot, a hat trick, a save, etc. The analysis of noun lists revealed several striking features peculiar to sports and news texts.

Firstly, sports and news texts have a characteristic synonymy of nominations, which is manifested in the existence of doublets of the native Russian and borrowed words, for example, coach-mentor, forward - striker, midfielder - midfielder, etc. Interestingly, according to Sharykina ^{[18, p. 60]}, despite the really high rate of borrowed words, there is no displacement of the native Russian vocabulary by borrowed words. In this regard, the fate of the words coach and mentor is interesting: if you believe the statistics of the main body of the NKRR, the word coach came into use in the 1940s, meanwhile the word mentor continues to coexist in modern usage.

The second striking feature of sports and news texts is the formation of stable collocations. An interesting phenomenon has been observed with stable phrases describing the goal situation, several synonymous collocations of the expression "score a goal" have been revealed. Firstly, a productive model is a collocation with the verb to formalize, characteristic of bureaucratic discourse: to form a double, to form a hat trick, to form a shutout, while this model of collocations is characteristic of all team sports.

The creation of an educational dictionary and the contrastive analysis performed on its basis made it possible to identify linguistic-specific differences in productive models of sports collocations. In Spanish, collocations describing a goal are formed as verb-nominal combinations, the top of which are the words tirar "to throw", hacer "to do" and marcar "to mark", the direct meaning of which is "to make a mark", however, it forms a productive model of collocations in a variety of subject areas.

Looking at Russian sports collocations through the prism of other languages, for example, Spanish, leads to interesting observations from the point of view of lexical typology. For example, in the Russian language, when describing a goal, verbs with the semantic component "to beat" are used - to score a goal, to kick a ball. Meanwhile, in Spanish, the verb tirar with the component "to throw" turns out to be productive. It is also interesting that in Spanish and Russian there are productive models of collocations with verbs that are not related to the "movement" frame, a natural component of sports, but at the same time are associated with the "registration" frame: issue a goal, marcar un gol (letters. mark a goal, make a mark in the form of a goal).