The analysis of linguistic variation in Translation Studies. A proposal for classifying translational phenomena between source text and target text

TL;DR: This paper addresses the study of variation in translated texts from a theoretical-methodological perspective and proposes a classification of variants in the variational space of languages, a concept emerging from the field of German variational linguistics.

Abstract: This paper addresses the study of variation in translated texts from a theoretical-methodological perspective. The first section focuses on the determining factors affecting diasystematic variation in the variational space of languages, a concept emerging from the field of German variational linguistics, where I refer to the domains of communicative immediacy and communicative distance, two concepts essential for understanding the classification proposed in the following pages. The second section is devoted to the type that I have called contact-based variation, defining language variants attributable to the situation of contact in which all translations are produced. The third section briefly covers what I have termed gradational variation, i.e. the existence of forms that are intensified or attenuated with respect to others. The fourth section describes how the three types of variation interrelate in target texts and establishes a typology of phenomena aimed at explaining variants in translated texts, revolving around the concept of interference. Lastly, the viability of this proposal for analysing variants in the field of descriptive, historical, and applied linguistics is discussed