Aug 2026· International Journal of Linguistics and Translation Studies· 0 citations· 31 references
TL;DR
The analysis shows that most mismatches follow a recurring pattern in which a French passé composé reporting the students’ own methods, results, or attribution to prior research is rendered in the English present tense, blurring the distinction between the students’ specific findings and established disciplinary knowledge.
Abstract
English verb tenses present significant challenges impacting both writing and translation into English by non-native speakers. This paper examines the translation of tenses from French to English in a corpus of 40 thesis abstracts across disciplines including biology, geology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics and computer sciences, submitted by Moroccan doctoral students with no prior training in translation. Drawing on Day’s (1995), Malcolm’s (1987), and Salager-Meyer’s (1992) functional frameworks, the study classifies each tense mismatch according to the rhetorical function it serves in scientific discourse. The analysis shows that most mismatches follow a recurring pattern in which a French passé composé reporting the students’ own methods, results, or attribution to prior research is rendered in the English present tense, blurring the distinction between the students’ specific findings and established disciplinary knowledge. These patterns point to gaps in genre awareness, rather than to general English proficiency alone. The findings of this analysis have the potential to significantly inform curriculum designers in the development of specialized language courses tailored to enhance the genre awareness, academic writing, and translation skills of multilingual doctoral students .
This study investigates the translation of gender from English into Arabic, focusing on the performance of senior-level translation students in a literary context. Building on previous research on verbal and adjectival translation, the article adopts a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative frequency analysis with qualitative examination of error types. The corpus consists of selected passages from Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley, translated into Modern Standard Arabic by student translators. Gender-related renderings are classified as similar, different or unattempted in order to assess both accuracy and omission. The findings indicate that while gender is generally handled correctly at the lexical level, significant difficulties arise in maintaining agreement within phrases and clauses, particularly in cases involving inanimate or abstract nouns and structurally complex constructions. The study highlights the impact of grammatical asymmetry between English and Arabic on translation performance and underscores the need for more systematic instruction in contrastive grammar and contextual analysis. It contributes to a more nuanced understanding of gender as a key factor in English–Arabic literary translation and provides implications for translator training.
K. Mansoor, Daniel Dejica· Scientific Bulletin of the P...· 0 citations
This study investigates how French secondary school learners of English
as a Foreign Language (EFL)(14 year-olds, levels A1+ to B1+) develop the ability to refer to
the past during social interactions. Based on a corpus of video-recorded peer
interactions, our cross-sectional study integrates tools from an enunciative theory
(theory of predicative and enunciation operations) and conversation analysis for second
language acquisition. We identified key stages in the acquisition of past tense forms,
from reliance on adverbials and verb stems to the use of more complex past verb forms. Our
findings align with Klein and Perdue’s Basic Variety concept (
1997
), suggesting a ‘natural’ interlanguage development, even in
tutored settings where a different linguistic progression is implemented in the programme
of instruction. By valuing learner productions and focusing on interactional dynamics, our
research highlights the natural progression in EFL learners’ use of various forms when
referring to the past, contributing to a deeper understanding of their linguistic
development and providing empirical support for the view that grammar emerges from social
interaction.
Pascale Manoïlov, Agnès Leroux· Language, Interaction and Ac...· 0 citations
The internationalization of higher education and scholarly publishing has made English an increasingly multilingual medium of academic communication. This study examines similarities and differences between native and non-native academic English through a computational corpus-based framework. The study aims to identify variation in lexical choices, lexical bundles, grammatical patterns, collocations, and academic stance. A comparative corpus design is proposed using matched academic texts produced by native and non-native English writers. Computational procedures include normalized frequency analysis, keyword analysis, n-gram and lexical-bundle extraction, collocation analysis, part-of-speech profiling, and stance-marker analysis. Recent corpus research indicates that lexical bundles and stance resources provide measurable evidence of variation in L2 academic writing (Chen, 2025; Siu et al., 2024), while World Englishes scholarship increasingly challenges the assumption that native-speaker English should function as the exclusive model for academic writing (Du & Liu, 2025). The study therefore approaches native and non-native academic English as analytically comparable but potentially diverse forms of scholarly communication rather than as superior and deficient varieties. The proposed analysis is expected to identify both shared academic conventions and systematic differences in phraseological, lexical, grammatical, and interpersonal choices. The study contributes to corpus linguistics and English for Academic Purposes by providing a computationally informed framework for examining academic language variation and by offering implications for corpus-based academic writing pedagogy.
N. Akhter, Fatima Khan, Hammad Malik et al.· Journal of Arts and Linguist...· 0 citations
The article examines the functional role of English verb tenses in the process of text
construction. The main aim of the study is to show that verb tenses function not only as a grammatical
category but also as an important resource in text organisation, ensuring logical sequencing and
expressing communicative intent. The study analyses the role of verb tenses in the formation of textual
cohesion and coherence based on Systemic Functional Linguistics and discourse analysis
approaches. In particular, it demonstrates how tense selection in different types of texts—especially
narrative and academic styles—influences the presentation of information and its interpretation by
the reader. The analysis is based on a corpus-based qualitative approach and investigates the impact
of tense selection on discourse organisation at both micro (sentence and inter-sentential) and macro
(textual and genre) levels. The results show that verb tenses do not only express temporal relations
but also function as key discourse resources that ensure textual structural integrity, regulate
information flow, and define genre distinctions. At the same time, inappropriate selection of tense
forms may reduce textual clarity and communicative effectiveness. From this perspective, studying
verb tenses within a functional framework is of significant importance for both theoretical linguistics
and practical language use.
As the internationalization of higher education intensifies — particularly under China’s “Double First-Class” initiative — Chinese scholars are increasingly expected not only to publish in English but also to perform effectively in high-stakes spoken genres such as conference talks, keynote lectures, and doctoral defences. Yet pragmatic features such as hedging remain a persistent barrier, often leading to pragmatic failure in real-time interactions. This study addresses this challenge through an integrated approach that couples corpus-based diagnostics with pedagogical design. Specifically, it investigates the use of lexical verb hedges in Chinese scholars’ spoken academic English by comparing a self-compiled Chinese Scholars’ Academic Spoken English Corpus (CASEC; 696,009 words; 279 events) with the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE; 1,848,364 words; 152 events). Following Granger’s reappraised Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis 2.0, MICASE is treated not as a native-speaker benchmark but as one Anglo-American reference variety against which typical L2 patterns can be described. Quantitative analysis revealed that Chinese scholars significantly underused individualized stance markers (e.g., I think) and significantly overused collective, consensus-building markers (e.g., We see). Qualitative analysis interprets these patterns through the lens of cross-cultural pragmatics and genre constraints, suggesting a rhetorical strategy oriented toward collective harmony and the diffusion of authorial responsibility. Crucially, the study moves beyond diagnosis to propose a “diagnosis-to-treatment” pipeline, culminating in a step-by-step Data-Driven Learning (DDL) module complete with full classroom worksheets. The pedagogical design aims to raise scholars’ pragmatic awareness and enhance their international academic communication competence.
Yinchu Wang, Yang Yu, Hanlin Song et al.· PLoS ONE· 0 citations
This article returns to the much-debated notion of equivalence and examines it through one
specific language pair, French and Turkish. The argument is straightforward enough to state but
harder to honour in practice: equivalence cannot be reduced to the hunt for matching words. It is
closer to a series of judgements, made more or less consciously, in which sense, style, grammar, the
organisation of the text, and cultural reference all press their claims at the same time. The discussion
begins with the familiar theoretical landmarks—Jakobson, Nida, Catford, Vinay and Darbelnet,
Newmark, Baker, Koller, Berman—but treats them as a connected argument rather than a checklist.
It then proposes five parameters along which French–Turkish difficulties tend to cluster: semanticsignifying, connotative-stylistic, grammatical-syntactic, textual-pragmatic, and cultural-discursive.
Every parameter is worked through with sentence-level examples taken from literary, legal, and
scientific-technical material, and the resulting model is finally set beside the recent wave of corpusbased and machine-translation research. Full equivalence between the two languages, the analysis
concludes, is the exception rather than the rule; what remains reliably available is a set of defensible,
functional solutions, provided the translator weighs text type, audience, and communicative purpose
together. Equivalence here is not a fixed identity but something the translator builds, and ranks, anew
in each text