Translation Can Distort the Linguistic Parameters of Source Texts Written in Inflected Language: Multidimensional Mathematical Analysis of “The Betrothed”, a Translation in English of “I Promessi Sposi” by A. Manzoni

Source abstract

We compare, mathematically, the text of a famous Italian novel, I promessi sposi, written by Alessandro Manzoni (source text), to its most recent English translation, The Betrothed by Michael F. Moore (target text). The mathematical theory applied does not measure the efficacy and beauty of texts; only their mathematical underlying structure and similarity. The translation theory adopted by the translator is the “domestication” of the source text because English is not as economical in its use of subject pronouns as Italian. A domestication index measures the degree of domestication. The modification of the original mathematical structure produces several consequences on the short–term memory buffers required for the reader and on the theoretical number of patterns used to construct sentences. The geometrical representation of texts and the related probability of error indicate that the two texts are practically uncorrelated. A fine–tuning analysis shows that linguistic channels are very noisy, with very poor signal–to–noise ratios, except the channels related to characters and words. Readability indices are also diverse. In conclusion, a blind comparison of the linguistic parameters of the two texts would unlikely indicate they refer to the same novel.