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This action research study aims to analyse the ways in which vicarious learning, one of the sources of self-efficacy beliefs according to Social Cognitive Theory, can materialise in the translation classroom. To achieve this aim, a mixed methodological approach was adopted based on the following techniques: the interview, the survey, classroom observation and focus groups. Results show that vicarious learning took place in the translation classroom where this study was performed both through the students’ comparison with professional translators and between peers. More particularly, a collaborative learning environment and practices such as the presentation of translation projects by the students, role-play or discovering the careers of previous graduates favoured vicarious learning and thus positively influenced the participant students’ self-efficacy beliefs, according to their perception. The results obtained contribute to shedding light on some ways to incorporate students’ self-efficacy beliefs in translator education, satisfying the need underlined by several authors.

The paper presents ongoing research in contrastive corpus linguistics with envisaged applications in machine translation (MT) and with focus on Google Translate (GT) performance in English-Bulgarian translation. Structural patterns, forms or expressions where automatic translation fails are identified and analysed in view of creating a GT-editing tool providing improved target language output. The paper presents the corpus and the corpus analysis method applied, including the identification of inacceptable string types, their structural analysis and categorization. For each failure type, pre- or post-GT editing transformations are proposed. A first outline is proposed of a GT-editing tool consisting of a pre-GT editor performing string identification, substitution or deletion operations, a post-GT editor with a set of more complex string transformation rules and an additional module transferring structural information.

The article reports research on the concept of key words as statistically significant items in a text or corpus. It reviews approaches to eliciting key words used in various software products for language analysis and the rationale for adopting them. Based on empirical data, a new method is proposed and tested on an exploratory corpus. The motivation and arguments for proposing the procedure are revealed, using comparisons between different languages. The adequacy of the results yielded by the different methods is tested via a mechanism developed with this research.

In standard British/American English, some transitive verbs, which are ontologically specified for objects, may be used with the objects not overtly expressed (for example, leave), while other transitive verbs do not permit this syntactic behavior (for example, vacate). The former have been referred to as verbs that allow implicit arguments. This study shows that while verbs such as vacate do not ideally allow implicit arguments in standard British/American English, this is permitted in Ugandan English (a non-native variety), thereby highlighting structural asymmetries between British/American English and Ugandan English, owing mainly to substrate influence and analogization. The current study highlights those structural asymmetries and ultimately uncovers some characteristic features in the structural nativization process of English in Uganda, thereby contributing to the growing larger discourse meant to fill the gaps that had characterized World Englishes scholarship, where thorough delineations of Ugandan English have been virtually absent.

This paper revisits the issue of the importance of context and critical thinking in translation and translation training by examining the linguistic controversy over the translation of the word mokusatsu in the statement of Japan’s Prime Minister Suzuki in response to the Potsdam Declaration. There is a widespread belief that the bombing of Hiroshima in August of 1945 was caused by a translation mistake. The author sides with the opposing view, i.e. that such an approach takes one word of the statement out of context in order to shift the focus of the problem from politics to linguistics. The message of the statement is unambiguous when analyzed in its entirety. As a result, it is obvious there was no translation mistake and the bomb was dropped for reasons other than translation quality. Sadly enough, the myth lives on as a textbook example of ‘the worst translation mistake in history” whereas it should be taught as an example of probably ‘the worst translation myth in history’.

This article comprises two sections. The first analyses John Milton’s Paradise Lost in terms of the frontier dividing Providence and Chaos. Chaos is represented in violent images of the colonial world, the English Civil War, and Scientific Revolution cosmology. Providence intends to justify the ways of God in history. Milton’s retelling of the traditional Biblical Fall allegorises the 17th century Scientific Revolution, English society overwhelmed by market forces, and early modern nation-building wars. The second section analyses the English Civil War, focusing on Providence and Natural Rights. The Natural Rights defence of pluralism was the work of political refugees, attempting to curtail atrocities done in the name of Providence. Providence, meanwhile, was a political weapon, amidst new forces of capitalism, dynastic rivalry, and nationalism. This article examines Milton’s poetic visions, and the institutions and actions that characterized his political life in the English Revolution, and their interconnection.

Morocco, a multilingual country with historical and geo-political legacies, has opened a hot debate on languages recently. Within this debate, this article investigates spontaneous comments in social media on languages in Morocco, especially adopting English as a first foreign language. It aims to bring this topic to the surface and thus discuss it in the light of research on language attitudes and language awareness. To do so, it analyses the reactions to texts about the declarations by the Minister of Higher Education shared in social networks and sites. The data consisting of 2,018 comments is classified according to 12 frequent patterns whose frequencies are calculated. The findings show that most of Moroccans have positive attitudes towards English while some show opposing reactions towards French. These participants hold ambivalent opinions about the rest of languages used in Morocco; however, they tend to insist on Morocco having a clear language policy which, seemingly, prioritises the mother tongues, Arabic and Amazigh. The discussions show that some investigated reactions are mitigated as they may be illusionary.

The choice between since and because allows language users to provide rationality which is part of the cognitive functions of language. Different conditions have been shown to explicate this alternation, with little attention paid to the clausal weight. The present paper shows how expression of rationality is alternated between choosing a since or because, since both have the semantic capacity to do so, in certain contexts. The study uses a simple measurement method to show the extent to which clausal weight relates to this alternation. Relying on corpus data from a well-known variety representing Nigerian English, the present study shows that the choice between since and because is related to a number of factors such as the type of text producing the usages. With 1074 usages showing such interchangeable usages extracted from academic and media text types in written Nigerian English, it is shown that, at least in the variety under examination, the choice of since over because as a rationality expresser is scarce, and that overall pattern can be predicted on the basis of certain contexts including clausal weight and ordering pattern. The scarcity of since as a rationality expresser is perhaps a reflection of interference from the local languages, which do not have semantic equivalents.

Analyzing the vocabulary and the stylistic techniques in the works of the two authors, dedicated to Bulgaria, the article aims to contribute to a change of the two seemingly contrasting attitudes in their Bulgarian reception. The first is the implicit attitude to MacGahan as a "dangerous" author whose work is not even published with its true title - "The Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria". The focus of the analysis are the passages that deal with the Bulgarian material culture and education, as well as their axiological charge. The second is the negative value-based perception of the Bulgaro-phobic texts of St. Clair, an author obviously considered ineligible for translating into Bulgarian. However, his work might be a valuable source of knowledge about the culture of the Bulgarian national revival, provided that our reception remains neutral and unaffected by his derogatory language.

The paper assesses and evaluates the performance of the ProseRhythmDetector (PRD) Text Rhythm Analysis Tool. The research is a case study of 50 English and 50 Russian fictional texts (approximately 88,000 words each) from the 19th to the 21st century. The paper assesses the PRD tool accuracy in detecting stylistic devices containing repetition in their structure such as diacope, epanalepsis, anaphora, epiphora, symploce, epizeuxis, anadiplosis, and polysyndeton. The article ends by discussing common errors, analysing disputable cases and highlighting the use of the tool for author and idiolect identification.