Normalization

Normalization has different meanings in translation studies. It may refer to a process of standardization that languages go through and where translations often have a leading role, to the standardization of texts, to the preparation of language for machine translation, to a translation strategy where translators try to integrate their translations into the target culture or to a frequency effect observed in translation corpora.

When it is understood as the standardization of a language, normalization describes cases where influential translators (e.g., Martin Luther) translated in a vernacular which was at their time not used as a literary language. Translations helped to standardize these vernaculars and to establish them as a means for normal communication.

When understood as the standardization of texts, normalization refers to a process where companies or national/international organizations define norms for terminology and other linguistic features of texts of a certain domain. Translators are confronted with these norms when translating. These norms often lead to a higher unification and a higher quality.

Normalization, understood as the preparation of text for machine translation, means that text which contains non-standard features such as orthographical variation or unusual abbreviations needs to be corrected before machine translation proceeds, to ensure an effective processing.

Normalization, as a translation strategy, describes the choice of translators to adapt their translation to target language rules. This strategy is also labelled domestication, fluent translation or centralization.

Globally, the term normalization is mostly used to refer to a frequency effect observed in comparable corpora. Normalization is then defined as the exaggeration of the target language norms in translations, compared to original texts in the target language (that is, the translation is more normal normal than original texts in the target language). This phenomenon becomes visible in the extensive use of linguistic features in translations which are typical for the specific target language. This frequency effect has been investigated in several corpus studies; it has been observed on different linguistic levels and in different language pairs. Several attempts have been made in order to find causes for normalization as a frequency effect, especially cognitive sources.