Examples of translation equivalents for ‘actually’ based on table 9

These most frequent translation equivalents (Hummel, 1995) of ‘actually’, i.e., ‘realmente’, ‘de hecho’, ‘de verdad’, ‘en realidad’ point to its central meaning as an epistemic marker, very close to the central meaning of ‘in fact’:

1) Statement of truth: <s> But his portfolio of information technology and tourism actually go very well together. </s> EUROPARL7.

<s> Pero sus carteras de informática y turismo, de hecho , casan muy bien juntas. </s> EU-ROPARL7.

2) Reinforcement of truth: <s> What I learned is that, actually, there is sufficient legislation in place but the problem is the lack of supervision. </s> EUROPARL7.

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<s> Lo que deduje de todo aquello es que en realidad hay suficiente regulación, pero el prob-lema estriba en que no se controla. </s> EUROPARL7.

3) Addition and reinforcement of true qualities: <s> FOSAVANCE not only prevents the loss of bone but actually helps to rebuild bone you may have lost and reduces the risk of bones breaking in the spine and hip. </s> OPUS 2- EMEA.

<s> FOSAVANCE no sólo previene la pérdida de hueso sino que realmente ayuda a reconstruir el hueso que puede haber perdido y reduce el riesgo de fractura de huesos en la columna vertebral y en la cadera. </s> OPUS 2- EMEA.

Other two translation equivalents (Hummel, 1995) to be mentioned for ‘actually’ as found in parallel corpora:

1) De verdad: enhancement:

<s>What actually happens when you die isthat your brain stops working and yourbody rots, like Rabbit did when he diedand we buried him in the earth at thebottom of the garden.</s> Multinot fiction (Lavid et al., 2015).

<s> Lo quede verdad pasa cuando te muereses que tu cerebro deja de funcionar y elcuerpo se pudre, como el de Conejocuando se murió y lo enterramos al fondodel jardín. </s> Multinot fiction (Lavid et al., 2015).

The function here is strongly emphatic, in the English source the sentence starts with a wh-pronoun, whose equivalent is the convination of a definite article ‘lo’ and an interrogative pronoun

‘que’; both ‘what’ and ‘lo que’ are substituting something previously said or written in the discourse/

speech. The use of ‘actually’ and ’de verdad’ draws the reader’s/ listener’s attention towards the relevance of the explanation provided afterwards.

Moreover, ‘de verdad’ is a ’marcador de refuerzo argumentativo’ (Portolés and Zorraquino, 1999), a fact that illustrates the connection between English VMs (Halliday, 2014) and Spanish ones.

Mª Estefanía Avilés Mariño 94

Translation correspondences of verificative markers in English and Spanish UCM The case of ‘de verdad’:

a) Pons and Bordería (2005) would point out that ‘de verdad’, due to its contrastive nature in this sentence, has an anti-oriented argumentative function.

b) Correction (El Messaoudi Rifi, 2018) and emphasis of truth or factuality (Violeta de Monte, 1999) are functions to be considered here for ‘actually’ and ‘de verdad’.

2) Así: Purpose-Explanation:

<s> Actually, no. </s> Tiedemann (2007).

<s> Así, no. </s> Tiedemann (2007).

‘Así’ is an adverb, which is used here as part of a utterance to explain how it should not be done what has previously been mentioned. Adverb is one of the functions suggested for ‘actually’ in mono-lingual analysis, epistemic adverb indeed. Here the main functions are correction and illustration.

The case of ‘así’:

a) Portolés and Zorraquino (1999) consider for ‘así’ the function of consecutive connector, this is, expressing a consequence or result.

b) Cuenca (2001) points out the function of exemplifiying reformulation for ‘Así’,

c) Núñez et al (2006) consider reformulation too, but with a function of recapitulation for ‘así’.

d) Cortés y Camacho (2005) consider reformulation too, but with a function of concretion for ‘así’.

Based on the previous analysis, more specially on the frequency occurrence table which intro-duces this section, the most frequent translation equivalents (Hummel, 1995) for ‘actually’ are ‘real-mente’, ‘en realidad’, ‘de verdad’, ‘de hecho’ and ‘así’; ordered from the most preferred translation equivalent for ’actually’, ‘realmente’, to the least.

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‘En realidad’ is the most frequent translation equivalent for ‘actually’ in the corpus Multinot essay (Lavid et al., 2015), ’de verdad’ is the most frequent translation equivalent (Hummel, 1995) for

‘actually’ in the corpus Multinot Fiction (Lavid et al., 2015), ‘de hecho’ is the most frequent trans-lation equivalent for ‘actually’ in the corpus Europarl7 (Koehn, 2001) and ‘así’ is the most frequent translation equivalent (Hummel, 1995) for ’actually’ in the corpus Opensubtitles (Tiedemann, 2007).

What is the preferred translation equivalent for ‘actually’ in Spanish after the analysis of paral-lel corpora? ‘realmente’ is, proportionally speaking, the preferred translation equivalent (Hummel, 1995) for ‘actually’ as found in the analysis of its equivalents in parallel corpora.

Analysis of other frequent translations for ‘actually’:

Taking into consideration the pragmatic functions pointed out by Aijmer (2004) addition, con-trast, reinforcement and result; the least frequent translations for ‘actually’ will be shown and grouped in table 10 bellow:

a) Contrast: between S1 and S1, mainly adversative meaning.

b) Reinforcement: emphasis about some element of S1 in S2.

c) Addition: of information about S1 in S2.

d) Truth: truthfulness of S1 defined in S2.

e) Reason: justification or explanation of some S1 in S2.

Contrast: Reinforcement Addition Truth Reason

Aunque Actualmente

También Además A su vez Incluso

En verdad La verdad

Bueno Pues

Table 10: Pragmatic additional examples for ‘actually’.

Mª Estefanía Avilés Mariño 96

Translation correspondences of verificative markers in English and Spanish UCM 6.1.2.4 Lexical domains ‘actually’

The following figure illustrates the ‘translation lexical domains’, in this case, this referes to the translation equivalent for ‘actually’ according to the function developed in the discourse of speech act:

Figure 12: ‘actually’ TLDs