Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

Canepari, Michela, A New Paradigm for Translators of Literary and Non-Literary Texts. (Critical New Literacies: The Praxis of English Language Teaching and Learning 14) 420 pp. 2022:8 (Brill, NE) <686-1618>
ISBN 978-90-04-52620-4 hard ¥31,779.- (税込) EUR 135.00
ISBN 978-90-04-52619-8 paper ¥15,301.- (税込) EUR 65.00

Over the years, translation has increasingly become a necessary tool to function in contemporary society. Based on years of research and teaching activity within the field, this book offers a useful and effective paradigm for the translation of different types of texts, guiding readers towards the realisation of effective translation projects. The several contrastive analyses presented and the suggestions offered throughout will help readers appreciate the implications and consequences of every translation choice, encouraging them to develop reading and translating skills applicable to the variety of texts they face in everyday life, from novels to comic books, films, and television series.

McElvenny, James (ed.), The Limits of Structuralism: Forgotten Texts in the History of Modern Linguistics. 336 pp. 2023:2 (Oxford U. Pr., UK) <686-1621>
ISBN 978-0-19-284904-5 hard ¥27,920.- (税込) GB￡ 98.00 *

Based around seven primary texts spanning 130 years, this volume explores the conceptual boundaries of structuralism, a scholarly movement and associated body of doctrines foundational to modern linguistics and many other humanities and social sciences. Each chapter in the volume presents a classic - and yet today underappreciated - text that addresses questions crucial to the evolution of structuralism. The texts are made accessible to present-day English-speaking readers through translation and extensive critical notes; each text is also accompanied by a detailed introduction that places it in its intellectual and historical context and outlines the insights that it contains. The volume reveals the complex genealogy of our ideas and enriches our understanding of their contemporary form and use.

Niklaus, Christina, From Complex Sentences to a Formal Semantic Representation using Syntactic Text Simplification and Open Information Extraction. 318 pp. 2022:8 (Springer Vieweg, GW) <686-1623>
ISBN 978-3-658-38696-2 paper ¥11,766.- (税込) EUR 49.99 *

This work presents a discourse-aware Text Simplification approach that splits and rephrases complex English sentences within the semantic context in which they occur. Based on a linguistically grounded transformation stage, complex sentences are transformed into shorter utterances with a simple canonical structure that can be easily analyzed by downstream applications. To avoid breaking down the input into a disjointed sequence of statements that is difficult to interpret, the author incorporates the semantic context between the split propositions in the form of hierarchical structures and semantic relationships, thus generating a novel representation of complex assertions that puts a semantic layer on top of the simplified sentences. In a second step, she leverages the semantic hierarchy of minimal propositions to improve the performance of Open IE frameworks. She shows that such systems benefit in two dimensions. First, the canonical structure of the simplified sentences facilitates the extraction of relational tuples, leading to an improved precision and recall of the extracted relations. Second, the semantic hierarchy can be leveraged to enrich the output of existing Open IE approaches with additional meta-information, resulting in a novel lightweight semantic representation for complex text data in the form of normalized and context-preserving relational tuples.

Wang, Hui, Discursive Mediation in Translation: Living History and its Chinese Translations. 193 pp. 2022:11 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK) <686-1625>
ISBN 978-981-19-4096-5 hard ¥25,890.- (税込) EUR 109.99

This book explores the actual process of mediation operation in the translation process and the interaction between mediation and social structure. It defines mediation in translation in a parameterized manner, characterizing the linguistic properties of mediation for ease of mediation identification. On this basis, it puts forward an integrated systematic approach to map out mediation operation at the text level and discuss the interactive relationship between mediation and social structure, with a view to unveiling how the source text is altered for the purpose of power balance in the translation process. It is a key read for those interested in better understanding of how translators mediate in the translation process so as to maneuver a text to achieve a certain purpose, thereby increasing mediation efficiency and avoiding potential pitfalls in mediation operation. It will be of interest to students and scholars in translation studies, professional translators, as well as those working in language and culture, intercultural communication, and cultural studies.

Cooper, Robin, From Perception to Communication: A Theory of Types for Action and Meaning. (Oxford Studies in Semantics and Pragmatics 16) 384 pp. 2023:3 (Oxford U. Pr., UK) <686-1119>
ISBN 978-0-19-287131-2 hard ¥33,475.- (税込) GB￡ 117.50 *

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book characterizes a notion of type that covers both linguistic and non-linguistic action, and lays the foundations for a theory of action based on a Theory of Types with Records (TTR). Robin Cooper argues that a theory of language based on action allows the adoption of a perspective on linguistic content that is centred on interaction in dialogue; this approach is crucially different to the traditional view of natural languages as essentially similar to formal languages such as logics developed by philosophers or mathematicians. At the same time, he claims that the substantial technical advantages made by the formal language view of semantics can be incorporated into the action-based view, and that this can lead to important improvements in both intuitive understanding and empirical coverage. This enterprise uses types rather than possible worlds as commonly employed in studies of the semantics of natural language. Types are more tractable than possible worlds and offer greater potential for understanding the implementation of semantics both on machines and in biological brains.

Kopf, Susanne, A Discursive Perspective on Wikipedia: More than an Encyclopaedia? (Palgrave Pivot) 168 pp. 2022 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK) <686-1149>
ISBN 978-3-031-11023-8 hard ¥10,589.- (税込) EUR 44.99 *

This book provides a concise yet comprehensive guide to Wikipedia for researchers and students of linguistics, discourse and communication studies, redressing the gap in research on Wikipedia in these fields and encouraging scholars to explore Wikipedia further as a platform and a medium. Drawing on Herring's situational and medium factors, as well as related developments in (critical) discourse studies, the author studies the online encyclopaedia both theoretically and empirically, examining its origins, production and consumption before turning to a discussion of its societal significance and function(s). This book will be of interest to Wikipedia scholars from a range of disciplines, as well as those with a broader interest in linguistics, discourse studies and the digital humanities.

Seah, Lay Hoon / Silver, Rita Elaine et al. (eds.), The Role of Language in Content Pedagogy: A Framework for Teachers' Knowledge. (Studies in Singapore Education: Research, Innovation & Practice 4) 243 pp. 2022:10 (Springer, GW) <686-1312>
ISBN 978-981-19-5350-7 hard ¥35,306.- (税込) EUR 149.99 *

This book explores the importance of language in content learning. It focuses on teachers' roles, knowledge and understanding of language in school contexts (including academic language and disciplinary languages) to support students. It examines teachers' language-related knowledge base for content teaching, which include teachers' knowledge of and about language, knowledge of (their) students and their pedagogical knowledge. This book also explores how teachers' knowledge of language, students and content are linked as part of a larger pedagogical content knowledge, which includes knowledge of the role of language in content learning. As well, it further considers literacy (and literacies) as part of this examination of teachers' knowledge of language.

Moniz, Helena / Parra Escartin, Carla (eds.), Towards Responsible Machine Translation: Ethical and Legal Considerations in Machine Translation. (Machine Translation: Technologies and Applications 4) 318 pp. 2022:12 (Springer, GW) <686-132>
ISBN 978-3-031-14688-6 hard ¥30,598.- (税込) EUR 129.99 *

This book is a contribution to the research community towards thinking and reflecting on what Responsible Machine Translation really means. It was conceived as an open dialogue across disciplines, from philosophy to law, with the ultimate goal of providing a wide spectrum of topics to reflect on. It covers aspects related to the development of Machine translation systems, as well as its use in different scenarios, and the societal impact that it may have. This text appeals to students and researchers in linguistics, translation, natural language processing, philosophy, and law as well as professionals working in these fields.