The Question in "Bilingual Texts": A Contrastive Analysis

Although an analysis of a bilingual corpus of English & French computer support documents, including advertising, shows a relatively modest increase in the % of direct questions in French as source & target language, a wider corpus of unilingual magazines shows that questions are used in French more than twice as often as in English. To help translators maintain a proportion of interrogative & declarative sentences more consistent with patterns observed in original French & English texts, areas of divergent usage between the languages are indicated. In French, questions are used to involve the reader in the text & to replace English imperative constructions in author-reader interactions. In argumentation, French has recourse to interrogatives to refer to evidence, to reduce the distance between author & reader, to efface the writer, & to wield irony. 15 References. Adapted from the source document