Books by Helka Riionheimo
This volume offers a cross-disciplinary insight into language contact research, bringing together... more This volume offers a cross-disciplinary insight into language contact research, bringing together fresh empirical and theoretical studies from various fields concerning different dimensions of language contact and variation, second language acquisition and translation. In the present-day world of globalization, population mobility and information technology, the themes of multilingualism and contact-induced language change are as topical as ever, and research on language contacts and cross-linguistic influence has expanded rapidly during the last few decades. Along with the increasing specialization of related disciplines, their research perspectives, methods and terminology have become dispersed, although language contact phenomena themselves can rarely be confined within the scope of a single discipline. This collection of articles creates dialogue between researchers from different scientific backgrounds, thus viewing language contact phenomena from a broader perspective. When language contact is re-defined to include the mental or cognitive level of contact between different languages and varieties in the minds of language learners or translators, salient links are created between the different disciplines dealing with this subject matter.
Papers by Helka Riionheimo
Lähivõrdlusi. Lähivertailuja, 2019
Lähivõrdlusi. Lähivertailuja, 2018
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2022
In this article, we analyse translation in the context of revitalisation from the point of view o... more In this article, we analyse translation in the context of revitalisation from the point of view of Language Making. Both translation and revitalisation are based on the idea of languages as distinct entities, and together they are doubly inclined to draw clear-cut borders between languages. The data come from a series of translation courses targeted at speakers and learners of Karelian, a critically endangered Finnic language spoken in Finland and Russia. By analysing the reflective assignments of the translation course participants and focusing on how they report on encountering and overcoming lexical gaps, we examine a very concrete case of Language Making: the creation of new lexical items for Karelian for the purposes of a translation task. Since coining neologisms in our data is mostly based on borrowing or calquing, the data illustrate how the participants perceive language boundaries and the connections between Karelian and other languages. Contrary to what the intersection b...
Language contacts at the crossroads of disciplines (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), 2014
This paper provides a theoretical meta-analysis of a frequency-related language contact effect te... more This paper provides a theoretical meta-analysis of a frequency-related language contact effect termed here interlingual reduction, which has previously been examined in the fields of contact linguistics, translation studies and second language acquisition research. Interlingual reduction, which refers to the reduction or the lower frequency of target language linguistic items or patterns not shared by both of the languages involved in the language contact situation, has been reported in the literature of all these three fields, but it has been examined within different theoretical frameworks and with differing terminology. This paper brings together these different theories and findings, and proposes that the interlingual reduction observed in these fields is one and the same phenomenon with a similar cognitive basis. The fact that such reduction occurs not only in attriting languages but also in the process of translating into ones’ L1 as well as in L2 speakers’ and bilinguals’ L1 suggests that contrary to what has been proposed, interlingual reduction does not solely relate to reduced language skills, but it should be seen as a natural part of bilingual and multilingual language processing and use. This paper is a contribution towards bringing together the fields of contact linguistics, second language acquisition and translation studies in order to advance a cross-disciplinary approach into the study of language contact.
Virittäjä, 2014
Tämä kirjoitus on terminologinen katsaus termiin interferenssi (engl. interference) ja niihin k... more Tämä kirjoitus on terminologinen katsaus termiin interferenssi (engl. interference) ja niihin kieltenvälisen vaikutuksen ilmiöihin, joihin interferenssillä on tutkimuskirjallisuudessa viitattu. Perehdymme interferenssiin kontaktilingvistiikan, maailman englantien tutkimuksen, toisen kielen omaksumisen tutkimuksen ja käännöstieteen kentillä. Tavoitteenamme on kuvata termin käyttöä ja niitä kielikontakti-ilmiöitä, joihin termillä on viitattu, ja avata tutkimussuuntausten välisiä yhtäläisyyksiä ja eroja. Pohdimme interferenssin suhdetta kuhunkin tutkimustraditioon ja siihen kieli-ideologiaan, jolle traditio pohjautuu. Nostamme samalla esiin interferenssiä korvaamaan tulleita termejä; interferenssistä luopumiseen ovat usein johtaneet uudet näkemykset, jotka käsitteistävät kontakteja ja niiden seurauksia aikaisemmasta poikkeavalla tavalla.
Virittäjä, 2014
Tämän teemanumeron artikkelit ovat syntyneet tieteidenvälisessä yhteistyössä kieli- ja käännöstie... more Tämän teemanumeron artikkelit ovat syntyneet tieteidenvälisessä yhteistyössä kieli- ja käännöstieteilijöiden kesken, ja artikkelit peilaavat niitä keskusteluja, joissa kirjoittajat ovat rakentaneet siltoja kielikontaktitutkimuksen, toisen kielen omaksumisen tutkimuksen ja käännöstie-teen rajojen yli. Tässä johdantoartikkelissa kehystämme teemanumeron artikkeleiden muodostamaa kokonaisuutta hahmottelemalla niitä ilmiöitä, jotka nousevat esiin artikkeleissa käydyssä tieteidenvälisessä vuoropuhelussa. Aloitamme esittelemällä keskeisten viitekehystemme yhteisiä alueita ja osoitamme, miksi niiden yhdistäminen on kielikontaktien tutkimuksen kannalta tärkeää. Luomme myös kielikontaktille uuden määritelmän, joka sopii luontevasti yhteen myös toisen kielen omaksumisen tutkimuksen ja käännöstieteellisen tutkimuksen kanssa. Sen jälkeen käsittelemme kahta ilmiötä, jotka ovat keskeisiä kaikissa käsitellyissä tutkimussuuntauksissa: kieltenvälistä vaikutusta ja sen taustalla olevia kieltenvälisiä kytköksiä.
Virittäjä, 2015
Tämän kirjoituksen tarkoituksena on kuvata, kartoittaa ja tehdä näkyväksi yksilöllisen monikielis... more Tämän kirjoituksen tarkoituksena on kuvata, kartoittaa ja tehdä näkyväksi yksilöllisen monikielisyyden tuottamaa translatorisuutta tilanteissa, jotka sijoittuvat ammatillisten kontekstien ulkopuolelle: käsittelemme isompia ja pienempiä kääntämis-ja tulkkaustilanteita sekä niihin liittyviä käytänteitä erilaisissa vuorovaikutustilanteissa. Translatorisella toiminnalla tarkoitamme kaikkia niitä kielenkäyttäjän toimia, joissa jotakin yhdellä kielellä jo ilmaistua "toistetaan" toisella kielellä. Toistaminen, joka voi sisältää sisällöllistä alkuperäisen viestin muuttamista, voi olla sekä kirjallista että suullista.
International Journal of Literary Linguistics, 2016
This article approaches literary translation from a contact-linguistic perspective and views tran... more This article approaches literary translation from a contact-linguistic perspective and views translation as a language contact situation in which the translator “moves” between the source and target language. The study touches upon the possible linguistic effects of the source text on the translated text and relates the translation-mediated cross-linguistic influence to other language-contact situations. The study investigates the use of Finnish passive in a corpus of literary texts consisting of Finnish translations from Estonian and German and comparable non-translated Finnish literary texts. The translated texts are compared with non-translated ones by using corpus-linguistic tools, and the results are related to a previous contact-linguistic study on the use of the Finnish passive in spoken interviews of Finnish migrants in Estonia. The main objective is to test methodological tools that could be used for this kind of comparative purposes. In addition, the study approaches the question whether translation as a type of language contact affects the use of the Finnish passive in a similar way as an oral language contact situation. All in all, the study shows that there are some features that differentiate the investigated literary translations from non-translated Finnish texts but the evidence is not unambiguous. The article discusses the possible reasons for the mainly non-conclusive results of the analysis and points out factors that should be taken into account in future studies, such as the size of the sub-corpora and the possibly biased text or genre specific stylistic characteristics. The methodology clearly has to be adjusted and more in-depth methods developed in order to acquire a fuller picture of the Finnish passive in literary texts and to confirm what is author, translator, genre or source-language specific in the use of the Finnish passive.
trans-kom, 2017
This cross-disciplinary review article provides an overview of previous studies on minority langu... more This cross-disciplinary review article provides an overview of previous studies on minority language translation by combining Translation Studies with language revitalization research and the study of the multilingual practices of minority language speakers. The article explores possible links between these three areas of research that, so far, have shown relatively little interest in a cross-disciplinary approach, and hopes thus to contribute to a better understanding of the different types and status of minority languages as well as the diverse roles of translation and interpreting for their speakers.
Virittäjä, 2014
This article investigates the Finnish passive from the viewpoint of three different language-cont... more This article investigates the Finnish passive from the viewpoint of three different language-contact situations. Its central research questions are what happens to the Finnish passive in contact with other languages, how it shapes the structures of the other language and what the contact effects tell us about the Finnish passive. This paper brings together results from three case studies which represent different language-contact situations and data: oral spoken data from Ingrian Finnish immigrants in Estonia, Finnish original texts and their translations into German, and written English compositions by Finnish-speaking second-language learners of English. The contact settings thus cover aspects of both societal and individual multilingualism, and they provide insights into the interlingual identification processes of bi-/multilingual speakers: the data shed light on what kind of interlingual links emerge between the Finnish passive and the passive or other syntactic structures in the contacting languages in different contact situations. The three case studies each highlight different aspects of the Finnish passive, and they show that the Finnish passive is a multifaceted linguistic category with manifold syntacto-semantic properties. This study applies a novel methodology in which the Finnish passive is approached and analysed through the contact variety or the other language pair in the contact situation. Another innovative aspect is the combination and comparison of migration-related, translational and SLA contact settings, which have not been brought together in such a way in previous studies.
Benjamins Current Topics, 2015
Sky Journal of Linguistics, 2002
Sociolinguistic Studies, 2015
Lähivõrdlusi. Lähivertailuja, 2013
Lähivõrdlusi. Lähivertailuja, 2010
Virittäjä 3 (2014), 2014
This Finnish language paper examines the term 'interference', its uses (or avoidance) and the lan... more This Finnish language paper examines the term 'interference', its uses (or avoidance) and the language ideologies related to it in the fields of contact linguistics, World Englishes research, second language acquisition research and translation studies.
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Books by Helka Riionheimo
Papers by Helka Riionheimo