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Thank you to those who responded to my query. Perhaps, though, I should
have been more explicit about what I am looking into readability indexes.
I work primarily as a translator (French to English) of commercial and
technical documents. Over the past 15 years, I've heard a lot of
criticism to the effect that translations (and particularly English to
French ones) are "harder" to read than the original. Well, I am
turning my curiosity about this into a Ph.D. thesis and will be
analyzing a corpus of translations (in both directions) produced for
a Canadian railway. And, I'm trying to find out if there is a way
I can measure the readability indexes of both the original and the
translation in order to compare them. Any ideas?
Sheryl Curtis
Montreal, Quebec
P.S.: I have also asked a translation list about this same topic, but
readability indexes aren't a big thing with translators and when I saw
the subject come up on this list I thought I'd see what I could
come up with. Thanks.
