Authorship attribution studies use features to analyse an author’s idiolect. The current study investigates the usage of some of these features over time. Over 120,000 WhatsApp text messages of...Show moreAuthorship attribution studies use features to analyse an author’s idiolect. The current study investigates the usage of some of these features over time. Over 120,000 WhatsApp text messages of seven Dutch participants were processed and analysed. Using relative frequencies of specific features, distributions of authors’ usage of the features throughout a period of three to five years was extracted and visualized to determine which features are consistent over time and which are not. The goal of the study was to determine a ranking of the features, which could speak to their reliability in authorship attribution, especially when there is a considerable time interval between samples. The results suggest that common abbreviations, filler words and message length are largely consistent features, while emojis are largely inconsistent.Show less
The present Master’s thesis seeks to develop a better understanding of the translation of idiolect in narrative dialogue. Idiolect found in three characters (two villains and one hero) from Roald...Show moreThe present Master’s thesis seeks to develop a better understanding of the translation of idiolect in narrative dialogue. Idiolect found in three characters (two villains and one hero) from Roald Dahl’s children’s novels Matilda and The Witches is analyzed by means of Juliane House’s model for translation quality assessment. Central to this discussion is the way in which the idiolects function regarding character portrayal, and how the Dutch translations affect this, if at all. The analyses demonstrate that idiolect is retained in all translations, although slight shifts have occurred in the translation process. These alterations mainly affect the humorous effect of the villains. The hero is less notably affected, because her idiolect is less explicitly present. Concluding, retaining idiolect in translation texts is salient for character portrayal.Show less
