The discourse marker anyway in the parallel corpus InterCorp

Abstract

‘Anyway’ is a multifunctional, context‑dependent expression that functions as a contrastive‑concessive conjunct and a connective discourse marker. The paper focusses on the treatment of its connective functions in Czech translations from English. By examining the fiction and subtitles in the parallel translation corpus InterCorp, this paper reveals a tendency towards zero equivalents in both registers. In cases of explicit equivalents, the dominant translation of sentence‑initial ‘anyway’ in the subtitles is ‘každopádně’, which is structurally close to the English discourse‑marker function, while in the fiction ‘ale’ and ‘ostatně’ perform this role. The analysis of clause‑initial and clause‑final ‘anyway’ shows that the syntactic distribution is a criterion of great significance.