Airbnb’s terms of service and Plain Language Movement: Towards a diaphasic intralingual translation of phrasal verbs, complex prepositions, binomials and trinomials
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Abstract
Given the great impact that collaborative housing platforms have on the tourism market, this paper aims to offer a diaphasic intralingual translation of the Terms of Service of Airbnb, according to the Plain Language movement, in order to facilitate its understanding for its travelling users. Specifically, this article focuses on the simplification of three multi-word lexical features: phrasal verbs, complex prepositions, and synonymous or quasi synonymous and extremely specific binomials and trinomials. Automatic data extraction was carried out with CQL query type and N-grams function of Sketch Engine, which was complemented by a manual sorting. In total, 64 items were analysed and simplified, amongst which complex prepositions predominated. The most recurrent Plain English strategy was the substitution of multi-word expressions by single-word units of the standard language.
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