“All’s Well That Starts Well”: An Intralinguistic and Interlinguistic Perspective on the Use and Translation of Well

Well is one of the most widely used, versatile pragmatic marker s. Given its multiple functions, it may pose translation challenges, especially in hybrid oral texts translated to be read rather than hear d. This paper investigates the presence and function of the pragmatic marker well in a parallel, aligned corpus of English TED Talk transcripts and their Italian translation s. All occurrences of well in the English subcorpus were identified and classified to observe whether and how this marker was translated in the Italian transcript s. In the English subcorpus, well is found in sentence-/clause-initial position to introduce (a) rhetorical questions, (b) fictitious turn-takings between the speaker and other fictitious addressees, and (c) quotation s. It was generally translated through a limited set of equivalents, which testifies to the standard approach used to transfer the pragmatic meaning of well into Italian, mostly relying on dictionary-based direct equivalents, e.g. beh and its orthographical variant s.


Introduction
Pragmatic markers are linguistic items we use "out of consideration for our readers or hearers" to "help them process and comprehend what we are saying" (Hyland, 2017: 17).1 Though variously referred to as (meta)discourse markers/particles, modal particles, punctors, connectives, pragmatic particles/expressions, hedges, boosters, fumbles, conversational greasers, illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs), pragmatic force modifiers (PFMs), to highlight the linguistic categories they belong to and/or the function(s) researchers focus on from time to time, they are generally regarded as words or phrases that preserve the common core meaning of, but do not add propositional meaning to, an utterance (Fischer, 2006).They are particularly frequent in oral discourse to catch the audience's attention and get them involved, to make the argumentation clearer, and as discourse fillers.In a narrower sense, they convey a speaker/writer's comment on the propositional content of a sentence without affecting the truth condition(s) of the sentence itself (Bazzanella, 2001b;Bazzanella, 2006: 449;Huang, 2012: 235-36).
Choosing the term 'pragmatic markers' over the others in this context is meant to stress the perspective from which we investigate phenomena in discourse.Specifically, translation is an area where it is not only necessary to analyse the co-text and cohesive aspects of utterances, but also take account of the relevant contextual features in the interaction (Bazzanella, 2001b).In line with Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen (2003), Johansson (2006) and Cuenca (2008), our working hypothesis is that analysing texts and their translations can contribute to throwing light on the functions of pragmatic markers.Being typical of oral rather than written discourse -also in the domain under investigation here, i.e. astronomy2 -the main focus of this paper is on well and the strategies used to translate it as observed in a corpus of hybrid oral texts translated to be read rather than heard, i.e.English TED Talk transcripts and their Italian translations.

2.1
Previous Work on the Pragmatic Marker Well Among English pragmatic markers, well is one of the most widely used (Zarei, 2012;Beeching, 2016) and versatile (Aijmer, 2011).Its pragmatic functions originated from propositional uses of the adverb, with early examples dating back to Old English (Jucker, 2017).Though widely researched (Schiffrin, 1987;Bolinger, 1989;Jucker, 1993;Schourup, 2001;Blakemore, 2002;Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen, 2003;Johansson, 2006;Cuenca, 2008;Kirk, 2018, to name but a few of the contributions that are more relevant in our case), well is a source of disagreement when it comes to its pragmatic aspects.In early studies of well, a basic distinction can be drawn between research based on the notion that well carries unified meaning (Carlson, 1984;Bolinger, 1989) and investigations relying on pragmatic/interactional functions of well (Schiffrin, 1987;Jucker, 1993;Smith and Jucker, 2000;2002).Schiffrin (1987) sees well as a device to create coherence, while Jucker (1993: 438, 450) suggests that the background of well has to be reconstructed in order to decide what is its most relevant context.Bolinger (1989: 332) transfers the locutionary meaning of well as "relatively good" to the illocutionary level describing it as a gestural interjection which implies conformity to a norm.Jucker (1993) and Smith and Jucker (2000;2002) present well as a facilitator that necessitates renegotiation of common ground in the propositional attitudes of participants in the conversation.Schourup (2001) is a case apart since he deals with well as an interjection.
In different ways, all these approaches establish a relationship with the meaning of well as an adverb.This is useful to make comparisons with similar devices in other languages for the purposes of translation, but partly overlooks the fact that -as Schourup (2001Schourup ( : 1038) ) suggests -these lexical ties of well as a pragmatic marker have faded over time.Schourup, however, recognises the epistemic nature of well, which aligns with Bolinger's view in a broad sense with reference to exclamations, prompts, uses in sentence-initial position, in expressions of disagreement, or as harmonizer.He then adds his own interpretations of well as a continuative and as a mental-state interjection "indicating a variety of epistemic-prospective consideration" (Schourup, 2001(Schourup, : 1046) ) possibly hinting at divergence from the hearer's expectations.As can be seen, these later studies provide a more and more complex picture of well and pragmatic markers in general.
In short, well may be regarded as a frame marker (Hyland, 2005) or topicalizer (Crismore et al., 1993) indicating a transition or a shift in topic.In addition, it may be used to raise an objection, preface a dispreferred response or indicate turn-taking (Beeching, 2016: 53-55).As a marker of insufficiency or uncertainty, it also modifies or qualifies a previous utterance in other-or self-correction (Beeching, 2016: 52, 55) and face-threatening mitigation, and can function as a delay device (Jucker, 1993) or gap filler for pausing and planning (Aijmer, 2011: 237), e.g. to express hesitation (Beeching, 2016: 53).Given its multiple functions, well may pose considerable challenges to translators, as suggested by studies involving translation.
From an interlinguistic perspective, Aijmer andSimon-Vandenbergen (2003: 1127) propose a functional, system-integrated account that relates well to its corresponding adverb meaning and "is comprehensive enough to deal with all contextual meanings and translation equivalents."Though they use translation corpora, the main aim of their study is to throw further light on well as a pragmatic marker, not to focus on equivalents of well in the two languages investigated, Swedish and Dutch.First, they describe uses in terms of epistemic modality, which focuses on evidentiality, either showing degrees of reliability or mode of knowing and source of knowledge.Second, well is regarded as an option involving an accommodation to context exhibiting its textual features as a boundary marker or a topic introducer or exhibiting interpersonal features as a marker of politeness.Further, well can express positive attitude in interactions where divergent interpretations or different expectations are present, expressing enthusiasm or reluctance, agreement or disagreement.Results of the study suggest that there is a large number of equivalents in both languages, probably as a consequence of the fictional nature of texts, that one equivalent is more frequent than the others, that omissions are very common in Swedish and hapax legomena in both Swedish and Dutch.In Swedish no direct equivalent of well was found, while translations expressed its core meaning or a reversal of meaning to express disagreement.By contrast, an equivalent with very similar functions to well does exist in Dutch.Finally, translations highlighted a 'doubling function' of well, that is "utterances in which the meaning of well is also expressed by other lexical or grammatical means" (Aijmer andSimon-Vandenbergen, 2003: 1153).
In studying translations in Norwegian and German in a bidirectional corpus of fiction, Johansson (2006: 117) regards well as a typical marker of (fictional) conversational interaction which presupposes a direct contact between speaker and hearer(s) and relevance of prosody for interpretation prior to translating.Interestingly, Johansson (2006: 119-20) analyses well in fictional dialogues or monologues and finds it to be used in declarative and interrogative sentences, to express agreement, disagreement or qualified agreement and to respond to a previous speaker's move.As to his findings in translations, one Norwegian particle, vel, seems to be the most frequent equivalent (22% of occurrences), though zero correspondences (16%) are also found (Johansson, 2006: 121, 126 Cuenca (2008) follows a path similar to Aijimer and Simon-Vandenbergen (2003) and Johansson (2006), but uses translations of well from the film Four Weddings and a Funeral into Catalan and Spanish, i.e. two languages that do not belong to the same language family as English.The main translation strategies are again the choice of a direct equivalent in both languages, the use of a continuative-consecutive marker and the omission of the marker.The author also finds a translational equivalent of the 'doubling function' above, which she calls 'integration' as a "specific translation strategy for well combined with other markers" (Cuenca, 2008(Cuenca, : 1378)).Considering the two main functions identified, structural and modal, when the former prevails, "it can precede opening or closing statements and indicate a pause or a change of topic or orientation in conversation.Although different equivalents are possible, structural meanings are typically translated as Catalan be´ and Spanish bien" (Cuenca, 2008(Cuenca, : 1381)).If, on the other hand, the latter dominates, "well can indicate either (partial) agreement, doubt, (partial) disagreement, or contraposition.Well with a modal meaning and uncombined is more frequently deleted than when it has a structural function in conversation" (Cuenca, 2008(Cuenca, : 1381)).These findings are highly relevant in our case (see 5) as Catalan and Spanish are closely related languages to Italian.
Focusing on the translation of well into Italian, Bazzanella and Morra (2000) and Bazzanella (2001b) identify interactional and metatextual functions of discourse markers.For the purposes of our study, relevant interactional functions are those of fillers, requests for attention, modulations, and as phatic devices, forms of control of message reception and statements or requests of agreement or confirmation.Metatextual functions that can be deemed important in hybrid texts are topic introduction, transition to a different topic, digression and introduction of a citation, focus and reformulation devices.The authors then stress that in translation, equivalents need to be found at a functional rather than lexical level to reflect use in specific contexts in the target language.Specifically, Bazzanella (2001b) observed that in the Italian translation of the English novel Brothers and Sisters the marker well was largely omitted (39% of instances) or predominantly translated (49.5%) through a considerable number (46) of functional equivalents, of which 27 have only one occurrence.

2.2
The Functions and Linguistic Features of Well Analysis of the debate on pragmatic markers and the wealth of attendant terminology outlined so far suggest that a possible way to approach the rendering of well in Italian translations is to identify recent work(s) that summarise the current take on the topic and use it as a framework for our investigation of translation strategies and products.This appears all the more advisable considering the main focus of our research, which -unlike Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen (2003) and Cuenca (2006;2008) -is the translation strategies and equivalents used to translate well, rather than a contrastive analysis aimed to confirm or highlight pragmatic marker features of well.
Among contrastive studies of well, we found the investigation of well in oral social interaction by Beeching (2016) to be a suitable framework to apply in our analysis of TED Talk transcripts and their translation.The reason is that well is seen as either retrospective, i.e. used to acknowledge previous discourse, or else prospective, i.e. used to anticipate upcoming discourse, which are both key functions in expert (popularizing) talks.Specifically, Beeching (2016) identifies uses of well that express hesitation, transition, change of topic, preface to a dispreferred option (well followed by but at some stage), turn-taking or polite interruption, correction of what others have said; self-correction and finally introduction of a quotation of direct speech (cf.5).
Studying well in a corpus of hybrid oral/written texts (and their translations) also requires an analysis of the linguistic features of well.In syntactic terms, well is (largely?)found in sentence-initial position -as our title hints at -or clause-initial position.It also falls outside the syntactic structure or is loosely attached to it.For this reason, it can be regarded as syntactically optional.Semantically, it may carry little or no propositional meaning, though it is multifunctional and thus operates on several linguistic levels simultaneously.Indeed, from an interactional sociolinguistic perspective, Schiffrin (1987: 22-23) maintains that well fills a conversational slot by simply adding coherence to the text.In a sociolinguistic sense, being largely oral rather than written, it tends to be (quite) informal, highly frequent and stylistically stigmatized.It also varies with gender and seems to be used more frequently by female speakers (Beeching, 2016; see also 6.1).

3
A Hybrid Genre: TED Talks Our investigation addresses the use of well in a special genre, i.e. the largely oral monologic TED Talks, where pragmatic markers are used in a fictitiously dialogic conversation between the speaker and the audience.As such, TED Talk transcriptions are hybrid texts as (a) they are written but preserve some features of the oral text they originate from; (b) they are similar to popular science articles, focussing as they do on findings rather than methods; (c) they resemble university lectures as planned speeches using visuals, film extracts, music and the like; and (d) they are similar to spoken popular science events because they display a degree of informality and colloquialisms (Caliendo, 2014).As Scotto di Carlo (2014: 592) put it, "TED talks […] are a new tool of popularization that breaches the typical 'scientist -mediator -audience' triangularization, bringing scientists directly into contact with their audiences."Most talks are translated in a variety of languages; they are not dubbed, but time-coded transcripts are provided.The code switch from one language to another is then paired with a shift from the oral to the written medium that is not always reflected in the content, form, and style of the text.
In popularizing talks, such as the TED Talks, speakers try to anticipate the questions the audience would ask, the objections they would be likely to raise, etc. in fictitious dialogic interaction.In this context, well is one of the devices expressing stance and engagement used to create what Hyland (2010: 17) calls 'proximity' .Proximity is a way to control rhetorical features in a text to display authority and position as an expert and respond to context.This way it is possibly to construct speaker/writer's personality, credibility or evaluation and keep the communication channel with the hearer/reader open based on the speaker's perception of the audience's sensitivity and engagement to and engagement in topics (cf.6.1).

Research Objectives
Our research combines a pragmatic approach to the study of well with a translational, cross-linguistic focus to provide insights into a still under-researched field of application of pragmatics, i.e. the approach and strategies adopted in the translation of well and the impact of its translations.The study thus offers a twofold perspective, which considers the use and functions of well from an intralinguistic perspective (6.1) and investigates the translation strategies used to deal with this marker from an interlinguistic viewpoint (6.2).The research questions addressed are the following: (

Material and Method
To answer our research questions, a corpus was needed which simultaneously implied mode switch and interlingual translation (Figure 1).TED Talks (cf. 3) appeared as the most suitable texts for this type of research.These are short live talks delivered by high-profile experts, which are freely available online and often accompanied by both intralingual transcriptions and their corresponding translations, with translators being credited.The presence of both native and non-native English speakers is here not deemed to bias our analysis since (a) our primary interest is not that of describing the use of well by native vs non-native speakers but to observe its functions and translations, and (b) all speakers are outstanding experts in their field and thus accustomed to using English (at least as a lingua franca) in their daily academic interaction.Despite our intent to balance the corpus with respect to both text length and the speakers' gender, the English talks vary considerably in length -from 500 to 5,500 tokens -and were delivered mostly by male experts, who still represent the vast majority of scholars in the field of astrophysics and astronomy (cf.Sugimoto et al., 2013).Considering our specific research objectives (4), these imbalances were held to be mostly uninfluential when investigating the functions served by well and its translation into a different target language or were compensated for through data normalization, e.g. when exploring data from a sociolinguistic perspective to find possible associations between the frequency of well and the speaker's gender (6.1).
From an intralinguistic perspective (6.1), the study considered the number and types of functions played by well in the English subcorpus collected for this investigation.Drawing on Beeching (2016) and considering also the multifaceted functions of well observed in the English subcorpus (cf.below the examples provided per each category and the set of additional mixed functions added to our list), a classification was developed jointly by the authors and implemented by comparing their personal analyses of the co-text of individual utterances until an agreement was reached.This includes the following functions: (a) Hesitation (Hes), when well is used as a delay device (Jucker, 1993) or gap filler for pausing and planning (Aijmer, 2011: 237), e.g."I think that if you can instil some interest in science and how it works, well, that's a payoff beyond easy measure" (TED48).(b) Transition (Trans), which refers to the introduction of additional information about the topic being addressed or related examples and sub-topics.E.g., "So, one particular question that we have is: 'How does dark energy affect the universe at the largest scales?Depending on how strong it is, maybe structure forms faster or slower.Well, the problem with the large-scale structure of the universe is that it's horribly complicated" (TED38).(c) Change of topic (ChT), when well is used to introduce new topics: e.g., "However, we do know that it must at least be strong enough to not fly apart as it rotates, so it probably has a density similar to that of rocky asteroids; perhaps even denser, like metal.Well, at the very least, I want to Contrastive PragmaticS 4 (2023) 321-349 show you one of the beautiful colour images that we got from one of the ground-based telescopes" (TED40).(d) Objection (Obj), which refers to the use of well to counter a previous statement/hypothesis about positions other than the speaker's, e.g."You hear a lot of talk about how quantum mechanics says that everything is all interconnected.Well, that's not quite right" (TED43).(e) Preface to a dispreferred option (DisOpt), in which well introduces a concessive clause followed by an adversative one (mostly, but).E.g., "If the LHC finds new particles, but they don't fit this pattern -well, that will be very interesting, but bad for this E8 theory" (TED39).(f) Turn-taking (TT) or polite interruption, e.g. in real or fictitious conversation or in the Q&A session between the speaker and the audience or other experts on or as if on a stage, mostly with a rhetorical function.E.g., "And where in the world would you find such water?Well the Russians have a tank in their own backyard" (TED4).(g) Self-correction (Self-C), in which well introduces further and/or more specific information as partial correction or specification with reference to the speaker's previous statements, e.g., "Now, when I came last time, shortly after the landing […] I told you I was surprised that those Rovers are lasting even a hundred days.Well, here we are four years later, and they're still working" (TED20).(h) Quotative well (Quot), which is used to introduce quotations from or beliefs of other experts and people, e.g."And then somebody else said, well, what if the star had already formed planets, and two of these planets had collided, similar to the Earth-Moon forming event" (TED6).The range of pragmatic functions performed by well was so varied that Beeching's classification was expanded to account for the composite functions observed in the English subcorpus.More precisely, two subcategories were identified in the category turn-taking, i.e.(a) Turn-taking (rhetorical function introducing a Question), e.g."Well, is this a typical place?" (TED17), and (b) Turn-taking (beginning), whenever well was used to open the talk, e.g."Well, indeed, I'm very, very lucky" (TED44).In addition, six blended categories accounting for multi-functional pragmatic uses of well with two functions being performed simultaneously were identified, i.e.: -Turn-taking (rhetorical function) + quotative well, e.g.well, you can, kind of pick out all the major continents, but that's about it" (TED50); -Preface to a dispreferred option + quotative well, e.g."You say: 'Well, of course life ultimately must depend of quantum mechanics.'But so does everything else" (TED3).This has raised the number of functions identified in the corpus to 16.From an interlinguistic perspective (6.2), we focused on how often and through which equivalents well was translated into Italian.First, our analysis aimed to observe how this versatile pragmatic marker fared in the interlingual shifts from English to Italian in this hybrid genre and whether translations reflected its multiple pragmatic meanings and functions or rather adopted a more standardised approach.Finally, the analysis also considered any correlations between the decision (not) to translate well and individual translators to understand whether these decisions depended on the linguistic and communicative context in which well appeared or rather the translator's stylistic preferences.

Results and Discussion
The results of our research are described in the following sections, which focus on the intralinguistic (6.1) and interlinguistic (6.2) analyses of data, respectively.

Intralinguistic Perspective
In the English subcorpus, well was observed having a pragmatic function in 192 different utterances5 in over 70% of the talks (i.e.41 out of 56), which confirms its pervasive presence in English oral discourse (Zarei, 2012;Beeching, 2016).It was found in sentence-initial position in the vast majority of cases (81%) and only occasionally (19%) in clause-initial position, mostly to introduce fictitious direct speech, i.e. to introduce a quotation by simulating an imaginary turn-taking between the speaker and the audience or other experts as if on stage.
As shown in Figure 2, the vast majority of occurrences serve a turn-taking function in which well introduces the answer to a rhetorical question, i.e.TT(A).Second, well was used to signal a transition in the argument (Trans), while the third and fourth most frequent functions introduce an objection to a previous statement (Obj) and a dispreferred option (DisOpt) through the sentence structure "well … but", respectively.The quotative function of well (Quot) was instead observed in 6.8% of cases, while in 5.7% of cases well was used to introduce a rhetorical question, i.e.TT(Q).Finally, the categories of self-correction (Self-C) and turn-taking to introduce a quotation (TT+Quot) applied to approximately 5% of occurrences, while the remaining functions under the label "other"i.e.hesitation, change in topic, and beginning a new turn-taking -each only represent 0.5-1% of occurrences.
In short, in the English subcorpus well can be said to perform two main functions, i.e. the turn-taking and the transitional ones (cf.Beeching, 2016).When simulating turn-taking, well is mostly used to introduce an answer to a rhetorical question -e.g., "Why time?Well, time is about origins …" (TED12) -while only occasionally does it introduce a rhetorical question -e.g., "Well, what is dark energy and why does it exist?"(TED12).
Interestingly, in some cases both the rhetorical question and the following reply were prefaced by well, e.g., "Well, what does that mean?Well, look out even further than we've just been …" (TED17).Finally, in this type of fictitious turn-taking well was also used to introduce the audience's supposed replies to the speaker's rhetorical questions, e.g."Why aren't we in empty space?You might say 'Well, there's nothing there to be living" (TED10).In this case, well performs two functions, i.e. introducing a turn in a fictitious conversation (TT) between the speaker and the audience, in which the speaker gives voice to or 'quotes' (Quot) the audience's supposed reply (TT+Quot).Whenever signalling a new turn in the fictitious monological conversation created by the speaker (TT), and/or prefacing quotations (Quot) from (fictitious) interlocutors, well also appears to serve specific (fictitious) phatic and rhetorical purposes.Phatic utterances are those that help to maintain "contact between the speakers where 'contact' is the physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling them to enter and stay in communication" (Jakobson, 1960, cited in Kulkarni, 2014: 119).If we consider that the physical channel can be interpreted as "the attention that speakers must pay towards each other" and psychological connection as the attitudes "showing interest and expressing agreement" (Kulkarni, 2014: 119), well can be said to keep the (virtual) communication channel open by simulating the audience's interest and attention.This is crucial for the successful delivery of a monologic talk aimed to inform and entertain silent audiences as "[i]t is only when the other interlocutor is attending to the conversation that a speaker can continue" (Kulkarni, 2014: 119).
In a fictitious turn-taking, well can be described as phatic as it simulates the audience's contribution to the imaginary conversation under way and reassures the fictitious addressees as to the consideration given to their possible doubts and objections.Moreover, in this case well serves multiple pragmatic/rhetorical purposes as it (a) gives prominence to a specific argument by making it stand out from the surrounding talk, (b) makes the talk more engaging and entertaining, and (c) mitigates the impact of potential objections to the argument by anticipating criticism, providing additional information and clarification.
The pure quotative function is the third most frequent function in our corpus, accounting for approximately 9% of occurrences.In the English subcorpus, quotative well was used to introduce the audience's thoughts and considerations, e.g., "Now, you may be wondering, OK, Tabby, well, how do aliens actually explain this light curve?"(TED6) or "You might say: Well, maybe things just smoothed themselves out" (TED10).In a narrative context, it also introduces other scholars' theories, objections and considerations to make past events happen before the audience and other scholars relive -e.g., "So Kaluza said, well, maybe there are more dimensions of space" (TED26); "Einstein comes along and says, well, space and time can warp and curvethat's what gravity is" (TED26) -or reproduces the speaker's own past thoughts and considerations -e.g., "And I thought: "'Well, maybe there is Lithium-6 in this star, which is an indication that this star has swallowed a planet'" (TED33); "So when I saw that, I said: 'Well, this is such a shame, because it's a very, very good idea'" (TED36).This confirms that well is flexible and versatile, serving both actual and fictitious pragmatic, phatic and rhetorical functions, which makes it a highly sophisticated discursive device.
From a sociolinguistic perspective, well was used by 39 speakers, i.e. 76.5% of the presenters and, more precisely, by 77% of female speakers (10 out of 13) and 76% of male presenters (28 out of 39).Although these data seem to counter previous research suggesting a more frequent use of well by women (Beeching, 2016), more specific gender-based analysis highlighted possible patterns of association with the use of well.Given that transcriptions vary highly in length, the incidence of well in each talk was calculated as the ratio between the occurrences of well and the number of tokens in the talk.Data (Figure 3) seemed to suggest that female speakers tend to use well more frequently than their male colleagues do, with in-group mean values being 0.22% for female presenters and 0.18% for male scholars, respectively.Further, 50% of female speakers scored above-the-mean and above-the-median (>0.22%) ratios, while most male speakers scored under-the-mean (<0.18%) and underthe-median (<0.14%) ratios.However, as Figure 3 shows, exceptions also apply, with one female presenter scoring the lowest ratio, another female speaker featuring a comparatively low ratio of 0.7%, and two men scoring the second highest values.Yet, the statistical significance of these findings was not confirmed by one-tailed Mann-Whitney U test.6 Hence, we cannot draw statistically valid conclusions from our sociolinguistic analysis to support previous observations (Beeching, 2016) about the more frequent use of well by female speakers.

6.2
Interlinguistic Perspective Our analysis of the parallel Italian subcorpus was aimed at observing how often and how differently well is translated and whether the translation of this marker affects the naturalness and readability of the target text.From a quantitative viewpoint, well is more often translated than not, with 76 occurrences (39.58%) out of 192 left untranslated.
Despite the variety of functions well was observed to have in the English parallel subcorpus (6.1), Italian translations reflect a standardised approach which relies on a restricted number of equivalents, amounting to 11 but dropping down to 7 when considering orthographical variants or spelling mistakes, i.e. bene/ebbene, beh, be' , be, *bè (Figure 4).
Hence, a core equivalent -i.e.bene/beh and its variants -appears to cover 91% of the total translated occurrences of well (i.e.105 out of 116), similar to what was observed by Cuenca (2008Cuenca ( : 1381) ) in relation to Catalan (bé) and Spanish (bueno) and Aijmer andSimon-Vandenbergen (2003: 1144) in relation to Dutch (nou/nou ja).Most importantly, these equivalents do not reflect the wide array of semantic, rhetorical and pragmatic nuances covered by well in 6 Given that two male speakers, Cox and Greene, delivered two talks each, the test was repeated twice, first by considering all men's talks (U-value = 113) and then by excluding Cox's and Greene's talks with the lowest incidence of well (U-value = 109).Statistical significance was not confirmed in either cases.the English subcorpus.Beh (and its orthographic variants) can be considered colloquial short forms for bene (Serianni, 1991) or ebbene and mostly signal turn-taking, mitigation or concession (Bazzanella, 2001a, Jafrancesco, 2015: 16, Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana online, Il Nuovo De Mauro online, Dizionario Treccani online).These would thus cover only some of the functions performed by well and would not be equally suitable to introduce, for instance, quotations, objections, transitions or changes of topic.This suggests the adoption of a one-fits-all translation strategy, which does not fully consider the specific communication context to select tailor-made equivalents, and goes against the main translation principle, i.e. translating contextualised meaning instead of adopting a word-based approach.This is even more apparent when observing individual target texts in isolation, i.e. when considering the strategy and equivalents used within individual target texts.The data did not highlight any patterns of association between specific translation strategies and individual (duos of) translators, also because the texts were translated and revised by two different translators and there is no indication as to their roles and the extent of their intervention/cooperation.7 Nonetheless, three main different approaches to the translation of well emerged, which can be summarised as follows: (1) All occurrences were translated by using the same or very similar equivalents, e.g.orthographical variants (16 talks, 39%).(2) No occurrences were translated (9 talks, 22%).
(3) Only selected occurrences were translated by using different equivalents (7 talks, 17%).The first and second strategies are the most radical, and possibly result from two opposite approaches, i.e. the translators' adherence to a standardised dictionary-based approach in which the most common direct equivalentse.g.beh -are (perhaps uncritically) implemented or, conversely, their adherence to the norms of written texts instead of to the traits of oral discourse.The first strategy is exemplified in Table 1, where all 7 occurrences of well in the same speech are translated by using the equivalent be' irrespective of the different functions well performs in each utterance.
Objections, at least in the example in Table 1, could be expressed through more specific equivalents, e.g.insomma.In addition, the use of an interjection such as be' to translate the turn-taking and quotative function (TT+Quot) of well is not suitable in the Italian context, where indirect (and not direct) speech is used.Interestingly, a similar standardised approach was observed also in 8 other talks (20%), where some instances of well were left untranslated, while Contrastive PragmaticS 4 (2023) 321-349   Table 1 First strategy: all occurrences are translated by using the same equivalent

Function EN text (TED20) IT translation
TT+Quot Naturally, they blew up a shack, and Caltech, well, then, hey, you go to the Arroyo and really do all your tests in there.

Obj
Some people tell me to do it; I think, well, that's not really proper, you know, these days.

TT
Well, the way I think about it is fairly simple.

Self-C
Well, here we are four years later, and they're still working.

DisOpt
Well, I always say it's important that you are smart, but every once in a while it's good to be lucky.

TT+Quot
And I know many of you, kind of, last time afterwards said well, that was a cool thing to havethose airbags.

Trans
Well, there were two satellites which were particularly interesting.
others were translated by using, again, always the same equivalent.This would increase the percentage of translations in which only one equivalent of well is used throughout the whole text to 59%.
As for the second strategy, an example is provided in Table 2, with none of the occurrences of well being transferred in the target text.Considering the specific context in which translation takes place, i.e. the translation of transcribed oral texts, this strategy appears more reasoned than the first one.Given that oral texts are translated to be read (rather than heard) by people who do not have a full understanding of the source language while watching the video, redundancies and inessential verbal elements are often omitted or reduced in number so that viewers can follow and understand the talk more easily.
Finally, a blended approach can be observed in Table 3, where two of the objections introduced by well are translated with markers signalling  Well, what is the implication of that?

Quot
He said, well, entropy increases because there are many, many more ways for the universe to be high entropy, rather than low entropy.

Obj
Well, if that's true, Boltzmann then goes on to invent two very modern-sounding ideas -the multiverse and the anthropic principle.

TT+Quot
You might say, "Well, there's nothing there to be living," but that's not right.
disagreement, and different equivalents are used to better mirror the diverse functions of well in the specific context.Still, bene accounts for five out of eight instances.
Flexible strategies considering the communicative and linguistic context testify to a greater understanding of the pragmatic meaning of the text on the part of the translator and ultimately increase the readability and naturalness of the Italian text by reducing redundancy as compared to standardised approaches, which exclusively rely on beh/bene/ebbene (and their variants).By way of example, consider the attested translations in Table 4 -also including alternative versions -which all rely on the same equivalent (beh/bene) irrespective of the different functions performed by well.In the first example, well is used to introduce a final consideration and anticipate a change in topic, while Italian interjection beh here appears to convey more a sense of resignation.In this case, the suggested option insomma (lit.'in short' , 'well') would have better suited the context and conveyed the sense of transition/conclusion implied in well.In the second example, the marker bene results in redundancy, much less tolerated in Italian as compared to English.Specifically, the very   same word, bene, is used as both a marker in sentence-initial position and an adverb in sentence-final position.This could have been easily avoided by using the conjunction e (lit.and), which is a typical marker stressing self-evident or consequential considerations.Bene is also used in the third example, where more specific markers, such as quindi (hence) or allora (then), could have been used to make the logical link between the previous argument and the question being asked by the speaker8 explicit.Finally, the fourth example shows how the Contrastive PragmaticS 4 (2023) 321-349 standard equivalent beh is preferred over other logical linkers, such as quindi (thus), dunque (hence) and allora (then), which would have better expressed the causal relation implied in 'so' (which is omitted in the Italian translation) between the previous utterance and the speaker's rhetorical question.These final examples, where the use of different equivalents makes the various functions of well more evident, also show how well implicitly carries logical meaning, or at least reinforces the logical structure of the text, thus functioning also as a cohesive device and enhancing textual coherence (Schiffrin, 1985).

Conclusions
Drawing on previous research on pragmatic markers and their classification (cf.2.2 and 5), our analysis aimed at observing how and to what extent the wide variety of functions covered by well in oral discourse are (not) translated into Italian in a unique translational setting, i.e. the transcription and translation of TED Talks, where oral texts are transcribed and translated to be read rather than uttered and/or heard.To the best of our knowledge, our investigation represents the first study shedding light on the use and translation of well in such a hybrid setting, which thus constitutes the original contribution of this paper to the investigation on the marker well from a cross-linguistic perspective.It considered a parallel corpus of 56 English TED Talks and their Italian translations, which were analysed from both an intra-and interlinguistic perspective.The intralinguistic analysis of our English subcorpus showed that well was uttered in over 70% of the talks, in either sentence-(81%) or clause-initial (19%) position.It was mostly used as a rhetorical device to create fictitious turn-taking between the speaker and the audience/online viewers or the speaker and other experts/people not on stage.This implied the use of two main strategies, i.e.(a) the (occasional) use of rhetorical questions and answers and (b) the inclusion of quotations of the audience's potential questions and/or objections as well as considerations from other scholars and people not on stage.In this context, well also appeared to perform a phatic function by keeping the (virtual) communication channel open and simulating the audience's interest and attention.Additionally, in this sense, it served as a rhetorical device which not only engages, entertains and reassures the fictitious addressees as to the consideration given to their possible doubts and objections, but also anticipates potential objections and/or gives prominence to specific arguments.Quotative well also proved useful when narrating past events to make them happen before the audience in a sort of historical dramatization, e.g. when the speaker quotes in fictitious direct speech other scholars, his/her own past thoughts or interactions with other colleagues/people.Finally, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the interlinguistic analysis initially seemed to point to a more frequent use of well by female speakers, but testing did not confirm the statistical significance of this trend and variation was also observed within the two gender groups.Interlinguistic analysis of the parallel corpus revealed that well was translated in 91% of cases (105 out of 116, see Figure 4) by resorting to an extremely limited set of equivalents, which mostly include spelling variants.This testifies to the standard approach largely used to transfer the pragmatic meaning of well into Italian, which seldom considers the variety of functions and the position of well within the source text.Translators adopted three main approaches: they (a) translated all instances of well with one or a very limited number of equivalent(s), (b) left all instances of well untranslated or (c) decided whether (not) to translate well only in specific utterances, and selected more varied equivalents to reflect the pragmatic, rhetorical and logical function(s) expressed in the source text.
Both standardised approaches, i.e.(a) and (b), often resulted in a failure to transfer the diverse pragmatic and logical functions performed by well in different contexts.Conversely, flexible strategies considering the communicative and linguistic context as well as the constraints typical of the hybrid translation setting under consideration appear more effective in this respect.The analysis of standardised translations in which the adoption of the same equivalent fails to mirror the multiple functions of well suggests that this marker can also reinforce the logical structure of the text, thus serving as a cohesive device and enhancing textual coherence (Beeching, 2016).Clearly, this calls for a specific linguistic analysis prior to translation, which is essential to identify tailor-made equivalents (e.g. the Italian markers dunque, quindi, allora) which cannot be considered full equivalents of well as a pragmatic marker, but rather mirror its implied logical function(s) and reinforce textual coherence in specific contexts.As Bazzanella (2001b) suggested, equivalents should be selected based on functional criteria and the specific context in which well appears.
It can then be concluded that well does pose specific translation problems requiring the adoption of flexible strategies, which consider the specific context of utterance as well as the wide array of pragmatic and rhetorical functions performed by this marker.
This type of analysis then throws light on and raises awareness about aspects that might otherwise pass unnoticed or be underestimated -as observed in this paper -by translators working in intermodal and/or (fictitiously) interactional contexts.It can also serve pedagogical purposes in both second-language and translation training to foster students' pragmatic competence, on the one hand, and their ability to identify context-based solutions instead of relying solely on direct dictionary-based equivalents, on the other.The limitations implied in the research design, concerning the investigation of a single domain (astronomy and astrophysics) and a single target language (Italian), could be overcome by replicating the study to investigate whether (a) the function of well observed in the English subcorpus are typical of the specific subject field considered or rather of the hybrid genre of TED Talks in general, and (b) the same standardised approach is also adopted in translations other than Italian.The sociolinguistic analysis could also be further expanded by considering samples including a higher number of female speakers and/ or by exploring the relation between the use of well in native and non-native TED Talk speakers, which was beyond the scope of this investigation.
1) To what extent and how is well used in transcribed popularizing talks delivered by experts?(2) To what extent and how is well translated in the corresponding Italian translations of the English transcribed talks?The first research question aims to observe how well is used in science popularization by international English-speaking experts, i.e. with what frequency and for what purposes.The second question focuses on how often and in what ways well is translated into Italian to observe whether the translation strategies adopted consider and/or mirror its multiple pragmatic functions.Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2023 10:49:33PM via free access Contrastive PragmaticS 4 (2023) 321-349 56 transcribed English talks (145,078 tokens and 123,873 types) about astronomy and astrophysics3 and their official Italian translations (134,716 tokens and 116,439 types) were collected, which formed a parallel corpus of approximately 280,000 tokens.The talks were delivered between February 2003 and April 2018 by 51 different native and non-native English-speaking experts (38 men and 13 women) and translated by 78 translators (2 per talk), of whom 17 translated more than one talk.4 3 These two domains are also addressed in previous publications by Musacchio.4 Cf.Appendix 1.

Figure 1
Figure 1 The corpus: facts and figures

Figure 2
Figure 2 Functions of 'well' in the English subcorpus

Figure
Figure 4 Translations of 'well' Turn-taking (rhetorical function) + hesitation, e.g."So when it comes to other planets, other Earths, in the future when we can observe them, what kind of gases would we be looking for?Well, you know, our own Earth has oxygen in the atmosphere to 20 percent by volume" (TED45); -Turn-taking (rhetorical function) + preface to a dispreferred option (well … but), e.g."What is the reason for this?Well, I don't have time to tell you about all the mathematics, but underlying this is the social networks, because this is a universal phenomenon" (TED55); -Preface to a dispreferred option (well … but) + hesitation, e.g."You can see, -Turn-taking (rhetorical function introducing a Question) + quotative well, e.g."But you can see the voids, you can see the complicated structure, and you say: 'Well, how did this happen?'"(TED50); Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2023 10:49:33PM via free access Contrastive PragmaticS 4 (2023) 321-349 - Figure3Incidence of 'well' in female and male speakers' talks Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2023 10:49:33PM via free access Contrastive PragmaticS 4 (2023) 321-349

Table 2
Second strategy: no occurrences are translated

Table 4
Standardised translation of 'well'