Editorial of Special Issue on Translation and Corpus Linguistics (Part II, 2010) (original) (raw)
Related papers
In this article I discuss the role of translated texts in different types of corpora. I first consider the role of translations in corpus-based monolingual linguistics, arguing that while translated texts are often excluded from corpora on the basis of a more or less implicit assumption that they “corrupt” the reference norm for a language, this assumption does not seem to be justified on theoretical grounds. For the same reason, translated texts should also be included in bi- and multi-lingual comparable corpora. The incorporation of subcorpora of parallel texts within comparable corpora can also offer practical advantages for contrastive studies. Finally, I provide an overview of the different types of corpora which can be used in translation studies research, and discuss the role of (sub)corpora of translations within these corpora.
Corpus Use and Learning to Translate, almost 20 years on
Cadernos de Tradução
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2016v36nesp1p9It is almost 20 years since a series of conferences known as CULT (Corpus Use and Learning to Translate) started. The first and second took place in Bertinoro, Italy, back in 1997 and 2000, respectively. The third was held in 2004 in Barcelona, and the fourth in 2015 in Alicante. Each was organized by a few enthusiastic lecturers and scholars who also happened to be corpus lovers. Guy Aston, Silvia Bernardini, Dominic Stewart and Federico Zanettin, from the Universitá di Bologna; Allison Beeby, Patricia Rodríguez-Inés and Pilar Sánchez-Gijón, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; and Daniel Gallego-Hernández, from the Universidad de Alicante, organized CULT conferences in the belief that spreading the word about the usefulness of corpora for teaching and professional translation purposes would have positive results.
Making way in corpus-based interpreting studies
Perspectives, 2019
Thanks to advancements in computer technology and the Internet, linguists now have the ability to process large corpus-based datasets relatively systematically. This makes it possible to discover patterns that would otherwise have been impossible manually. In 1993, Mona Baker introduced the corpus linguistic approach to translation studies. Since then, corpusbased translation studies (CTS) has gained tremendous traction, establishing itself as a major 'paradigm' (Laviosa, 1998). In comparison, a corpus-based approach to interpreting studies (CIS) was a late-starter. Notably, Miriam Shlesinger's (1998) article 'Corpus-based Interpreting Studies as an Offshoot of Corpus-based Translation Studies' laid the groundwork, paving the way for CIS. Fourteen years later, it was the publication of Straniero Sergio and Falbo's (2012) edited book Breaking Ground in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies that further pushed CIS forward. Twenty years after Shlesinger's seminal work, whilst some of the inherent challenges of CIS still persist (e.g., the evanescence of spoken data and the often laborious and time-consuming nature of data transcription/preparation) and it remains 'a cottage industry' (Setton, 2011, p. 34), CIS has certainly come of age. Taking stock of the strides made in this burgeoning area and charting its future path, Making Way in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies could not have come at a more opportune time. A brainchild of the editors following the First Forlì International Workshop on CIS, the book has two aims. First, it aims to forge a deeper understanding of the interpreting process and product using corpus linguistics methodologies on relatively large datasets, rather than based on 'anecdotal observations or small-size casestudies' (p. ix). Also, following Shlesinger's (1998) call, this volume serves as a renewed call, encouraging researchers to further advance CIS empirically and methodologically. This book consists of eleven chapters. The first two concern the theoretical/methodological aspects of CIS, while the other nine (chapters 3-11) are more empirical in nature. Claudio Bendazzoli, in chapter 1, takes stock of twenty years' developments in CIS all the way up to Web 2.0 applications, exploring how major components relating to interpreting (scholarly research, education and professional interpreting practice) have flourished. Focusing on procedural-methodological issues, Bernardini et al. (chapter 2) synthesise their pioneering experiences and offer an informative guide for corpus developers (working specifically with the European Parliament data). A reasonably comprehensive assessment of the current technologies is also provided. They strive to harmonise and unify procedures and expand the EP interpreting and multimodal corpora through collaboration. This is followed by a series of chapters examining interpreters' strategies in practice. In chapter 3, drawing upon the EPICG (European Parliament Interpreting Corpus Ghent) established in Belgium, Bart Defrancq and Koen Plevoets' empirical study investigates filled pauses in compounds as a signal of cognitive load. Using the CEIPPC corpus (Chinese-English Interpreting for Premier Press Conferences) built at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in China, Binhua Wang and Bing Zou (chapter 4) investigate language specificity and explore cognitive load associated with consecutive interpreting between two vastly different languages Chinese and English. They focus specifically on how the complex long attributive modifying
Testimonies of the evolution of corpus-based Translation Studies in the last decade (2003-2013)
[Introduction to Sánchez Nieto, M.T.S. et al., 2015. Metodología y aplicaciones en la investigación en traducción e interpretación con corpus / Methodologies and applications in corpus-based Translation and Interpreting Studies 1st ed., Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad de Valladolid.] The aim of the first part of the present Introduction is to show how the different papers collected in this volume fit into Laviosa’s (2014) representation of corpus-based Translation Studies, which has consolidated itself over the last decade. A brief overview of the contributions, which are described and commented in further detail in sections 2 to 6, is provided below.
Creating and using multilingual corpora in translation studies
2015
Corpus-based translation studies has become a major paradigm and research methodology and has investigated a wide variety of topics in the last two decades. The contributions to this volume add to the range of corpus-based studies by providing examples of some less explored applications of corpus analysis methods to translation research. They show that the area keeps evolving as it constantly opens up to different frameworks and approaches, from appraisal theory to process-oriented analysis, and encompasses multiple translation settings, including (indirect) literary translation, machine(-assisted) translation and the practical work of professional legal translators. The studies included in the volume also expand the range of application of corpus applications in terms of the tools used to accomplish the research tasks outlined.
New directions in corpus-based translation studies
2015
Corpus-based translation studies has become a major paradigm and research methodology and has investigated a wide variety of topics in the last two decades. The contributions to this volume add to the range of corpus-based studies by providing examples of some less explored applications of corpus analysis methods to translation research. They show that the area keeps evolving as it constantly opens up to different frameworks and approaches, from appraisal theory to process-oriented analysis, and encompasses multiple translation settings, including (indirect) literary translation, machine (assisted)-translation and the practical work of professional legal translators. The studies included in the volume also expand the range of application of corpus applications in terms of the tools used to accomplish the research tasks outlined. An electronic version of the volume is freely available from http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/76
Towards methodologically more rigorous corpus-based translation studies
Across Languages and Cultures, 2012
This paper argues in favour of a more rigorous methodology for corpusbased translation studies. According to our proposal, research papers in the field should be minimally required to (i) provide a meticulous overview of the corpus materials used and of the exact procedures for selecting, annotating and sifting the data; (ii) comment on any specific problems encountered during data selection and annotation, including explicit and motivated statements as to the solutions being adopted; (iii) include elaborate testing for statistical significance as a complement of, not in opposition to, thorough qualitative analysis. This approach, we suggest, not only offers a way around many theoretical and methodological problems that have been noted in the recent literature (e.g., House 2008; Becher 2010; Bernardini and Ferraresi 2011), it also facilitates more rigorous replication and reinterpretation of previous work, potentially leading to a re-assessment of some popular but unproven assumptions such as the notion that linguistic features in translations are independent of source language or genre. By thus moving forward the empirical cycle of testing and re-testing of hypotheses, the methodology advocated here encourages collaborative research, and leads ultimately to more scientific progress.