1st Edition
Corpora in Translator Education
The use of language corpora as a resource in linguistics and language-related disciplines is now well-established. One of the many fields where the impact of corpora has been growing in recent years is translation, both at a descriptive and a practical level. The papers in this volume, which grew out of presentations at the conference Cult2k (Bertinoro, Italy, 2000), the second in the series Corpus Use and Learning to Translate, are principally concerned with the use of corpora as resources for the translator and as teaching and learning aids in the context of the translation classroom.
This book offers a cross-section of research by some leading scholars in the field, who offer accounts of first-hand experience and theoretical insights into the various ways of building and using appropriate corpora in translation teaching, for the benefit of teachers and learners alike. The various contributions provide a rich source of inspiration for other researchers and practitioners concerned with 'corpora in translator education'.
Contributors include Stig Johansson, Tony McEnery, Kirsten Malmkjær, Jennifer Pearson, Lynne Bowker, Krista Varantola, Belinda Maia and a number of other scholars.
Contents
Corpora in Translator Education: Contents
Corpora in Translator Education: An Introduction, Silvia Bernardini, Dominic Stewart and Federico Zanettin, pp 1-13
Using parallel texts in the translator training environment, Jennifer Pearson, pp 15-24
This paper aims to examine whether and how parallel corpora can be used to inform This paper aims to examine whether and how parallel corpora can be used to inform specialized translation courses. Comparable corpora have already found their niche in translator training, and we will argue that parallel corpora can be used as a complement to comparable corpora because there will be times when comparable corpora will not suffice. A small parallel collection of popular science articles translated from English into French will be used to illustrate the point, and we will look at how translation students might use resources of this type to help them in translation.
Corpora and LSP translation, Natalie Kübler, pp 25-42
This paper reports an experimental approach in the training of LSP translators by introducing digital corpora and corpus manipulation tools. The use of corpora in LSP translation is nothing new. In specialized translation, translators also work as terminologists, as they have to make up a list of the terms of a specific domain, as well as the list of their translations into the target language. People working in terminology have been using paper corpora for a long time to look for term candidates and their phraseology.
The great change in the past few years stems from the greater accessibility of digitized corpora and powerful personal computers. This paper shows how the use of corpora and corpus query tools can greatly improve and facilitate the work of translators.
Training translators in terminology and information retrieval using comparable and parallel corpora, Belinda Maia, pp 43-53
The use of corpora to verify how words are used in context can be particularly useful in areas of LSP and terminology. The very possibility of examining terms in texts that deal with the subject matter under discussion makes it easier for the terminologist - and also the translator - to understand the concepts behind the terms used. However, whereas one can follow the advice of Pearson (1998) for monolingual texts in English, it is less
easy to find comparable or parallel texts which are reliable, of an equal level of complexity and which offer the same information value. This paper will look at efforts made to find and use text corpora in English and Portuguese to further terminology work in various areas, the problems that arise and how they can, or cannot, be solved.
Translators and disposable corpora, Krista Varantola, pp 55-70
This article will focus on the use of disposable, ad hoc corpora in translation. The study is based on a workshop experiment using the Web as a corpus resource. The main emphasis is on the compilation of these corpora and their analysis tools. A distinction is made between competence and performance in translation. It is pointed out that disposable corpora can be structurally simple but nevertheless very useful performance-enhancing tools in translation. A simple corpus structure does not, however, imply that there are no design criteria for these corpora. It is claimed that the knowledge of how to compile corpora and use them is an essential part of modern translational competence. A tentative list of corpus management skills is sketched at the end of the article.
Introducing Compara, the Portuguese-English parallel corpus, Ana Frankenberg-Garcia and Diana Santos, pp 71-87
This paper is an introduction to the Portuguese-English parallel corpus, Compara. Compara is a machine-searchable and open-ended collection of Portuguese-English and English-Portuguese source texts and translations. It was made for people who have never used corpora before as well as for experienced corpus users. Compara's encoding and alignment criteria allow users to inspect translators' notes and investigate when and where translators have chosen to join, separate, delete, add and reorder sentences. Also, the corpus has been specifically designed to accommodate more than one translation per source text. Compara is freely accessible on the WWW.
Corpora, translation and multilingual computing, Tony McEnery and Paul Baker, pp 89-102
In this paper the authors survey current development in the provision of corpus data for use in the research and practice of translation. While conceding that much research and development for indigenous European languages is needed, they argue that non-indigenous minority languages in Europe are both an important source of domestic translation tasks and are poorly served with corpora/language processing tools.
Student translation archive and student translation tracking system - Design, development and application, Lynne Bowker and Peter Bennison, pp 103-117
This paper describes the creation of the Student Translation Archive (STA) and Student Translation Tracking System (STTS) currently being used to collect, manage and study texts that have been translated by students. In addition, it outlines a preliminary methodology for exploiting the STA by extracting different types of corpora that may be useful or interesting in a translator training context. Some of the difficulties encountered during the
development of the prototype system are outlined, as well as plans for future development.
On a pseudo-subversive use of corpora in translator training, Kirsten Malmkjær, pp 118-134
The use in translation studies of methodologies inspired by corpus linguistics has proved to be one of the most important gate-openers to progress in the discipline since Toury's re-thinking of the concept of equivalence. In this paper, I discuss mainly the use of corpora in translator education, arguing that, the many advantages to be had by this method notwithstanding, there are problems. For example, it is not always obvious which corpus might help a translator solve a specific problem; corpus evidence might be misleading in
some cases; and offering past linguistic behaviour as a model for the future flies in the face of the nature of language and may, furthermore, stifle invention. For these reasons, I argue, it is worth exploring ways of using corpora which may seem subversive of standard uses, either alone or in conjunction with more traditional methods of investigation and teaching in Translation Studies.
Reflections on corpora and their uses in cross-linguistic research, Stig Johansson, pp 135-144
The paper attempts to set up a framework within which the contributions in the book can be interpreted and surveys some recent developments in the compilation and use of corpora for cross-linguistic research and translation studies. Research questions and applications are considered, and different models for the building of multilingual corpora are presented, with particular reference to recent work at the University of Oslo. The paper stresses that corpora provide openings both for learning and research. Access to corpora may even help to bring learning and research together. This is an auspicious time to focus on corpus use and learning to translate.
Notes on Contributors
Biography
Federico Zanettin, Silvia Bernardini, Dominic Stewart
