Contrastiue functional analysis as a starting point for corpus-based translation studies (CTS): Methodological considerations for analysing small transiational corpora

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show the benefits of working with relatively small but carefully designed corpora of texts specifically selected for the purposes of a given study, and also to put forward a research paradigm for corpus-based translation studies (CTS) based on contrastive linguistics. The theoretical framework is contrastive functional analysis (CFA), a methodology based on meaning and looking at the ways in which meaning is expressed in a pair of languages (Chesterman 1998). For the purposes of the present article and, more generally, translation studies and CTS, a distinction is also made between translation-mediated texts and original (parallel) texts, as well as between professional and trainee translations. The article also advocates what may be called an eclectic approach to corpus studies: an initial, contrastive analysis is conducted on relatively small corpora of texts (cf., e.g. Malmkjaer 1998) and larger corpora are used at a later stage of the analysis to verify statistically the findings of the initial study and thus to objectify the final results.