Abstract
The relationship between contrastive linguistics (CL) and translation studies (TS) as two disciplines within the field of applied linguistics has been explored in depth by several authors, especially in the 1970s and early 1980s. From the mid-nineties on both these disciplines have experienced a great boom due to the use of computerised language corpora in linguistic analysis. We will argue in this paper that this new corpus-based approach to CL and TS makes it necessary to revise the relationship between them, and look for a new common ground to work on. Our hypothesis is that the use of translation equivalence as a tertium comparationis for a corpus-based contrastive analysis provides essential data for TS in a wide range of aspects. On the other hand, the corpus approach of TS has shed a new light on numerous aspects of CL.
Highlights
The introduction of electronic language corpora has resulted in major changes in the world of linguistic research in general
The importance of corpora lies in the fact that they reveal patterns of language usage which would not be detected otherwise, since “the language looks rather different if we look at a lot of it at once” (Sinclair 1991:100)
contrastive linguistics (CL) aims at acquiring knowledge about two languages on a descriptive basis and translation studies (TS) aims at acquiring knowledge about the actual translation process between two languages
Summary
The introduction of electronic language corpora has resulted in major changes in the world of linguistic research in general. We will argue here that the new perspective provided by the corpus-based approach has led to important developments in these two disciplines, but that corpora have contributed to a new type of relationship between CL and TS. This new relationship builds on previous approaches, but reveals innovative trends within both academic disciplines. Noelia Ramón García oped in recent years and showing a closer link with translation than standard CL as we knew it before the expansion of language corpora Another interesting feature refers to the use of contrastive methods in corpus-based TS, showing to what extent CL and TS are interrelated
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