Corpora and corpus technology for translation purposes in professional and academic environments. Major achievements and new perspectives

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2016v36nesp1p36The “use” of corpora and concordancers in translation teaching has grown increasingly attractive since the mid1990s’ with an abundant literature advocating their use and promoting their benefits in the translation classroom. In translator training, efforts are being made to incorporate the use of corpora and concordancers in masters’ programmes and to offer specific modules on corpora for translation as the use of translation memory (TM) systems within Computer-Aided Translation (CAT) courses still dominates. In the translation profession, while TM systems are part of the everyday working environment, the same cannot be said of corpora and concordancers even though the most recent surveys show that professional translators would like to learn more about the potential of corpora for translation. Overall, the “usefulness” of corpora and corpus technology at the different stages of the translation process remains poorly documented in translation but a growing number of empirical studies has started to show concern as it has now become of paramount importance to assess the extent to which corpora are of added value for translation quality in both professional and academic environments.