Abstract

Corpus-based translation research emerged in the late 1990s as a new area of research in the discipline of translation studies. It is informed by a specific area of linguistics known as corpus linguistics which involves the analysis of large corpora of authentic running text by means of computer software. Within linguistics, this methodology has revolutionised lexicographic practices and methods of language teaching. In translation studies this kind of research involves using computerised corpora to study translated text, not in terms of its equivalence to source texts, but as a valid object of study in its own right. Corpus-based research in translation is concerned with revealing both the universal and the specific features of translation, through the interplay of theoretical constructs and hypotheses, variety of data, novel descriptive categories and a rigorous, flexible methodology, which can be applied to inductive and deductive research, as well as product- and process-oriented studies. In this article an overview is given of the research that has led to the formation of a new subdiscipline in translation studies, called Corpus-based Translation Studies or CTS. I also demonstrate how CTS tools and techniques can be used for the analysis of general and literary translations and therefore also for Bible translations. (Acta Theologica, Supplementum 2, 2002: 70-106)

Highlights

  • Corpus-based translation research emerged in the late 1990s as a new area of research in the discipline of translation studies

  • It is informed by a specific area of linguistics known as corpus linguistics which involves the analysis of large corpora of authentic running text by means of computer software

  • On the basis of a comparison of concordance data from the BNC (British National Corpus) and the TEC (Translational English Corpus), the quantitative results show that the that-connective is far more frequent in TEC than in BNC, and that the zero-connective is more frequent for all forms of both verbs in the BNC than in TEC

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Corpus-based translation research emerged in the late 1990s as a new area of research in the discipline of translation studies. It is informed by a specific area of linguistics known as corpus linguistics which involves the analysis of large corpora of authentic running text by means of computer software. Within linguistics, this methodology has revolutionised lexicographic practices and methods of language teaching. In order for me to home in on current corpus-based translation research, some remarks on corpus linguistics and the descriptive approach to translation are needed. Such remarks will be brief and of necessity selective as my only purpose will be to highlight the provenance of ideas that influenced computerised studies of translation

CORPUS LINGUISTICS
Corpus processing techniques
DESCRIPTIVE TRANSLATION STUDIES
The notion of the “third code”
Universal features of translation: early research
A tendency towards explicitation and addition
A tendency towards disambiguation and simplification
A tendency towards conventionalisation and normalisation
Types of corpora
Explicitation as a universal of translation
Simplification as a universal of translation
Normalisation as a universal of translation
OTHER APPLICATIONS OF CORPUS-BASED TRANSLATION RESEARCH
Analysing linguistic features signalling involvement in drama translation
Analysing the style of professional literary translators
Studying what is “in” and “of” translational English
ANY IMPLICATIONS FOR BIBLE TRANSLATION?
Full Text
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