5. The real use of corpora in teaching and research contexts
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Carme Colominas
Abstract
The relevance of corpora in translation studies has often been stressed in the literature during the last decade (Zanettin et al. 2003; Olohan 2004; Laviosa 2003). The advantages of corpora as complementary resources to dictionaries, terminologies, etc. have been recognised, and actually the use of corpora as translation resources and of corpus analysis software in general has become part of the syllabus of translation studies. However, the real use of corpora in translation studies still faces (some) practical problems/limitations, as already pointed out by Granger (2003): on the one hand, in some cases, sufficiently large corpora that are representative of modern language do not exist, and on the other, interfaces for accessing corpora are not user-friendly enough to satisfy the real needs of translation students and researchers. In this chapter we deal with these kinds of problems by discussing the weak and strong points of current corpora interfaces and referring to improvements that have already been made and that should continue to be developed in the future. The chapter ends with a revision of corpus-based applications in translation training contexts and in cross-linguistic research.
Abstract
The relevance of corpora in translation studies has often been stressed in the literature during the last decade (Zanettin et al. 2003; Olohan 2004; Laviosa 2003). The advantages of corpora as complementary resources to dictionaries, terminologies, etc. have been recognised, and actually the use of corpora as translation resources and of corpus analysis software in general has become part of the syllabus of translation studies. However, the real use of corpora in translation studies still faces (some) practical problems/limitations, as already pointed out by Granger (2003): on the one hand, in some cases, sufficiently large corpora that are representative of modern language do not exist, and on the other, interfaces for accessing corpora are not user-friendly enough to satisfy the real needs of translation students and researchers. In this chapter we deal with these kinds of problems by discussing the weak and strong points of current corpora interfaces and referring to improvements that have already been made and that should continue to be developed in the future. The chapter ends with a revision of corpus-based applications in translation training contexts and in cross-linguistic research.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
- 1. A comparative evaluation of bilingual concordancers and translation memory systems 1
- 2. Interactive reference grammars: Exploiting parallel and comparable treebanks for translation 23
- 3. Corpora for translator education and translation practice 39
- 4. CORPÓGRAFO V.4: Tools for educating translators 57
- 5. The real use of corpora in teaching and research contexts 71
- 6. The use of corpora in translator training in the African language classroom: A perspective from South Africa 89
- 7. CAT tools in international organisations: Lessons learnt from the experience of the Languages Service of the United Nations Office at Geneva 107
- 8. Global content management: Challenges and opportunities for creating and using digital translation resources 121
- 9. BEYTrans: A Wiki-based environment for helping online volunteer translators 135
- 10. Standardising the management and the representation of multilingual data: The Multi Lingual Information Framework 151
- 11. Tagging and tracing Program Integrated Information 173
- 12. Linguistic resources and localisation 195
- Index 215
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
- 1. A comparative evaluation of bilingual concordancers and translation memory systems 1
- 2. Interactive reference grammars: Exploiting parallel and comparable treebanks for translation 23
- 3. Corpora for translator education and translation practice 39
- 4. CORPÓGRAFO V.4: Tools for educating translators 57
- 5. The real use of corpora in teaching and research contexts 71
- 6. The use of corpora in translator training in the African language classroom: A perspective from South Africa 89
- 7. CAT tools in international organisations: Lessons learnt from the experience of the Languages Service of the United Nations Office at Geneva 107
- 8. Global content management: Challenges and opportunities for creating and using digital translation resources 121
- 9. BEYTrans: A Wiki-based environment for helping online volunteer translators 135
- 10. Standardising the management and the representation of multilingual data: The Multi Lingual Information Framework 151
- 11. Tagging and tracing Program Integrated Information 173
- 12. Linguistic resources and localisation 195
- Index 215
