The application of corpora in translation studies
The main content of this chaptersection includes the motivation for applying corpora in translation, types of corpora and general application of different corpora in translation studies.
2.1 Why use corpora in translation studies
According to Bowker and Pearson (2002:9), a corpus is “a large collection of authentic texts that have been gathered in electronic form according to a specific set of criteria”. (Bowker and Pearson 2002:9) and corpus research has greatly influenced the way we study and investigate translation a lot.
The use of corpus in translation studies is relatively new and nowadays, it becomes increasingly popular among research methods used in translation research. One of the reasons for using corpora could be to find out the underlying reasons for the presence of unique patterns in translated text. For example, translated texts tend to contain more optional elements than non-translated text to make meanings explicit, like using more relative pronouns .
Another reason for adopting corpora in translation studies should be that although building a corpus is time-consuming, it will facilitate investigations and benefit future studies a lot. With its authentic language use and sufficient examples, researchers do not don’t need to collect language materials little by little on their own but simply use functions like concordance to get the data and information directly and then carry out relevant analysis.
There are various other reasons for using corpora in translation studies, more discussion on this topic will be made in the following part. Corpora used in translation studies and the reasons for using them will be examined.
2.2 Types of corpora
Different types of corpora are built for various research goals including language study, culture study and translation study. In her book Corpus-based Translation Studies: Theory, Findings, Applications, Sara Laviosa (2002: 34) represented a corpus typology aiming to “achieving consistency
2.1 Why use corpora in translation studies
According to Bowker and Pearson (2002:9), a corpus is “a large collection of authentic texts that have been gathered in electronic form according to a specific set of criteria”. (Bowker and Pearson 2002:9) and corpus research has greatly influenced the way we study and investigate translation a lot.
The use of corpus in translation studies is relatively new and nowadays, it becomes increasingly popular among research methods used in translation research. One of the reasons for using corpora could be to find out the underlying reasons for the presence of unique patterns in translated text. For example, translated texts tend to contain more optional elements than non-translated text to make meanings explicit, like using more relative pronouns .
Another reason for adopting corpora in translation studies should be that although building a corpus is time-consuming, it will facilitate investigations and benefit future studies a lot. With its authentic language use and sufficient examples, researchers do not don’t need to collect language materials little by little on their own but simply use functions like concordance to get the data and information directly and then carry out relevant analysis.
There are various other reasons for using corpora in translation studies, more discussion on this topic will be made in the following part. Corpora used in translation studies and the reasons for using them will be examined.
2.2 Types of corpora
Different types of corpora are built for various research goals including language study, culture study and translation study. In her book Corpus-based Translation Studies: Theory, Findings, Applications, Sara Laviosa (2002: 34) represented a corpus typology aiming to “achieving consistency