Cover not available
Part of
Parallel Corpora for Contrastive and Translation Studies: New resources and applications
Edited by Irene Doval and M. Teresa Sánchez Nieto
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 90] 2019
► pp. 39–56

Living with parallel corpora

The potentials and limitations of their use in translation research

| University Jaume I
Parallel corpora can be used in translation research in at least two ways: as the main source of data or as a supplement to data retrieved from a comparable corpus, enabling data triangulation. In the former scenario, they may throw light on contrastive aspects or on translator techniques and methods. In the latter they will tend to be searched to account for differences perceived between the two components of a comparable corpus. Two case studies will be put forward in order to illustrate these two uses of parallel corpora. Both draw on the English-Catalan subcorpus of COVALT (Valencian Corpus of Translated Literature). The first analyses the translation of meal names whereas the second focuses on the -ment adverb + adjective construction.
Keywords: parallel corpora, main source of data, supplementary source of data, comparable corpora, COVALT
Article outline
  • 1.Parallel corpora and research on translation: Some landmarks
  • 2.Parallel corpora and the study of translation: Potentials and limitations
    • 2.1Parallel vs. comparable corpora?
    • 2.2Advantages and uses of parallel corpora
  • 3.Case study 1: Analysing the Translation of Meal Names with a Parallel Corpus as the Main Source of Data
  • 4.Case study 2: Analysing the construction –ment adverb + adjective in Catalan translations with a parallel corpus as a supplementary source of data
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 March 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.90.03mar
References (33)
References
Anderman, Gunilla & Rogers, Margaret. 2008. The linguist and the translator. In Incorporating Corpora. The Linguist and the Translator, Gunilla Anderman & Margaret Rogers (eds), 5–17. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Baker, Mona. 1993. Corpus linguistics and translation studies – Implications and applications. In Text and Technology. In Honour of John Sinclair, Mona Baker, Gill Francis & Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds), 233–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1996. Corpus-based translation studies: The challenges that lie ahead. In Terminology, LSP and Translation: Studies in Language Engineering, in Honour of Juan C. Sager, Harold Somers (ed.), 175–186. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baroni, Marco & Bernardini, Silvia. 2003. A preliminary analysis of collocational differences in monolingual comparable corpora. <[URL]> (11 April 2017).
Bernardini, Silvia. 2005. Reviving old ideas: Parallel and comparable analysis in translation studies – with an example from translation stylistics. In New Tendencies in Translation Studies, Karin Aijmer & Cecilia Alvstad (eds), 5–18. Göteborg: University of Göteborg.Google Scholar
. 2007. Collocations in translated language. Combining parallel, comparable and reference corpora. In Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics Conference, Matthew Davies, Paul Rayson, Susan Hunston & Pernilla Danielsson (eds). <[URL]> (11 April 2017).Google Scholar
Bosseaux, Charlotte. 2007. How Does it Feel? Point of View in Translation. The Case of Virginia Woolf into French. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Calzada Pérez, María. 2005. Corpus electrónicos como herramientas de documentación y formación de traductores. In La biblioteca de Babel. Documentarse para traducir, Dora Sales Salvador (ed.), 163–199. Granada: Comares.Google Scholar
Cambridge Idioms Dictionary, 2nd edn. 2006. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Dayrell, Carmen. 2007. A quantitative approach to compare collocational patterns in translated and non-translated texts. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 12(3): 375–404. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dyvik, Helge. 2002. Translations as semantic mirrors: From parallel corpus to wordnet. In Advances in Corpus Linguistics. Papers from the 23rd International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 23) Göteborg 22–26 May 2002, Karin Aijmer & Bengt Altenberg (ed.), 311–326. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Firth, John R. 1957. Papers in Linguistics 1934–1951. London: OUP.Google Scholar
Frankenberg-Garcia, Ana & Santos, Diana. 2003. Introducing Compara, the Portuguese–English parallel corpus. In Corpora in Translator Education, Federico Zanettin, Silvia Bernardini & Dominic Stewart (eds), 71–87. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Gellerstam, Martin. 1986. Translationese in Swedish novels translated from English. In Translation Studies in Scandinavia. Proceedings of the Scandinavian Symposium on Translation Theory (SSOTT), Lars Wollin & Hans Lindquist (ed.), 88–95. Lund: Lund Studies in English.Google Scholar
Jantunen, Jarmo Harri. 2004. Untypical patterns in translations: Issues on corpus methodology and synonymity. In Translation Universals, Do They Exist? [Benjamins Translation Library 48], Anna Mauranen & Pekka Kujamaki (eds), 101–126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johansson, Stig. 2007. Seeing through Multilingual Corpora. On the Use of Corpora in Contrastive Studies [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 26]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kenny, Dorothy. 2001. Lexis and Creativity in Translation. A Corpus-Based Approach. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
. 2005. Parallel corpora and translation studies: Old questions, new perspectives? Reporting that in Gepcolt: A case study. In Meaningful Texts: The Extraction of Semantic Information from Monolingual and Multilingual Corpora, Geoff Barnbrook, Pernilla Danielsson & Michaela Mahlberg (eds), 154–165. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Malmkjaer, Kirsten. 1998. Love thy neighbour: Will parallel corpora endear linguists to translators? Meta: Translators’ Journal 43(4): 534–541. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mauranen, Anna. 2000. Strange strings in translated language: a study on corpora. In Intercultural Faultlines. Research Models in Translation Studies, I: Textual and Cognitive Aspects, Maeve Olohan (ed.), 119–141. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
McEnery, Tony & Xiao, Richard. 2008. Parallel and comparable corpora: What is happening? In Incorporating Corpora: The Linguist and the Translator, Gunilla Anderman & Margaret Rogers (eds), 18–31. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Montanari, Massimo. 2004. Il cibo come cultura. Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Nilsson, Per-Ola. 2004. Translation-specific lexicogrammar? Characteristic lexical and collocational patterning in Swedish texts translated from English. In Translation Universals, Do They Exist? [Benjamins Translation Library 48], Anna Mauranen & Pekka Kujamaki (eds), 129–141. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olohan, Maeve. 2004. Introducing Corpora in Translation Studies. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oster, Ulrike & Molés-Cases, Teresa. 2016. Eating and drinking seen through translation: A study of food-related translation difficulties and techniques in a parallel corpus of literary texts. Across Languages and Cultures 17(1): 53–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol & Gries, Stefan T. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction of words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8(2): 209–243. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stewart, Dominic. 2000. Poor relations and black sheep in translation studies. Target 12(2): 205–228. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Teich, Elke. 2003. Cross-Linguistic Variation in System and Text. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zanettin, Federico. 2000. Parallel corpora in translation studies: issues in corpus design and analysis. In Intercultural Faultlines. Research Models in Translation Studies, I: Textual and Cognitive Aspects, Maeve Olohan (ed.), 105–118. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
. 2012. Translation-Driven Corpora. Corpus Resources for Descriptive and Applied Translation Studies. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Grabowski, Łukasz & Nicholas Groom
2022. Functionally-defined recurrent multi-word units in English-to-Polish translation. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 35:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Mikhailov, Mikhail
2021. Mind the Source Data! Translation Equivalents and Translation Stimuli from Parallel Corpora. In New Perspectives on Corpus Translation Studies [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 259 ff. DOI logo
Pérez Blanco, María & Marlén Izquierdo
2021. Chapter 6. Developing a corpus-informed tool for Spanish professionals writing specialised texts in English. In Corpora in Translation and Contrastive Research in the Digital Age [Benjamins Translation Library, 158], ► pp. 147 ff. DOI logo
Molés-Cases, Teresa
2019. Why typology matters: a corpus-based study of explicitation and implicitation of Manner-of-motion in narrative texts. Perspectives 27:6 ► pp. 890 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.