Literature Review on Corpus—based Translation Studies

PanYan

【Abstract】Corpus linguistics is a way of studying language by the assistant of computer tools. It has served as a particular and brand-new methodological framework for translation studies， and obtained a growing interest from all researchers and scholars. While corpus-based translation studies is not a translation theory but a new approach and discipline， which is presenting a brilliant picture for us gradually. This paper introduces the development of this field and analyzes the significance between corpus linguistics and translation.

【Key words】Literature Review； Corpus-based； Translation Studies

1. Introduction

Translation studies has experienced five paradigms of development， which are “philological studies， linguistics studies， cultural studies， philosophical studies and cognitive studies.”

（王克非2012）Since 1990， with the rise of corpus linguistics and descriptive translation studies， translation studies has produced a new research model—corpus-based translation studies. The main content of the new model is the construction of the corpus of translation studies， translation language characteristics， the translators style， translational norms， translation practice， teaching translation and interpretation， and so on. The famous scholar in China， Wang Kefei once defined that：“Corpus-based translation studies is a translational research approach for exploring the essence of translation and interpreting a diachronic or synchronic translation phenomena with the guide of language and translation theories， using the means of probability and statistics， taking mass bilingual and real language materials as examples， adopting the combination of bilingual and interlingua contrast methods.” （王克非2012）From the above definition， we can see that corpus-based translation studies it is more objective， scientific and systematic when we compared it with the traditional type of translation studies， introspection and speculation. After nearly two decades of development， this studies has gradually become an indispensable discipline.

2. The Overview of Corpus-based Translation Studies

2.1 The Development of Corpus-based Translation Studies Overseas

Mona Baker is one of the founders of Corpus-based Translation Studies. From 1993 to 1998， as a leader of the multi-country scholars research team， she had built a lot of translation corpora， including parallel corpus and comparable corpus， and carried out a lot of theoretical tasks for corpus-based translation studies. In 1995， she began to build the worlds first corpus for translation studies， which is Translational English Corpus， namely TEC. The most representative article she published in 1993 is entitled “the Corpus linguistics and translation studies：implications and applications”. This article is so classical and creative that it is considered as a fundamental work for the adaptation of corpus linguistics in translation studies by all the scholars.

Under the influence of Mona Baker， one of her disciples， Sara Laviosa also claimed that the corpus-based translation studies is a new paradigm in the near future. In 1998， two groups of articles edited by Laviosa and entitled “The Corpus-based Approach：the New the Paradigm in Translation Studies” were published by the famous Canadian journal of translation studies Meta. The second group is mainly focused on the problems in the application fields and the empirical research areas， such as the characteristics of translated languages， translational norms， translator training. In her article which is entitled “Core Patterns of Lexical Use in a Comparable Corpus of English Narrative Prose”. In a way， these two groups of articles have enriched Mona Bakers ideas on corpus-based translation studies， and finally declared that a new paradigm of translation studies had been set up.

Since 1999， corpus-based translation studies has entered a period of rapid development. On one hand， many parallel corpora， comparable and translation corpora have been built as an important platform for corpus-based translation studies. Among them， the famous ones are ‘Bible Multilingual Parallel Corpus which was built by Resnik in 1999， Enlish-Norwegian Parallel Corpus， namely ENPC by Johanson from 1997 to 2001， German-English Parallel Corpus of Literary Texts， namely GEPCOLT， by Dorothy Kenny in 2001， and Corpus of Translational Finnish， namely CTF， in 2002， and so on. On the other hand， in the academic conferences on corpus-based translation studies which have held recently， scholars discussed the present situation of the research and the future trend of development. It is worth noting that many research thesis and works were published at the same time， and the scholars such as Dorothy Kenny， Sara Laviosa， Maeve Olohan， all adopted the corpus translational approaches or methodologies to have practical research. Among them， the most noticeable I recommend is the following book “Intercultural Faultlines—Research Models in Translation StudiesⅠ：Textual and Cognitive Aspects” edited by Maeve Olohans in 2000. This book presents many different perspectives and methodologies for translation studies. It is a set of collected papers with sixteen theses by the scholars mainly from Europe， Australia and Canada. Moreover， it is divided into three sections by Olohan in accordance of Chestermans famous research models of translation （i.e. comparative， process and causal）. Chestman（1998）， proposed three models：comparative models， namely finding out the similarities between the source and target texts. Process models are energetic models which can represent “different phases the translational process of over time”. （Olohan2000）And the last models are implicit， the causal models， “translations are explicitly seen both as caused by antecedent conditions and as causing effects on readers and cultures” （ibid）. As a matter of fact， Chestermans theory of these models is very influential and significant for translation studies because the choice of any research models can determine the corresponding methodology which the researcher should select， and thus influence the following researching results he gains finally.

2.2 The Development of Corpus Translation Studies in China

Domestic corpus-based translation studies started much later than foreign countries， but it has been developing rapidly. In 1999， Feng YueJin and Chen Wei published the first article on corpus translation studies in Journal of Foreign Studies（Shanghai International Studies University）， which is called “The Investigation on the English Translations Corpus of Chinese ‘ fuzhi. The authors found that it was difficult to find suitable English equivalents to signify Chinese subordinate ranks or tiles， due to the cultural difference between Chinese and English. So they aimed to utilize the data from Bank of English（BoE）， the corpus of 320 million words， and analyze the collocation regularities for the English lexemes “deputy”， “ associate”， “assistant” and “ vice” when they all signify Chinese subordinate ranks or titles. And thus discussed and explored the different English translation strategies of Chinese subordinate ranks or tiles in different contexts. This article serves as a pioneering work for Chinese domestic translation studies. From then on， Chinese scholars have attempted to work on the research of translation studies by the assistance of corpus， and gained a growing progress.

3. Conclusion

Corpus linguistic is a way of studying language by the assistant of computer tools. It has served as a particular and brand-new methodological framework for translation studies， and obtained a growing interest from all researchers and scholars. To sum up， corpus-based translation studies is not a translation theory but a new approach and discipline， which is presenting a brilliant picture for us gradually. Lets wait and see.

References：

[1]王克非.語料库翻译学探索[M].上海交通大学出版社，2012：4-13.

[2]Olohan，Maeve（ed）（2000）Intercultural Faultlines.Research Models in Translation StudiesⅠ：Textual and Cognitive Aspects， Manchester：St.Jerome Publishing.2000：4-93.

【基金】本文是广东省重点学科（英语语言文学）阶段性成果。