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In: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

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Living with parallel corpora

The potentials and limitations of their use in translation research

 | University Jaume I
Published online: 20 March 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.90.03mar
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.
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
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