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Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies

Corpus-based Translation Studies: Research and Applications

23-25 July 2003 Pretoria, South Africa, hosted jointly by the Department of Linguistics (Translation Studies) University of South Africa & Centre for Translation & Intercultural Studies, UMIST (University of Science & Technology in Manchester)

Corpus-based Translation Studies (CTS) is now recognised as a major paradigm informing a wide array of studies in the discipline. Recent events such as the Research Models in Translation Studies conference held at UMIST in 2000 and the 2001 EST Congress in Copenhagen have been dominated by panels and workshops devoted to corpus-based translation research.

What motivates this growing interest in the use of corpora in translation research? Does corpus-based research represent a major departure from previous, well-established paradigms? Or does it simply involve the application of modern technology on the basis of the same assumptions and theoretical frameworks that have informed the discipline for several decades? Is the use of technology likely to allow us to refine our research techniques or will it simply encourage more number-crunching and superficial quantitative analyses? Are corpora creating opportunities for more reliable and 'objective' research or are they widening the gap between dominant and minoritised languages and cultures? Can they be effectively used to challenge rather than bolster dominant languages and dominant research paradigms?

It is perhaps time to reassess our positions and consider ways in which corpora may be used to develop novel and challenging perspectives in the discipline, as well as ways in which they may support research outside the mainstream hegemonic research cultures. The conference aims to create a platform for critical debate about key issues in corpus-based studies of translation, interrogating their underlying assumptions, and offering an opportunity for discussing potential future developments in the field.

Conference Organisers

Conference Advisory Board

Plenary Speakers

Michael Hoey (University of Liverpool, UK)
Author of Patterns of Lexis in Text and On the Surface of Discourse

Juliane House (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Author of A Model for Translation Quality Assessment and Translation Quality Assessment: A Model Revisited

Dorothy Kenny (Dublin City University, Ireland)
Author of Lexis and Creativity in Translation: A Corpus-based Study

Sara Laviosa (University of Salford, UK)
Author of Corpus-based Translation Studies: Theory, Findings, Applications (forthcoming, Rodopi) and editor of Corpus-based Translation Studies (special issue of Meta 1998)

Maeve Olohan (UMIST, UK)
Author of Corpora in Translation Studies (forthcoming, Routledge) and editor of Research Models in Translation Studies I: Textual and Cognitive Aspects

Panel Discussion

Critiquing Corpus-based Translation Studies (Chaired by Mona Baker)

Workshops

Michael Barlow (Rice University, USA)
Alignment and Parallel Concordancing Software

Mike Scott (University of Liverpool, UK)
Using Wordsmith Tools in CTS

Saturnino Luz (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
Web-based Corpus Software

Programme & Call for Papers

The three-day conference hosted plenary lectures, papers, one panel discussion and three hands-on workshops. Papers of 30 minutes each (excluding discussion time) were delivered on different aspects of corpus-based translation research, particularly with respect to the following issues:

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