Researching Translation in the Age of Technology and Global Conflict: Selected Works of Mona Baker 2019028252, 9780367109950, 9780367109967, 9780429024221

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RESEARCHING TRANSLATION IN THE AGE OF TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBAL CONFLICT

Mona Baker is one of the leading figures in the development of translation studies as an academic discipline. This book brings together fifteen of her most inf luential articles, carefully selected and grouped under three main topics that represent her most enduring contributions to the field: corpus-based translation studies, translation as renarration and translators in society. These applications and approaches have been widely adopted by translation scholars around the globe. The first section showcases Baker’s pioneering work in introducing corpus linguistics methodologies to the field of translation studies, which established one of the fastest growing subfields in the discipline. The second section focuses on her application of narrative theory and the notion of framing to the study of translation and interpreting, and her contribution to demonstrating the various ways in which translators and interpreters intervene in the negotiation of social and political reality. The third and final section discusses the role of translators and interpreters as social and political activists who use their linguistic skills to empower voices made invisible by the global power of English and the politics of language. Tracing key moments in the development of translation studies as a discipline, and with a general introduction by Theo Hermans and section introductions by other scholars contextualising the work, this is essential reading for translation studies scholars, researchers and advanced students. Kyung Hye Kim is a lecturer in translation studies at the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and member of the Jiao Tong Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies. She holds a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies from the University of Manchester. Yifan Zhu is a professor in translation studies at the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Deputy Director of the Jiao Tong Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies.

Key Thinkers on Translation

This series presents the essential selected works – journal articles and book extracts – of the leading figures in the field of translation studies in a single manageable volume. With a general introduction and section introductions contextualising the work, readers can follow the themes and strands of their work and see their contribution to the development of a field, as well as the development of the field itself. Researching Translation in the Age of Technology and Global Conflict Selected Works of Mona Baker Edited by Kyung Hye Kim and Yifan Zhu For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Key-Thinkers-on-Translation/book-series/KTOT

RESEARCHING TRANSLATION IN THE AGE OF TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBAL CONFLICT Selected Works of Mona Baker

Edited by Kyung Hye Kim and Yifan Zhu

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Kyung Hye Kim and Yifan Zhu; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Kyung Hye Kim and Yifan Zhu to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Baker, Mona, author. | Kim, Kyung–Hye, editor. | Zhu, Yifan, editor. Title: Researching translation in the age of technology and global conf lict : selected works of Mona Baker / edited by Kyung Hye Kim and Yifan Zhu Description: 1. | New York : Taylor and Francis, 2019. | Series: Key thinkers on translation | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019028252 | ISBN 9780367109950 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367109967 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429024221 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Translating and interpreting—Technological innovations. | Translating and interpreting—Study and teaching. | Translation studies. Classification: LCC P306.97.T73 B35 2019 | DDC 418/.02—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn loc.gov/2019028252 ISBN: 978-0-367-10995-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-10996-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-02422-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of figures List of tables Preface Theo Hermans Acknowledgements

viii x xi xvii

PART I

Corpus-based translation studies Introduction Federico Zanettin

1 1

1 1993. ‘Corpus linguistics and translation studies: implications and applications’, in Mona Baker, Gill Francis and Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds) Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 233–250.

9

2 1995. ‘Corpora in translation studies: an overview and some suggestions for future research’, Target 7(2): 223–243.

25

3 1996. ‘Corpus-based translation studies: the challenges that lie ahead’, in Harold Somers (ed.) Terminology, LSP and Translation: Studies in Language Engineering in Honour of Juan C. Sager, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 175–186.

44

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Contents

4 2000. ‘Towards a methodology for investigating the style of a literary translator’, Target 12(2): 241–266.

55

5 2004. ‘A corpus-based view of similarity and difference in translation’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9(2): 167–193.

77

PART II

Translation as renarration Introduction Neil Sadler

101 101

6 2007. ‘Reframing conf lict in translation’, Social Semiotics 17(2): 151–169.

111

7 2008. ‘Ethics of renarration: Mona Baker is interviewed by Andrew Chesterman’, Cultus 1(1): 10–33.

130

8 2010. ‘Narratives of terrorism and security: “accurate” translations, suspicious frames’, Critical Studies on Terrorism 3(3): 347–364.

151

9 2014. ‘Translation as re-narration’, in Juliane House (ed.) Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 158–177.

174

10 2018. ‘Narrative analysis and translation’, in Kirsten Malmkjæer (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Linguistics, London & New York: Routledge, 179–193.

190

PART III

Translators in society Introduction Moira Inghilleri 11 2010. ‘Interpreters and translators in the war zone: narrated and narrators’, in Moira Inghilleri and Sue-Ann Harding (eds) Translation and Violent Conflict, Special Issue of The Translator 16(2): 197–222.

209 209

219

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12 2010. ‘Translation and activism: emerging patterns of narrative community’, in Maria Tymoczko (ed.) Translation, Resistance, Activism, Amherst & Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 23–41.

243

13 2013. ‘Translation as an alternative space for political action’, Social Movement Studies 12(1): 23–47.

259

14 2016. ‘The prefigurative politics of translation in place-based movements of protest: subtitling in the Egyptian revolution’, The Translator 22(1): 1–21.

287

15 2016. ‘Beyond the spectacle: translation and solidarity in contemporary protest movements’, in Mona Baker (ed.) Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution, London & New York: Routledge, 1–18.

312

Subject index Name index

329 333

FIGURES

4.1 5.1 5.2 6.1

6.2

6.3 6.4 9.1 10.1 10.2 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 13.8

Screen shot from the Translational English Corpus Overview of subcorpora used in the study Translators in the narrative subcorpus of TEC Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh prays before a speech, most likely for funds . . . most likely to come from Iran A militant from the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade on the West Bank, during an event to remember one of the many acts of violence that have taken place there Yemenite Cleric Abd Al-Majid Al-Zindani. Annotated video clip accompanying Alhayat Aljadeeda article, courtesy of MEMRI Screen shot from Jenin Jenin Opening screen shot from ‘Words of Women from the Egyptian Revolution’ Videos Typographical error in Freedom for Hassan Mostafa Grammatical error in Episode 2: Sabah Ibrahim Translators United for Peace website Translator Brigades’ translations of Adbusters articles Translator Brigades site and language categories Extract from Tlaxcala’s ‘Library of Translators’ featuring WSF as an entry Tlaxcala’s ‘Who We Are’ section, 2009 Ecos – Babels section of the ECOS site An early version of the ECOS site (2009) giving prominence to the issue of Palestine Babels homepage (accessed 12 August 2011)

60 80 81

119

119 119 124 179 201 202 263 266 267 268 269 271 274 280

Figures

List of Babels site languages accessible through baBeLOG section (accessed 12 August 2011) 13.10 Interface languages on earlier version of Tlaxcala website (2009) 13.11 Interface languages on current Tlaxcala site (accessed 12 August 2011) 13.12 baBeLOG entry, 2006 14.1 Mosireen logo 14.2 ‘Why Riot’ – Choice of ‘provocateurs’ 14.3 ‘Why Riot’ – Choice of ‘fig-leaf ’ 14.4 Sort of a joke in English subtitles 14.5 Sort of a joke in Spanish subtitles 14.6 Prefigurative gender (un)marking in Words of Women. Episode 6 – Mariam Kirollos 14.7 Prefigurative gender (un)marking in Words of Women. Episode 7 – Madeeha Anwar 14.8 Overlap of Arabic and English subtitles – ‘Revolution is a crime, market rate at least two years in prison’ 14.9 English subtitles obscuring Arabic on a piece of paper held by Hany El Gamal – ‘The Shura Council Detainees’ 15.1 Addition of #OccupyCabinet in the subtitles of a Mosireen documentary

ix

13.9

281 281 282 283 295 301 301 302 303 304 304 306 306 323

TABLES

4.1 Distribution of zero/that in Original (BNC) and Translated (TEC) English 4.2 Distribution of zero/that in Translations by Peter Bush and Peter Clark 8.1 MEMRI’s evolving narrative of terrorism and security (four versions of ‘About Us’)

68 69 162

PREFACE Theo Hermans

In a career spanning some 30 years Mona Baker has earned the singular distinction of having inspired three paradigm shifts in translation studies. The paradigms are very different one from the other, and they ref lect her intellectual itinerary since the early 1990s. The essays reprinted in the present selection appear in roughly chronological order, so we can follow her journey. Mona Baker first made a name for herself in the world of translation studies with her book In Other Words (1992). This was “a coursebook on translation”, as the subtitle indicated. It spoke to students and teachers, and proved extremely popular: an enlarged second edition followed within ten years, with a third edition, extended again, in 2018. Part of its attraction was the accessible way in which linguistic issues were explained and the use of numerous concrete examples. In the preface to both the first and the second editions Mona Baker paid homage to John Sinclair, who, she said, taught her most of what she knew about language. Sinclair was professor of English at the University of Birmingham at the time Mona Baker also worked there. As a linguist he was interested in language as it actually occurs, and hence in empirical approaches that worked with authentic material, including electronically stored data that could be analysed by harnessing the power of computer technology. This is where, for linguists, the origins of corpus studies lay. The first essay in the present selection, “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications”, was originally published in a book in honour of John Sinclair. It triggered the first of the three paradigm shifts mentioned above by proposing the application of corpus studies to translated texts. It proved to be a strategic contribution on two fronts. For linguists, applying corpus tools to translations meant a departure from their usual focus on what they regarded as naturally occurring language. For translation researchers, especially those working descriptively, it captured the moment by identifying the

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need to analyse large amounts of text in order to solve such fundamental issues as the distinctiveness of translated texts or the possibility of there being universal features of translation. While for most of the 1990s Mona Baker spoke primarily as a linguist, she effectively charged both fellow linguists and translation scholars with tunnel vision, the former for their unwarranted exclusion of translated texts, the latter for remaining blind to a tool that could help answer some of their most pressing problems. The next few essays in the selection show a neat progression. The second piece, from 1995, opened the toolbox of corpus studies and explained the main ideas and distinctions for the benefit of the translation studies community. By the time the third essay appeared in 1996 Mona Baker had moved from Birmingham to the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and been instrumental in creating the world’s first translational corpus. The essay (“Corpus-Based Translation Studies: The Challenges That Lie Ahead”) reads like a report from the shop f loor: it addresses practical as well as methodological questions, from corpus design to copyright permissions and from asking the right kind of questions to interpreting the findings. It also exudes a sense of excitement and of a community of researchers coming together; several of the references in the bibliography are to works in progress. Two years later, in 1998, the Canadian journal Meta devoted a special issue to corpus-based translation studies. In her opening piece Sara Laviosa presented the corpus approach as a new paradigm in the field, and the concluding essay by Maria Tymoczko recognized corpora as being central to the discipline (Laviosa 1998; Tymoczko 1998). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited single-handedly by Mona Baker, appeared in the same year and soon became translation studies’ most widely used reference work. Its second edition, now coedited with Gabriela Saldanha, followed in 2009, and the third edition in 2019. By the time the first book-length guides to corpus-based work in translation studies appeared ( Laviosa 2002; Olohan 2004), the approach had diversified, as shown also in the final two articles in the first part of the present selection. Whereas the earlier pieces were mostly after identifying potential universals of translation, the fourth essay, “Towards a Methodology for Investigating the Style of a Literary Translator” (2000), opened up an entirely different perspective in drawing on forensic stylistics in order to demonstrate that literary translators were likely to have a style of their own which could be traced across all their work. Methodologically however the essay remained cautious and tentative. These methodological concerns form the main topic of the final essay in this part, “A Corpus-Based View of Similarity and Difference in Translation” (2004), and they have become very prominent in recent accounts of corpus-based studies (Zanettin 2014; Defrancq et al. 2015) In the mid-1990s Mona Baker, together with her husband Ken, established St Jerome Publishing, a business devoted exclusively to publishing books and journals on translation. While he looked after the business side of things, she took care of academic matters. From the beginning St Jerome brought out a new

Preface

xiii

journal, The Translator, with Mona Baker as editor, a role she continued to fulfil for almost 20 years. The Translator quickly grew into one of the leading journals in the field. It withstood political upheaval, gave its editor a good sense of what was brewing in translation studies and enabled her to build a global network of contacts. In the early 2000s she was appointed Professor of Translation Studies and the whole unit of which she was director, the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, moved to new premises as UMIST merged with the University of Manchester. The altered environment must have proved stimulating: apart from a ground-breaking monograph, about which there is more below, Mona Baker compiled the four-volume anthology Translation Studies: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (2009), comprising 74 articles in some 1,600 pages, which in turn spawned a smaller and more affordable selection in one volume, Critical Readings in Translation Studies (2010). The monograph was Translation and Conflict, first published in 2006 and reissued as a Routledge Translation Classic in 2018. It launched the second new paradigm illustrated in the present book. The approach became known as narrative or socio-narrative theory, and drew on the work of social scientists like Margaret Somers and Walter Fisher. Narratives, in this perspective, are the large and small stories we tell ourselves and others to give meaning to the world and which, in that sense, construct our world. They form part of the human condition. On a practical level, narratives comprise four features. First, they involve protagonists caught up in chains of events that unfold in a specific time and place. Second, the various elements making up a story derive their meaning from the connections they entertain with other elements in the story. Third, the sequence of events making up the story moves forward in a manner that has a logic of its own. Fourth, in order to piece together a story from the myriad things happening around us we necessarily select some for inclusion and ignore the rest. The technical terms for these features are temporality, relationality, emplotment and selectivity. In narrative theory, the set of narratives you believe in defines who you are; collective identity is a matter of subscribing to shared narratives. Part of the model’s attraction lies in its ability to address questions of ideology and to connect the personal and the public sphere, from the way we imagine our own path through life to the grand media narratives about the onward march of democracy or the impending perils of climate change. It is also a f lexible model, not tied to any particular medium or genre. Its initial testing and dissemination owed much to Mona Baker’s own doctoral students ( Julie Boéri, Sue-Ann Harding, Mahmoud Al-Herthani and others), who used narrative theory in their PhD theses and went on to publish monographs and journal articles. Douglas Robinson was among the first to engage with socio-narrative theory as applied to translation from a different but broadly sympathetic perspective (Robinson 2011: 161–187). The second part of the present selection covers socio-narrative theory. It includes an interview with Andrew Chesterman (“Ethics of Renarration”, 2008)

xiv

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in which Mona Baker explains, mostly with reference to Translation and Conflict, how narrative can be a useful way to think about the recontextualization that translation typically involves as translated texts enter new narrative environments and, in the process, are tweaked and retuned in a variety of ways. The two articles on either side of the interview, “Reframing Conf lict in Translation” (2007) and “Narratives of Terrorism and Security: ‘Accurate’ Translations, Suspicious Frames” (2010), draw on the further concept of framing, a frame being any device in the space around a narrative designed to steer its interpretation in a certain direction. The French critic Gérard Genette (1997) speaks of paratexts as performing a comparable function as “thresholds” of interpretation. The notion of framing is broader than this, since any narrative comes with a context that affects how it is perceived. The articles provide telling illustrations of the way in which political and ideological ends can be served by framing translations in a certain way. Some of the examples also occur in Translation and Conflict, and so the articles can provide a stepping stone to the book. The final two pieces in this part, “Translation as Renarration” (2014) and “Narrative Analysis and Translation” (2018), originally appeared as book chapters in a wide-ranging survey and a reference work, respectively. They restate the basic assumptions of the narrative approach but are also able to draw on the theoretical ref lections and practical case studies that had appeared in print since the publication of Translation and Conflict. As a result, the range of examples is now significantly more diverse, and it becomes clear that, in theoretical terms, distinguishing and classifying different types of narrative has exercised the researchers’ minds. In the case studies that are analysed by means of the narrative model, words like “power” and “conf lict” are common, as are references to ethical issues. This in itself was not entirely new in translation studies at the time, but the interest in translation as part of ideological and other struggles was rapidly growing. It was shared not only by proponents of narrative theory but also by researchers coming from cultural history such as Maria Tymoczko and by those studying the role of translators and interpreters in situations of actual war. Among the latter were Kayoko Takeda, who wrote on interpreters at the Tokyo War Crimes trial, Moira Inghilleri, who investigated translators recruited into the American “War on Terror”, and Hilary Footitt, whose Languages at War project assessed the role of translators and interpreters in scenarios ranging from the Second World War to the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia (Tymoczko & Gentzler 2002; Takeda 2010; Inghilleri 2009; Footitt et al. 2012). For Mona Baker the concern with the deployment of translation in conf lict situations led to a research project centred on the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and the uses its activists made of translation to support their cause. The essays in the third part of the present book ref lect this aspect of her work. It has generated widespread interest in activist translation, the third of the major innovations indicated at the beginning of this introduction. The broad idea has been to highlight the interventionist role, the social responsibility and the self-perception of

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activist networks engaged in producing counter-narratives as part of local as well as global ideological struggles. The article “Interpreters and Translators in the War Zone: Narrated and Narrators” (2010), which appeared in a special issue of the journal The Translator on “Translation and Violent Conf lict”, can be thought of as a transitional piece. It focuses on the perception of locally recruited translators by an army of occupation wary of the local population, the case in point being the American-led occupation of Iraq in 2003–2011, during which both the military and the international media who reported the occupation badly needed the fixers and facilitators able to negotiate the language barrier. The following two essays, “Translation and Activism” (2010) and “Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action” (2013), explore the phenomenon of activism and the place of translation in it. Activism itself covers the whole ideological spectrum, including the extreme right, but translation studies research has concentrated on humanitarian and global justice groups. Surveying several activist groups the articles consider the way these collectives keep their distance from mainstream professional and political structures, their commitment to equality and diversity, their non-hierarchical organization and their aim to change mindsets rather than reaching specific political goals, but they also probe the consistency and credibility of the narratives the groups tell about themselves. The second of these two articles brings up the notion of prefiguration, the idea of living here and now by the principles and standards that one would like to see in a future equitable society. The notion of prefigurative practice is carried forward in the final two pieces that make up the present book. They both date from 2016 and focus on activist networks in the particular case of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 and the aftermath of its suppression in the military coup of 2013. Both pieces show direct engagement with the individuals and collectives involved and champion citizen media, the material and virtual means through which activists organize and disseminate their protest. The two concluding pieces round off the present selection but they do not bring closure. In 2016 Mona Baker and her colleague Luis Pérez González started a large new research project on “Genealogies of Knowledge”, which is concerned with “the evolution and contestation of concepts across time and space”, as its subtitle indicates. While the project is primarily historical in nature, it reaches into the present. It also introduces a new generation of corpus studies and has ample room for intellectual as well as political conf lict and contestation. This introduction however must end here. Much about Mona Baker has been left unsaid, from her long involvement with research training to her unrelenting emphasis on scholarly quality. Her achievement in translation studies is unparalleled. She has given currency to novel ideas and created new research models. She has initiated major projects and received prestigious awards. She has had the courage of her convictions and has led by example. She has been inspirational.

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References Defrancq, B., De Clerck, B. & De Sutter, G. (2015) ‘Corpus-Based Translation Studies: Across Genres, Methods and Disciplines’, Across Languages and Cultures 16 (2), 157–162. Footitt, H., Kelly, M., Tobia, S., Baker, C. & Askew, L. (2012) Languages at War: Policies and Practices of Language Contacts in Conflict. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Genette, G. (1997) Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. Jane Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Orig: Seuils, 1987). Inghilleri, M. (2009) ‘Translators in War Zones: Ethics under Fire in Iraq’, in Globalization, Political Violence and Translation (ed. E. Bielsa & C. Hughes). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 207–221. Laviosa, S. (2002) Corpus-Based Translation Studies: Theory, Findings, Applications. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Laviosa, S. (1998) ‘The Corpus-Based Approch: A New Paradigm in Translation Studies’, Meta 43, 474–479. Olohan, M. (2004) Introducing Corpora in Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge. Robinson, Douglas (2011) Translation and the Problem of Sway, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Takeda, K. (2010) Interpreting the Tokyo War Crimes Trial: A Sociopolitical Analysis. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press. Tymoczko, M. (1998) ‘Computerized Corpora and the Future of Translation Studies’, Meta 43, 652–659. Tymoczko, M. & Gentzler, E., Eds. (2002) Translation and Power. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Zanettin, F. (2014) ‘Corpora in Translation’, in Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach (ed. J. House). Basingstoke: Palgrave, 178–199.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors and publisher would like to thank the following for permission to reprint material: ‘Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications’, in Mona Baker, Gill Francis and Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds.) Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, 1993, pp. 233–250. Reproduced by permission of John Benjamins. ‘Corpora in Translation Studies: An Overview and Some Suggestions for Future Research’, in Target, vol. 7, no. 2, 1995, pp. 223–243. Reproduced by permission of John Benjamins. ‘Corpus-based Translation Studies: The Challenges that Lie Ahead’, in Harold Somers (ed.) Terminology, LSP and Translation: Studies in Language Engineering in Honour of Juan C. Sager, 1996, pp. 175–186. Reproduced by permission of John Benjamins. ‘Towards a Methodology for Investigating the Style of a Literary Translator’, in Target, vol. 12, no. 2, 2000, pp. 241–266. Reproduced by permission of John Benjamins. ‘A Corpus-based View of Similarity and Difference in Translation’, in International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, vol. 9, no. 2, 2004, pp. 167–193. Reproduced by permission of John Benjamins. ‘Reframing Conf lict in Translation’, in Social Semiotics, vol. 17, no. 2, 2007, pp. 151–169. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis. ‘Narratives of Terrorism and Security: “Accurate” Translations, Suspicious Frames’, in Critical Studies on Terrorism, vol. 3, no. 3, 2010, pp. 347–364. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis. ‘Translation as Renarration’, in Juliane House (ed.) Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp.  158–177. Reproduced by permission of Palgrave Macmillan (Springer).

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‘Narrative Analysis and Translation’, in Kirsten Malmkjær (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Linguistics, 2018, pp. 179–193. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis. ‘Interpreters and Translators in the War Zone: Narrated and Narrators’, in Moira Inghilleri and Sue-Ann Harding (eds.) Translation and Violent Conflict, Special Issue of The Translator, vol. 16, no. 2, 2010, pp. 197–222. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis. ‘Translation and Activism’, in Maria Tymoczko (ed.) Translation, Resistance, Activism, 2010, pp.  23–41. Reproduced by permission of University of Massachusetts Press. ‘Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action’, in Social Movement Studies, vol. 21, no. 1, 2013, pp. 23–47. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis. ‘The Prefigurative Politics of Translation in Place-Based Movements of Protest: Subtitling in the Egyptian Revolution’, in The Translator, vol. 22, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1–21. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis. ‘Beyond the Spectacle: Translation and Solidarity in Contemporary Movements’, in Mona Baker (ed.) Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution,  2016, pp.  1–18. Reproduced by permission of Taylor  & Francis.

PART I

Corpus-based translation studies Introduction Federico Zanettin The first section of this volume collects five articles written between the early 1990s and the early 2000s, and which together articulate a vision of the application of corpus linguistics insights and techniques to the study of translation. This vision proved to be rather prolific, since hardly any article on corpus-based translation studies fails to refer to one or more of these pioneering publications, which trace the birth as well as the first developments of one of the fastestgrowing subfields in translation studies (Zanettin et al. 2015). The first three articles sketch out a rationale and possible research lines, while the last two further discuss methodological aspects of the application of corpus tools and resources in translation studies. The first article, published in 1993, appeared in a Festschrift volume honoring John Sinclair, the late British linguist and founder of the COBUILD project, which revolutionized contemporary lexicography and opened the way to a new type of corpus-based dictionaries. Perhaps not coincidentally, the article by Mona Baker similarly opened the way to what has since been known as corpus-based translation studies, or CTS. Baker’s article was not, strictly speaking, the first publication to discuss translation as an object of investigation using corpus linguistics methodologies; earlier publications include Lindquist (1984) and Gellerstam (1986). It was, however, the first to depart from a contrastive linguistics approach and consider corpora from a translation studies perspective. In Baker’s approach, corpus linguistics is used to explore features which are “linked to the nature of the translation process itself rather than to the confrontation of specific linguistic systems” (1993: 243), and translation is seen as a variety of language worthy of being studied because of its specificities, rather than as a deviant, distorted version of “real”, “natural” language.

2

Federico Zanettin

The article is divided into two parts, the first providing an overview and state-of-the-art of translation studies, at the time still an emerging discipline, the second offering some “suggestions for future research”, ones that indeed spawned much research in the decades that followed. Baker notes how debates on the notion of equivalence evolved from a search for isomorphism and semantic sameness across languages to an expansion of the concept and to various classifications of how different levels and types of equivalence may be realized. A move away from an essentialist view of meaning towards an understanding of meaning as function in context, in the British tradition of linguistics which extends from J.R. Firth to M.A.K. Halliday and John Sinclair, can be seen as paralleling the shift from source-oriented notions of equivalence to target-oriented approaches, with the latter stressing the role and function of translation in the receiving culture. This shift occurred both in relation to literary translation, where the position of translated text as part of the target system was underlined by descriptive translation studies, and in relation to non-literary translation, where the role of the receiving culture was underlined by functionalist theories. Especially important is the connection with polysystem theory and the notion of norms introduced by Gideon Toury, which presupposes a view of literature as a conglomerate of systems, and the need to study translated texts as part of such systems rather than in isolation and only as compared to the source text. Thus, while on the one hand the status of the source text was being undermined, translation was increasingly seen as a non-derivative activity, both by “systemic” scholars (Hermans 1999) and by scholars advocating a higher visibility of translation and translators ( Venuti 1995). Baker notes that “the notion of norms is very similar to that of typicality, a notion which has emerged from recent work on corpus-based lexicography” (1993: 239). She argues that, since norms can only be investigated on the basis of a corpus of texts rather than on the basis of individual texts, computerized corpora and corpus linguistics tools and methods make it possible to overcome the limitations inherent in the manual investigations of printed collections of text, which had led Toury to state that “we are in no position to point to strict statistical methods for dealing with translational norms” ( Toury 1978: 96). Baker suggests several research lines which could be fruitfully pursued with the help of electronic corpora; thus, corpora may help unearth sociocultural norms, for instance whether various target cultures may at times consistently show different attitudes towards the use of loan words. The evolution of translations through different stages and versions, including revision and editing by different agents, is another aspect that may be investigated by corpus linguistics techniques. However, among Baker’s suggestions for research avenues, what she then termed “universal features of translation” have indeed attracted most attention. Numerous articles have since been written on this topic, and the very notion of “universals of translation”, as they have sometimes also been called, has faced intense scrutiny (see e.g. Mauranen & Kujamäki 2004). The debate has led to reclassifications of supposed translation universals as well as to their redefinition

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and questioning, including by Baker herself ( Baker 2007), or to their outright rejection as a viable theoretical framework. The issue of universality aside, Baker suggested that computerized corpora can help explicate the phenomenon of translation, that is whether translated texts share characteristics which are the result of translation being a distinct and distinctive practice. Drawing on previous literature, she lists several features which have been posited to pertain to all translated texts, irrespective of source language or text type. These include a supposed tendency of translated texts to be more explicit, simpler and more conventional than non-translated texts, as well as to avoid repetition and to demonstrate a distinct distribution of conventional TL (target language) features, for instance of specific cohesive patterns. While still presented as “a very tentative list of suggestions” (1993: 343), Baker argues that corpora have, in fact, the potential of addressing a number of descriptive hypotheses in translation studies, and that cumulative findings may allow scholars to make generalizations that are otherwise very difficult to arrive at. While the 1993 article was included in a collection of articles on linguistics and addressed corpus linguists, the essay published in 1995 in the journal Target was addressed to the translation studies community. Baker points out the potential of corpora in theoretical and pedagogical areas of translation studies, and after noting how corpora are already firmly established as a basis for new developments in terminology and machine translation, devotes some space to defining and explaining the main terms and concepts of corpus linguistics. Specifically, after introducing corpora, concordances and basic statistical counts, she proposes a number of criteria for classifying different types of corpora for translation studies purposes. In addition to multilingual corpora and parallel corpora, the latter including translations together with their source texts, she introduces a new variety, which is comprised of two separate collections of texts in the same language, one composed of original texts and one consisting of texts translated into that language. The two corpus components must be comparable along a set of criteria. This is the type of corpus which, Baker argues, can support research into norms and distinctive features of translation. Having described corpus composition, Baker provides examples of possible investigations which could be carried out in order to test hypothesized features; thus, a higher frequency of occurrence of the optional “that” in reported structures in translated English texts, as compared to a corpus of non-translated English texts, may provide support to the explicitation hypothesis, while a lower type/token ratio and lexical density, i.e. “the percentage of lexical as opposed to grammatical items” (1995: 237), may be seen as supporting the simplification hypothesis. Aspects of corpus creation and of features to be investigated are discussed further in the 1996 essay. As far as corpus resources are concerned, Baker focuses on the creation of a comparable monolingual English corpus. She describes the specific parameters being implemented and documented in what became known as the Translational English Corpus (TEC), and its non-translational counterpart,

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assembled by selecting a comparable subcorpus of English non-translated texts. Baker stresses that the careful selection and documentation of texts belonging to different text types, from different languages and by different authors and translators, would allow scholars not only to search for assumed distinctive features of translation, but also to focus on and make sense of atypical patterns and unusual examples. While in this article Baker brings to sharper focus four possible specific features of translated texts per se, namely explicitation, simplification, normalization/conservatism and levelling out, she is well aware that these are rather vague and abstract concepts, and that the real challenge consists in devising techniques for isolating the surface expressions that constitute concrete manifestations of such higher-level features. She suggests, for instance, that among the features which could be seen as pointing to translated texts being more explicit than non-translated texts is the overuse of explanatory vocabulary and conjunctions. In order to detect whether translated texts are simpler and easier to read than non-translated texts, one could instead look not only at simple statistical features such as type/token ratio, lexical density and average sentence length, but also at the use of punctuation. As far as normalization/conservatism is concerned, she suggests taking into consideration the use of unmarked grammatical structures, punctuation and collocational patterns, which might be more frequent in translated texts than in non-translated texts. The fourth feature discussed, levelling out, would be confirmed if translated texts were found to be more homogeneous and similar to each other than non-translated texts are among themselves, so that by looking at statistical features such as lexical density and type/token ratio it could be shown that “translation tends to pull various textual features towards the centre, to move away from extremes” (1996: 184). While these first articles projected possible investigations at a time when not much was available in terms of suitable corpus data, the article published in 2000 takes stock of the Translational English Corpus (TEC), whose construction was by this time well under way in Manchester, using a comparable subcorpus of texts extracted from the British National Corpus (BNC) as a reference point. However, this time Baker explores a different path, providing tentative examples of how such a corpus resource can be used to investigate individual style in literary translation, rather than norms and distinctive features per se. Baker argues that while the concept of style in translation had been usually treated as a matter of quality assessment, that is as an evaluation of how well a translation renders the style of the original, style of translation can be described as referring to the characteristic use of language by individual translators, their “profile of linguistic habits” (2000: 246) as manifested in often subconscious “recurring patterns of linguistic behaviour” (ibid.), as compared to other translators. Baker suggests that the concept of style of translation should not, however, be restricted to differences in linguistic patterning, which may also be carried over, at least partly, from the source language and author, and that the very choice of themes, literary genres and texts could be included in the notion of (literary) translator style. Baker highlights how, while the study of corpora may appear to be driven by

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exclusively linguistic preoccupations, corpus-based studies may also lead to the empowerment of translation and translators, by foregrounding their visibility and voice, as opposed to a view of translation as a derivative activity. After providing a description of the composition of the translational corpus, which was “specifically designed to include, among other things, several works by individual experienced literary translators” (2000: 247), and of the corpus software specifically built to interrogate this resource, Baker sets about exploring methodological issues. She argues that while a comparable monolingual corpus can be used to provide evidence of the style of individual translators as well as of groups of translators under specific social and historical circumstances, in order for this type of resource to be used effectively there is a need to develop a feasible research methodology. Corpora can provide an answer to the question of whether two translators translating into the same target language, independently of source author and language, manifest a consistent preference for using specific “lexical items, syntactic patterns, cohesive devices, or even style of punctuation” (2000: 248). Baker brief ly surveys some linguistic patterns identified in this article and elsewhere (e.g. Baker 1999; Olohan & Baker 2000) in order to investigate the style of individual literary translators. These include statistical measures of lexical variation based on word frequency and sentence length as well as more focused lexicogrammatical analyses, for instance concerning the patterning of the lemma SAY, the most frequent reporting verb in English, in a number of literary texts translated by two different British translators. Baker, however, is also careful to remind us that findings from corpora should be corroborated by and integrated with extratextual research about the sociocultural environment in which the translators operate and their positioning towards their readers. The last article included in this section, published in 2004 in the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, addresses further methodological questions which specifically apply to corpus-based research on translation. After summarizing research carried out in two main areas, namely research on translated texts as opposed to non-translated texts and research on the linguistic behaviour of individual translators, Baker focuses on the latter, examining the identification of patterns of stylistic variation in the work of individual translators in more detail, and on some associated methodological challenges. She notes, for instance, the seemingly staggering difference between the overall frequency and distribution of recurring lexical phrases such as “in other words”, “once and for all”, “at the same time”, etc. in a subset of the translational and non-translational components of the English comparable corpus. Furthermore, recurring lexical patterns may be found to be unevenly distributed across different texts, and to occur with higher frequency in some texts rather than others. The distribution of lexical patterns may also vary among individual translators, possibly as the result of conscious strategies rather than of mostly unconscious stylistic choices, and the style of individual translators may develop over time. Methodological challenges include the issue of increasingly having to

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deal with too much rather than too little corpus data, the ever-present “danger of uncritical application of the methodology” (2004: 169) and issues related to corpus design and comparability. Baker’s contribution lies not only in her focus on both theoretical and methodological issues, but also in her commitment to developing suitable corpus resources to be used by the translation studies community and beyond. These concerns are still visible in the design of the Genealogies of Knowledge corpus, created by the eponymous project based at the University of Manchester (http:// genealogiesof knowledge.net/), of which Baker is currently principal investigator. The Genealogies suite of corpora is designed to allow researchers to examine the renegotiation of key concepts via translation in texts produced within specific historical and spatial locations, ranging from ancient Greek, medieval Arabic and Latin manuscripts to modern English printed and digital texts, and clearly builds on the experience gained during the development of the Translational English Corpus. While corpus-based studies have since evolved in many different directions and grown both in statistical and methodological sophistication (see e.g. Oakes & Ji 2012; Malamatidou 2017, respectively), the essays reprinted here, although exploratory in nature, already highlighted fundamental issues involved in doing corpus-based translation studies and foregrounded the role and distinctiveness of translation. As Baker reminds us throughout, despite increased technological refinements and the availability of corpus resources and tools, corpus-based studies remain a human endeavor, the exploitation of whose full potential rests on the principled selection of features to investigate and critical interpretation of results.

References Baker, Mona. 1993. ‘Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications’, in Mona Baker, et al. (eds.) Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 233–250. Baker, Mona. 1995. ‘Corpora in Translation Studies: An Overview and Some Suggestions for Future Research’, Target 7(2): 223–243. Baker, Mona. 1996. ‘Corpus-Based Translation Studies: The Challenges That Lie Ahead’, in Harold Somers (ed.) Terminology, LSP and Translation: Studies in Language Engineering in Honour of Juan C. Sager. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 175–186. Baker, Mona. 1999. ‘The Role of Corpora in Investigating the Linguistic Behaviour of Professional Translators’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 4(2): 281–298. Baker, Mona. 2000. ‘Towards a Methodology for Investigating the Style of a Literary Translator’, Target 12(2): 241–266. Baker, Mona. 2004. ‘A Corpus-Based View of Similarity and Difference in Translation’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9(2): 167–193. Baker, Mona. 2007. ‘Patterns of Idiomaticity in Translated vs. Non-Translated Text’, Belgian Journal of Linguistics 21: 11–21. Gellerstam, Martin. 1986. ‘Translationese in Swedish Novels Translated from English’, in Lars Wollin and Hand Lindquist (eds.) Translation Studies in Scandinavia. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 88–95.

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Hermans, Theo. 1999. Translation in Systems: Descriptive and System-Oriented Approaches Explained. Manchester: St Jerome. Lindquist, Hans. 1984. ‘The Use of Corpus-Based Studies in the Preparation of Handbooks for Translators’, in W. Wilss and G. Thome (eds.) Translation Theory and Its Implementation in the Teaching of Translating and Interpreting. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 260–270. Malamatidou, Sofia. 2017. Corpus Triangulation: Combining Data and Methods in CorpusBased Translation Studies. Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge. Mauranen, Anna and Pekka Kujamäki, eds. 2004. Translation Universals: Do They Exist? Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Oakes, Michael P. and Meng Ji, eds. 2012. Quantitative Methods in Corpus-Based Translation Studies: A Practical Guide to Descriptive Translation Research. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Olohan, Maeve and Mona Baker. 2000. ‘Reporting That in Translated English: Evidence for Subconscious Processes of Explicitation?’, Across Languages and Cultures 1(2): 141–158. Toury, Gideon. 1978. ‘The Nature and Role of Norms in Literary Translation’, in J. S. Holmes, J. Lambert and R. van den Broeck (eds.) Literature and Translation. Leuven: ACCO, 83–100. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. London and New York: Taylor & Francis. Zanettin, Federico, Gabriela Saldanha and Sue-Ann Harding. 2015. ‘Sketching Landscapes in Translation Studies: A Bibliographic Study’, Perspectives 23(2): 1–22. doi: 10.1080/0907676X.2015.1010551

1 CORPUS LINGUISTICS AND TRANSLATION STUDIES* Implications and applications Mona Baker

Abstract: The rise of corpus linguistics has serious implications for any discipline in which language plays a major role. This paper explores the impact that the availability of corpora is likely to have on the study of translation as an empirical phenomenon. It argues that the techniques and methodology developed in the field of corpus linguistics will have a direct impact on the emerging discipline of translation studies, particularly with respect to its theoretical and descriptive branches. The nature of this impact is discussed in some detail and brief reference is made to some of the applications of corpus techniques in the applied branch of the discipline.

1.1 Introduction A great deal of our experience of and knowledge about other cultures is mediated through various forms of translation, including written translations, subtitling, dubbing, and various types of interpreting activities. The most obvious case in point is perhaps literature. Most of us know writers such as Ibsen, Dostoyevsky and Borges only through translated versions of their works. But our reliance on translation does not stop here. Our understanding of political issues, of art, and of various other areas which are central to our lives is no less dependent on translation than our understanding of world literature. Given that translated texts play such an important role in shaping our experience of life and our view of the world, it is difficult to understand why translation has traditionally been viewed as a second-rate activity, not worthy of serious academic enquiry, and why translated texts have been regarded as no more than second-hand and distorted versions of ‘real’ texts. If they are to be studied at all, these second-hand texts are traditionally analysed with the sole purpose of proving that they inevitably fall short of reproducing all the glory of the original. * 1993. ‘Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications’, in Baker et al. (eds) Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 233–250.

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A striking proof of the low status accorded to translated texts comes from the young but by now well-established field of corpus linguistics. A recent survey commissioned by the Network of European Reference Corpora, an EECfunded project, shows that many corpus builders in Europe specifically exclude translated text from their corpora.1 This is presumably done on the grounds that translated texts are not representative and that they might distort our view of the ‘real’ language under investigation. It is perhaps justifiable to exclude translated texts which are produced by non-native speakers of the language in question, but what justification can there be for excluding translations produced by native speakers, other than that translated texts per se are thought to be somehow inferior or contrived? Biased as it may be, this traditional view of translation implies, in itself, an acknowledgement of the fact that translational behaviour is different from other types of linguistic behaviour, quite irrespective of the translator’s mastery of the target language. The starting point of this paper is that translated texts record genuine communicative events and as such are neither inferior nor superior to other communicative events in any language. They are however different, and the nature of this difference needs to be explored and recorded. Moreover, translation should be taken seriously by related disciplines such as linguistics, literary theory and cultural and communication studies, not least because these disciplines can benefit from the results of research carried out in the field of translation. At the same time, as a phenomenon which pervades almost every aspect of our lives and shapes our understanding of the world, the study of translation can hardly be relegated to the periphery of other disciplines and sub-disciplines, those listed above being no exception. What is needed is an academic discipline which takes the phenomenon of translation as its main object of study. For many scholars, this discipline now exists. Some refer to it as the ‘science of translation’, others as ‘translatology’, but the most common term used today is ‘translation studies’. Eco (1976:7) distinguishes between a discipline and a field of study. The first has “its own method and a precise object” (my emphasis). The second has “a repertoire of interests that is not as yet completely unified”. It could be argued that translation studies is still largely a ‘field of study’ in Eco’s terms. The vast majority of research carried out in this, shall we say emerging discipline, is still concerned exclusively with the relationship between specific source and target texts, rather than with the nature of translated text as such. This relationship is generally investigated using notions such as equivalence, correspondence, and shifts of translation, which betray a preoccupation with practical issues such as the training of translators. More important, the central role that these notions assume in the literature points to a general failure on the part of the theoretical branch of the discipline to define its object of study and to account for it. Instead of exploring features of translated texts as our object of study, we are still trying either to justify them or dismiss them by reference to their originals. It is my belief that the time is now ripe for a major redefinition of the scope and aims of translation studies, and that we are about to witness a turning point

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in the history of the discipline. I would like to argue that this turning point will come as a direct consequence of access to large corpora of both original and translated texts, and of the development of specific methods and tools for interrogating such corpora in ways which are appropriate to the needs of translation scholars. Large corpora will provide theorists of translation with a unique opportunity to observe the object of their study and to explore what it is that makes it different from other objects of study, such as language in general or indeed any other kind of cultural interaction. It will also allow us to explore, on a larger scale than was ever possible before, the principles that govern translational behaviour and the constraints under which it operates. Therein lie the two goals of any theoretical enquiry: to define its object of study and to account for it. Section 1.2 below offers an overview of the emerging discipline of translation studies and explains why translation scholars are now in a position to use the insights gained from corpus linguistics, and some of the techniques developed by it, to take translation across the threshold of ‘field of study’ and into the realm of fully-f ledged disciplines.

1.2 Translation studies: the state of the art 1.2.1 Central issues: the status of the source text and the notion of equivalence Until very recently, two assumptions dominated all discussions of translation and were never questioned in the literature. The first is that of the primacy of the source text, entailing a requirement for accuracy and faithfulness on the part of the translator. The second is a consequence of the first and is embodied in the notion of equivalence which has been the central concern of all discourse on translation since time immemorial. Translations should strive to be as equivalent to their originals as possible, with equivalence being understood mainly as a semantic or formal category. The implied aim of all studies on translation was never to establish what translation itself is, as a phenomenon, but rather to determine what an ideal translation, as an instance, should strive to be in order to minimise its inevitable distortion of the message, the spirit, and the elegance of the original. The essentialist question of how equivalence per se might be established in the course of translation has gradually been tempered by experience and by an explosion in the amount and range of texts which have come to be translated in a variety of ways on a regular basis. Hence, we now have a massive amount of literature which attempts to classify the notion of equivalence in a multitude of ways, and the question is no longer how equivalence might be achieved but, increasingly, what kind of equivalence can be achieved and in what contexts. This in itself is a noticeable improvement on the traditionally static view of equivalence, but it still assumes the primacy of the source text and it still implies that a translation is merely a text striving to meet the standards of another text.

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1.2.2 Developments which support a move towards corpus-based research The attempt to extend and classify the notion of equivalence has brought with it a need to explore not only the source text as the model to be adhered to but also the target language, and the specific target language text type, in order to give meaning to such categories as stylistic equivalence and functional equivalence. If the idea is not simply to reproduce the formal structures of the source text but also to give some thought, and sometimes priority, to how similar meanings and functions are typically expressed in the target language, then the need to study authentic instances of similar discourse in the two languages becomes obvious. There have been other developments which have played a more direct role in preparing the ground for corpus work. One such development is the decline of what we might call the semantic view of the relationship between source and target texts. For a long time, discourse on translation was dominated by the idea that meaning, or messages, exist as such and can, indeed should, be transferred from source to target texts in much the same way as one might transfer wine from one glass to another. The traditional dichotomy of translating word-forword or sense-for-sense is a product of this view of meaning. At about the same time that the notion of equivalence began to be reassessed, or perhaps a little earlier, new ideas began to develop about the nature of meaning in translation. Firth (1968:91) was among the first to suggest that, difficult though as it may appear, an approach which connects structures and systems of language to structures and systems in the context of situation (as opposed to structures and systems of thought) is more manageable and “more easily related to problems of translation”. Similarly, Haas (1968:104) stresses that, in practice, correspondence in meaning amounts to correspondence in use and asserts that “unless we can succeed in thus explaining translation, the mystery of bare and neutral fact will continue to haunt us”. Two expressions are equivalent in meaning if and only if “there is a correspondence between their uses” (ibid). The importance of this change in orientation, from a conceptual to a situational perspective and from meaning to usage, is that it supports the push towards descriptive studies in general and corpus-based studies in particular. Conceptual and semantic studies (in the traditional sense) can be based on introspection. Studies which take the context into consideration, and even more so, studies which attempt to investigate usage, are, by definition, only feasible if access is available to real data, and, in the case of usage, to substantial amounts of it. Apart from the decline of the semantic view of translation, another, and very exciting, development has been the emergence of approaches which undermine both the status of the source text vis-à-vis the translated text and the value of the very notion of equivalence, particularly if seen as a static relationship between the source and target texts. The move away from source texts and equivalence is instrumental in preparing the ground for corpus work because it enables the discipline to shed its longstanding obsession with the idea of studying individual

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instances in isolation (one translation compared to one source text at a time) and creates a requirement which can find fulfilment in corpus work, namely the study of large numbers of texts of the same type. This is precisely where corpus work comes into its own.

1.2.2.1 New perspectives: polysystem theory In the late seventies, Even-Zohar, a Tel-Aviv scholar, began to develop a theory of literature as a polysystem, that is as a hierarchical and dynamic conglomerate of systems rather than a disparate and static collection of texts. A given literary polysystem is seen as part of a larger cultural polysystem, itself consisting of various polysystems besides literature, for example politics and religion. These polysystems are structured differently in different cultures. Polysystem theory has far-reaching implications for the status of translated literature in general and for the status of the source text vis-à-vis the target text in particular. First, the theory assumes a high level of interdependence among the various systems and sub-systems which underlie a given polysystem, as well as among the polysystems of literature in various cultures. This means that, for instance, “literature for children would not be considered a phenomenon sui generis, but related to literature for adults” and, similarly, “translated literature would not be disconnected from original literature” (Even-Zohar 1979:13). As a consequence, the status of translated literature is elevated to the point where it becomes worthy of investigation as a system in its own right, interacting with its co-systems and with the literary polysystems of other cultures. By recognising translated literature as a system in its own right, polysystemists shifted the attention away from individual literary translations as the object of literary studies to the study of a large body of translated literature in order to establish its systemic features. Second, one of the main properties of the polysystem is that there is constant struggle among its various strata, with individual elements and systems either being driven from the centre to the periphery or pushing their way towards the centre and possibly occupying it for a period of time (ibid:14). This constant state of f lux suggests that no literary system or sub-system is restricted to the periphery by virtue of any inherent limitations on its value. Thus, the approach stresses that translated literature may, and sometimes does, occupy a central position in the polysystem and is therefore capable of providing canonised models for the whole polysystem. Moreover, given that polysystem theory recognises that intra- and inter-relations exist within both systems and polysystems, leading to various types of interference and transfer of elements, models, canons, and so on, it becomes obvious that “semiliterary texts, translated literature, children’s literature – all those strata neglected in current literary studies – are indispensable objects of study for an adequate understanding of how and why transfers occur within systems as well as among them” (ibid:25). And finally, polysystemists

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reject the popular view of translation as a derivative activity and stress instead that literary translation is “a creatively controlled process of acculturation in that translators can take an original text and adapt it to a certain dominant poetics or ideology in the receiving culture” (Heylen 1993:21). This view of literature as a conglomerate of systems, as well as the growing interest in transfer and interference across systems, has gradually undermined the status of the source text in translation studies. Since the early eighties, Toury, another Tel-Aviv scholar, has been stressing that a translation belongs to one textual system only, namely the target system, and the source text has gradually been assuming the role of a stimulus or source of information rather than the starting point for analysis. Questions regarding how a translated text came into being or what type of relationship it has with a given source text are becoming secondary to its classification as part of the target textual system. As Toury puts it in a more recent publication (1985:19): It is clear that, from the standpoint of the source text and source system, translations have hardly any significance at all, even if everybody in the source culture ‘knows’ of their factual existence . . . Not only have they left the source system behind, but they are in no position to affect its linguistic and textual rules and norms, its textual history, or the source text as such. On the other hand, they may well inf luence the recipient culture and language, if only because every translation is initially perceived as a target-language utterance. It is worth noting that similar, though not quite so radical, assessments of the status of the source text have also emerged among groups of scholars not specifically concerned with literary translation. For example, Vermeer (1983:90)2 suggests that the function of the translated text is determined by the interests and expectations of its recipients and not by the function of the source text. The SL text is a source of information and, like other sources of information, it may be exploited in a variety of ways to meet the expectations of an envisaged audience.

1.2.2.2 From equivalence to norms From the late seventies onwards, the source-oriented notion of equivalence has been gradually replaced by notions which clearly take the target system and culture as a starting point. Some of these notions have evolved within theories designed to account for translation within a commercial environment. They include, for example, Vermeer’s notion of coherence, defined as the agreement of a text with its situation (Vermeer 1983), and Sager’s definition of equivalence as a function of the specifications that accompany a request for translation (Sager 1993). The most important, however, has been the notion of norms, introduced by Toury (1978, 1980).

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Toury has developed a tripartite model in which norms represent an intermediate level between competence and performance. If we think of competence as an inventory of all the options that are available to translators in a given context, and performance as the subset of options which are actually selected by translators from this inventory, then norms are a further subset of these options. They are options which are regularly taken up by translators at a given time and in a given socio-cultural situation. In this sense, the notion of norms is very similar to that of typicality, a notion which has emerged from recent work on corpus-based lexicography and which contrasts sharply with the standard, absolute dualisms in linguistics: competence and performance, langue and parole. Norms, then, are a category of descriptive analysis. They can be identified only by reference to a corpus of source and target texts, the scrutiny of which would allow us to record strategies of translation which are repeatedly opted for, in preference to other available strategies, in a given culture or textual system. The concept of norms tips the balance not only in favour of the target text (as opposed to the traditional obsession with the source text), but, more important, it assumes that the primary object of analysis in translation studies is not an individual translation but a coherent corpus of translated texts. Norms do not emerge from a source text or a body of source texts. Equally, they do not emerge from the target system nor from a general collection of target texts. They are a product of a tradition of translating in specific ways, a tradition which can only be observed and elaborated through the analysis of a representative body of translated texts in a given language or culture. They can therefore be seen not just as a descriptive category but also as providing a functional, socio-historical basis for the structure of the discipline (Lambert 1985:34).

1.2.2.3 The rise of descriptive translation studies Since the seventies, several scholars have begun to express dissatisfaction with the heavy reliance on introspective methods in translation studies. Holmes (1988:101) makes the point most clearly: Many of the weaknesses and naiveties of contemporary translation theories are a result of the fact that the theories were, by and large, developed deductively, without recourse to actual translated texts-in-function, or at best to a very restricted corpus introduced for illustration rather than for verification or falsification. Newman (1980:64) similarly suggests that the way out of the dilemma posed by the notions of equivalence and translatability is to look at actual instances of translation and to determine, on the basis of those instances, “the kind of generalities that might form the basis of a theory of competence or systematic description”. It is however Toury who has done more to elaborate the concept of descriptive translation studies than anyone else in the discipline.

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For Toury, it is vital for translation studies to develop a descriptive branch if it is ever to become an autonomous discipline. Without this, translators will continue to rely on other disciplines such as linguistics to provide them with theoretical frameworks and the means to test their hypotheses. Descriptive Translation Studies, or DTS for short, is not reducible to a collection of case studies or comparative analyses of source and target texts. It is that branch of the discipline which must provide a sound methodology and explicit research procedures to enable the findings of individual descriptive studies to be expressed in terms of generalisations about translational behaviour. Its agenda consists, primarily, of investigating what translation is “under any defined set of circumstances . . . and WHY it is realized the way it is” (Toury 1991a:186). One of its main objectives is to render the findings of individual studies intersubjective and to make the studies themselves “repeatable, either for the same or for another corpus” (Toury 1980:81). It is perhaps worth noting at this point that although the words corpus and corpora are beginning to figure prominently in the literature on translation, they do not refer to the same kind of corpora that we tend to talk about in linguistics. Corpora in translation studies have so far been very modest affairs. Their size is not generally expressed in terms of number of words but of number of texts, and they are searched manually. For example, Vanderauwera (1985) is a study of “50 or so novels” translated from Dutch into English in “roughly the period 1960–1980” (ibid:1–2). This is a very small corpus, and yet the experience of searching it manually leads Vanderauwera to suggest that “serious and systematic research into translated texts is a laborious and tiresome business” (ibid:6). Toury himself seems torn between the need to set an ambitious program for DTS and the recognition that “the larger and/or more heterogeneous the corpus, the greater the difficulties one is likely to encounter while performing the process of extraction and generalization” (1980:66–7). In an earlier publication, Toury (1978:96) argues for a distributional study of norms based on statistical techniques but concludes that . . . as yet we are in no position to point to strict statistical methods for dealing with translational norms, or even to supply sampling rules for actual research (which, because of human limitations, has nearly always been applied to samples only, and will probably go on being carried out in much the same way). At this stage we must be content with our intuitions . . . and use them as keys for selecting a corpus and for hitting upon ideas. One of John Sinclair’s major achievements for linguistics has been his success, through the collection of computerised corpora and the development of a relevant research methodology, in providing ways of overcoming our human limitations and minimising our reliance on intuition. His work can provide solutions for precisely the kind of problems that translation scholars are still struggling with today.

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1.3 Corpus work in translation studies: the potential There is no doubt that the availability of corpora and of corpus-driven methodology will soon provide valuable insights in the applied branch of translation studies, and that the impact of corpus-based research will be felt there long before it begins to trickle into the theoretical and descriptive branches of the discipline. Sinclair (1992:395) touches very brief ly, and strictly from the point of view of a linguist, on one obvious application: The new corpus resources are expected to have a profound effect on the translations of the future. Attempts at machine translation have consistently demonstrated to linguists that they do not know enough about the languages concerned to effect an acceptable translation. In principle, the corpora can provide the information. In the above statement, which is one of the very few Sinclair has made on translation, the concern is merely with improving the performance of translators and of machine translation systems in terms of approximating to the structures and natural patterns of a given language or languages. This same concern underlies most of the expressions of interest in corpus studies which are beginning to take shape in the literature.3 It is of course a legitimate concern and one which will be shared widely by scholars within and outside translation studies, theorists and practitioners alike. I would, however, like to think that the ‘profound effect’ which Sinclair refers to will not be understood merely in terms of knowing enough about the languages concerned to approximate to their patterns. After all, once we are in a position to describe and account for our object of study, namely translation, we might find that approximating to the patterns of the target language, or any language for that matter, is not necessarily as feasible as we seem to assume, and that it is not the only factor at play in shaping translational behaviour. Several scholars, for example Toury (1991b:50) and Even-Zohar (1979:77) have already noted that the very activity of translating, the need to communicate in translated utterances, operates as a major constraint on translational behaviour and gives rise to patterns which are specific to translated texts. Thus Even-Zohar (ibid), stresses that “we can observe in translation patterns which are inexplicable in terms of any of the repertoires involved”, that is patterns which are not the result of interference from the source or target language. Examples of these patterns are discussed as universal features of translation in section 1.3.1 below. The profound effect that corpora will have on translation studies, in my view, will be a consequence of their enabling us to identify features of translated text which will help us understand what translation is and how it works. The practical question of how to improve our translations will find more reliable and realistic answers once the phenomenon of translation itself is explained in its own terms. Practical applications aside, what kind of queries can access to computerised corpora help us resolve in our effort to explicate the phenomenon of translation?

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Given that this question, to my knowledge, has not been addressed before, what follows has to be seen as a very tentative list of suggestions which can provide a starting-point for corpus-based investigations in the discipline but which do not, by any means, address the full potential of corpora in translation studies.

1.3.1 Universal features of translation The most important task that awaits the application of corpus techniques in translation studies, it seems to me, is the elucidation of the nature of translated text as a mediated communicative event. In order to do this, it will be necessary to develop tools that will enable us to identify universal features of translation, that is features which typically occur in translated text rather than original utterances and which are not the result of interference from specific linguistic systems. It might be useful at this point to give a few examples of the type of translation universals I have in mind. Based on small-scale studies and casual observation, a number of scholars have noted features which seem, intuitively, to be linked to the nature of the translation process itself rather than to the confrontation of specific linguistic systems. These include: (i) A marked rise in the level of explicitness compared to specific source texts and to original texts in general (see for instance Blum-Kulka 1986:21). In Baker (1992), I discussed several examples of translations which build extensive background information into the target text. In one case (Autumn of Fury: the Assassination of Sadat by Mohamed Heikal; 1983:3), a simple clause – The example of Truman was always present in my mind – is rendered into Arabic as follows: In my mind there was always the example of the American President Harry Truman, who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt towards the end of World War II. At that time – and after Roosevelt – Truman seemed a rather nondescript and unknown character who could not lead the great human struggle in World War II to its desired and inevitable end. But Truman – faced with the challenge of practical experience – grew and matured and became one of the most prominent American presidents in modem times. I imagined that the same thing could happen to Sadat. Toury (1991b:51) accepts that ‘explicitation’4 is a feature of all kinds of mediated events, including interaction in a foreign language, but wonders whether there are any differences in the level and nature of explicitation by, for instance, language learners vs. translators, professional vs. nonprofessional translators, or in oral vs. written translation. The techniques currently available in corpus linguistics can in principle cope with such tasks as the measurement of expansion in two or more corpora. Moreover, specific conventions and software tools are now available for recording

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(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

(v)

(vi)

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and retrieving automatically such things as information about a writer or speaker, for example his/her first language, nationality, and gender. A tendency towards disambiguation and simplification. For example, Vanderauwera (1985:97–8) notes that, in her corpus of English translations of Dutch novels, potentially ambiguous pronouns are replaced by forms which allow more precise identification, and difficult syntax is made easier. Similarly, she reports that “where quotation marks fail to distinguish a person’s speech or thought in the source text, they are almost invariably restored in the target text” (ibid:94). Again, corpus linguistics now has the necessary tools to measure such things as simple vs. complex syntax, and the automatic retrieval of pronominal as opposed to precise forms of identification, as well as elements of punctuation such as quotation marks, is a fairly simple operation in terms of current corpus techniques. A strong preference for conventional ‘grammaticality’. In interpreting, that is oral translation, this manifests itself in an overriding tendency to round off unfinished sentences, ‘grammaticise’ ungrammatical utterances and omit such things as false starts and self-corrections, even those which are clearly intentional in a courtroom context (Shlesinger 1991:150). Vanderauwera (1985:93) records a similar tendency towards general textual conventionality in a corpus of English translations of Dutch novels. A tendency to avoid repetitions which occur in source texts, either by omitting them or rewording them (Shlesinger 1991, Toury 1991a). Toury (ibid: 188) reports this feature as “one of the most persistent, unbending norms in translation in all languages studied so far”. A general tendency to exaggerate features of the target language. For example, binomials composed of synonyms or near-synonyms, which are a common feature of Hebrew writing, tend to occur more frequently in translated than in original Hebrew texts and to replace non-binomials in source texts (Toury 1980:130). Vanderauwera (1985:11) suggests that translations overrepresent features of their host environment in order to make up for the fact that they were not originally meant to function in that environment. Point (v) above not withstanding, it has been shown that the process of mediation often results in a specific type of distribution of certain features in translated texts vis-à-vis source texts and original texts in the target language. For example, Shamaa (1978:168–71) reports that common words such as say and day occur with a significantly higher frequency in English texts translated from Arabic than they do in original English texts. At the same time, their frequency of occurrence in the translated English texts is still considerably lower than the frequency of the equivalent Arabic items in the source texts. Shamaa suggests that, although subtle and elusive, this unusual distribution of features contributes to the identification of a text as a translation and “leave[s] a vague impression of being culturally exotic” (ibid: 172). It is a symptom of what is sometimes referred to as “the third code” (Frawley 1984:168), which is a result of the confrontation of the source and

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target codes and which distinguishes a translation from both source texts and original target texts at the same time.5 Another example of the operation of the ‘third code’ is provided by Blum-Kulka (1986:33) who suspects that research is likely to reveal “that cohesive patterns in TL texts are neither TL nor SL norms oriented, but form a system of their own”. Research into the nature of the third code in translation might also provide answers to queries about the nature of ‘pseudotranslations’, that is texts which are regarded as translations but for which no genuine source texts exist. It will clearly take some time and ingenuity to develop a corpus methodology for capturing universal features of the type discussed above. But, assuming that we have a corpus of texts translated into, say, English from a variety of languages, we might attempt to isolate patterns which (i) occur across the corpus, irrespective of whether the source texts are French, Hebrew or Chinese, (ii) do not occur, or do not occur to the same degree/with the same frequency, in original English texts. We then need to compare our results with the results of similar research carried out on corpora of translated texts in, let us say, French and German. As a starting point, this will help us identify certain patterns or tendencies which occur in the three corpora and which, therefore, are good candidates for universal features of translation. Further research on similar corpora in other languages will either confirm or disprove our hypotheses.

1.3.2 Translational norms operating in a given socio-cultural context Universal features such as those discussed in 2.1 above can be seen as a product of constraints which are inherent in the translation process itself, and this accounts for the fact that they are universal (or at least we assume they are, pending further research). They do not vary across cultures. Other features have been observed to occur consistently in certain types of translation within a particular sociocultural and historical context. These are a product of norms of translation which represent another type of constraint on translational behaviour (see section 1.2.1 above). Like universal features of translation, textual exponents of translational norms can be efficiently and reliably investigated if access to computerised corpora is made available to scholars in the field. Toury (1978) distinguishes between various types of norms which operate at different stages of the translation process. The techniques of corpus linguistics are particularly suited to the identification of what Toury calls ‘operational norms’: norms which “affect the matrix of the text, that is, the modes of distributing linguistic material [matricial norms] . . ., and the actual verbal formulation of the

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text [textual norms]” (ibid:87). Matricial norms cover the occurrence of omissions, additions, substitutions and transpositions in translated texts. For instance, Toury (1980:127) reports that in translations of prose fiction from English and German into Hebrew during the years 1930–45, there was a tendency to omit substantial subtitles (that is subsidiary rather than main titles of literary works), and that this contrasts with a tendency to add subtitles of a certain type in literary translation into French in the early eighteenth century. Textual norms have been discussed more widely in the literature, and examples include the following: (i) Toury (1980:129) reports, in the same corpus of Hebrew translations of prose fiction, a high level of dependence on a repertory of fixed collocations derived from canonised religious texts. The same corpus also reveals that special importance was attached to direct speech: pieces of dialogue were regularly turned into independent paragraphs, indirect speech was replaced by direct speech, and phrases which indicated a move from narration to dialogue were omitted. (ii) In a corpus of 425 mystery books translated into Hebrew since the early sixties, Toury (ibid:104) identifies a strong norm which he expresses as “The title should never be too complex, witty or sophisticated”. This norm manifests itself in two ways. First, sophisticated titles (in terms of lexis) are replaced by simple titles which contain one of a stock of items that include the Hebrew equivalents of ‘mystery’, ‘murder’, ‘blood’, ‘death’, and so on. Thus, The Case of the Ice-Cold Hands becomes “The Mystery of the Murder in the Motel”. Second, the Hebrew titles follow a limited range of simple syntactic patterns, notably ‘the x of y’, as in the above example, and ‘the x’s y’ as in “The Black Candle’s Mystery”. (iii) In a corpus of Dutch novels translated into English, Vanderauwera (1985:93) notes that foreign words and dialogue which occur in the source texts are either replaced in the translation by target language items (for example Malay klamboe is replaced by mosquito curtain) or glossed in the target language. (iv) Based on a study of a limited corpus of translations of modern, nonliterary English texts in a variety of languages, I have suggested (Baker 1992:36) that Japanese seems far more tolerant of the use of loan words in translation than, for instance, Arabic and French. The norms that govern translational behaviour in the three languages are noticeably different in this regard.

1.3.3 Other issues for corpus research Apart from universal and norm-oriented features of translational behaviour, access to computerised corpora should enable us to explore a number of other theoretical issues which are difficult to deal with on the basis of small-scale studies.

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First, there is the question of the intermediate stages of translation, or how the final product evolves over a period of time. Recent developments in the working practices of professional translators will soon make this type of research feasible. For instance, the Institute of Translation and Interpreting of Great Britain is currently considering a proposal to adapt a variant of the British Standard BS57506 for professional translators working in a variety of contexts: as staff translators, on their own or through agencies or co-operatives. If adopted, this standard will require translators to follow certain routines in documenting the work they receive and despatch, whether in manuscript or disk form, and to maintain clearly labelled and dated versions of each translation. Access to this type of text in electronic form can be used to explore the process of translation through a retrospective analysis of successive versions of the product. New software tools, including tools for fuzzy matching (that is identifying stretches of text which are similar but not identical), are currently being developed by corpus linguists. Svanholm (1992) reports that IBM already offer their translators fuzzy matching software as a basic tool for revising and updating existing translations of large documents. Second, central questions which have been on the agenda for decades can be resolved more efficiently and reliably through the investigation of large computerised corpora. These questions include the size and nature of the unit of translation, the type of equivalence which is achieved in practice and the level at which it is achieved. Again, new software tools are now available for the investigation of parallel corpora, that is corpora of source texts and their translations (see for example Marinai et al 1991, Brown & Cocke 1988, Church & Gale 1991). New and sophisticated methodologies are also evolving for investigating the nature and limits of equivalence on the basis of comparable corpora, that is corpora of comparable original texts in several languages. Sinclair has pioneered the investigation of comparable corpora through a project on multilingual lexicography (Sinclair 1991).

1.4 Conclusion I have argued in this paper that translation studies has reached a stage in its development as a discipline when it is both ready for and needs the techniques and methodology of corpus linguistics in order to make a major leap from prescriptive to descriptive statements, from methodologising to proper theorising, and from individual and fragmented pieces of research to powerful generalisations. Once this is achieved, the distinction between the theoretical and applied branches of the discipline will become clearer and more convincing. There is now an urgent need to explore the potential for using large computerised corpora in translation studies. It seems to me that most of the components for realising this potential are in place. The emphasis has shifted from meaning to usage, and the notion of equivalence is gradually giving way to that of norms. The status of the source text has been undermined and we have managed to make the leap from source-text-bound rules and imperatives to descriptive

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categories. There is increasing interest in features of translated texts per se and we are beginning to develop a descriptive branch of the discipline with welldefined objectives and an explicit program. What we need is a research methodology and a set of tools that can help us put this program into action. A suitable methodology and a set of very powerful and adaptable tools are now available from corpus linguistics.

Notes 1 INL Working Paper 92–11. J. G. Kruyt & E. Putter, Corpus Design Criteria: report submitted to the European Commission by the Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie, Leiden, as a contribution to a European enquiry into corpus design criteria. 2 I do not have access to the original German text quoted in the references, but have relied on an unpublished translation by Professor J. C. Sager, UMIST, of short extracts from various German sources. 3 For example, Lindquist (1984) is a corpus-based study of adverbials which aims not at explicating translational behaviour but at providing a ‘translation grammar’ which can guide translators’ choices. 4 This is the term used in the literature. 5 In some cases, when an unusual distribution of features is clearly a result of the translator’s inexperience or lack of competence in the target language, this phenomenon is referred to as ‘translationese’. 6 BS5750 is a British standard for quality assurance. It specifies a set of controls which have to be implemented in order for an organisation to claim that it is ‘quality assured’. It is therefore a form of company certification, guaranteeing that the final product marketed by a given company meets the national standard.

References Baker, M. 1992. In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London & New York: Routledge. Blum-Kulka, S. 1986. “Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation”. Interlingual and Intercultural Communication: Discourse and Cognition in Translation and Second Language Acquisition Studies ed. by J. House & S. Blum-Kulka, 17–35. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Brown, P. & J. Cocke. 1988. “A Statistical Approach to Language Translation”. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computational Linguistics: COLING ’88 ed. by D. Vargha, 71–6. Budapest. Church, K. & W. Gale. 1991. “Concordances for Parallel Text”. Using Corpora: Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference of the UW Centre for the New OED & Text Research. St. Catherine’s College: Oxford. Eco, U. 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press. Even-Zohar, I. 1978. “The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem.” Literature and Translation ed. by J. S. Holmes, J. Lambert & R. van den Broeck 117–27. Leuven: ACCO. ———. 1979, 1990. “Polysystem Theory.” Poetics Today (Special Issue on Polysystem Studies by Itamar Even-Zohar) 11, 1. 9–26. Firth, J. R. 1956, 1968. “Linguistics and Translation” Selected Papers of J. R. Firth 1952–59 ed. by F. R. Palmer, 84–95. London: Longman. (first read at Birbeck College, London in 1956). Frawley, W. 1984. “Prolegomenon to a Theory of Translation”. Translation: Literary, Linguistic and Philosophical Perspectives ed. by W. Frawley, 159–75. London & Toronto: Associated University Presses.

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Haas, W. 1968. “The Theory of Translation”, in The Theory of Meaning, ed. by G. H. R. Parkinson, 86–108. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heylen, R. 1993. Translation, Poetics, and the Stage: Six French Hamlets. London & New York: Routledge. Holmes, J. S. 1988. Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Lambert, J. 1991. “Shifts, Oppositions and Goals in Translation Studies: Towards a Genealogy of Concepts.” Translation Studies: The State of the Art ed. by K. M. van Leuven-Zwart & T. Naaijkens, 25–37. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Marinai, E., C. Peters & E. Picchi. 1991. “Bilingual Reference Corpora: A System for Parallel Text Retrieval”. Unpublished manuscript. Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale: Pisa, Italy. Lindquist, H. 1984. “The Use of Corpus-based Studies in the Preparation of Handbooks for Translators”. Translation Theory and its Implementation in the Teaching of Translating and Interpreting ed. by W. Wilss & G. Thome, 260–70. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Newman, A. 1980. Mapping Translation Equivalence. Leuven: ACCO. Sager, J. C. 1993. An Extended Communicative Theory of Translation. Unpublished Manuscript, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. Shamaa, N. 1978. A Linguistic Analysis of Some Problems of Arabic to English Translation. D. Phil. Thesis, Oxford University. Shlesinger, M. 1991. “Interpreter Latitude vs. Due Process. Simultaneous and Consecutive Interpretation in Multilingual Trials”. Empirical Research in Translation and Intercultural Studies ed. by Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit, 147–55. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Sinclair, J. M. 1991. Council of Europe Multilingual Lexicography Project. Unpublished report submitted to the Council of Europe under contract no. 57/89. ———. 1992. “The Automatic Analysis of Corpora”. Directions in Corpus Linguistics: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 82, Stockholm 4–8 August 1991 ed. by J. Svartvik 379–97. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Toury, G. 1978. “The Nature and Role of Norms in Literary Translation.” Literature and Translation ed. by J. S. Holmes, J. Lambert & R. van den Broeck 83–100. Leuven: ACCO. ———. 1980. In Search of a Theory of Translation. Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. ———. 1985. “A Rationale for Descriptive Translation Studies”. The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation ed. by T., Hermans, 16–41. London & Sydney: Croom Helm. ———. 1991a. “What are Descriptive Studies into Translation Likely to Yield apart from Isolated Descriptions.” Translation Studies: The State of the Art ed. by K. M. van LeuvenZwart & T. Naaijkens 179–92. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ———. 1991b. “Experimentation in Translation Studies: Achievements, Prospects and Some Pitfalls”. Empirical Research in Translation and Intercultural Studies ed. by Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit, 45–66. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Vanderauwera, R. 1985. Dutch Novels Translated into English: The Transformation of a “Minority” Literature. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Vermeer, H. J. 1983. Aufsätze zur Translationstheorie. Heidelberg: Groos.

2 CORPORA IN TRANSLATION STUDIES* An overview and some suggestions for future research Mona Baker

Abstract: Corpus-based research has become widely accepted as a factor in improving the performance of machine translation systems, and corpus-based terminology compilation is now the norm rather than the exception. Within translation studies proper, Lindquist (1984) has advocated the use of corpora for training translators, and Baker (1993a) has argued that theoretical research into the nature of translation will receive a powerful impetus from corpusbased studies. It is becoming increasingly important to take stock of what is happening on this front and to start working towards the development of an explicit and coherent methodology for corpus-based research in the discipline. This paper discusses the current and potential use of corpora in translation studies, with particular reference to theoretical issues. Résumé: On s’accorde à voir dans la recherche sur corpus un facteur susceptible d’améliorer les systèmes de traduction automatique; la terminologie basée sur corpus devient la règle plutôt que l’exception. A propos des recherches sur la traduction, Lidquist (1984) a prôné le recours aux corpora dans la formation des traducteurs; selon Baker (1993a), l’étude théorique de la traduction bénéficiera des recherches fondées sur corpus. Il importe désormais de répertorier les acquis en ce domaine, afin de mettre au point une méthodologie explicite et cohérente. L’article qui suit analyse l’usage présent et possible des corpora dans les recherches sur la traduction, et prêtant une attention particulière aux questions théoriques.

2.1 Introduction The potential for using corpora is beginning to take shape in translation studies. Computerised corpora are becoming increasingly popular in those areas of the discipline which have close links with the hard sciences. This is particularly true of terminology and machine translation, where the emphasis is primarily, if not exclusively, on scientific and technical texts. * 1995. ‘Corpora in Translation Studies: An Overview and Some Suggestions for Future Research’, Target 7(2): 223–243.

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Terminology compilation is now firmly corpus-based. The desire to construct abstract and neat conceptual systems has given way here to the practical need of addressing what happens in real life. Terms are therefore no longer extracted from previous lists but are rather drawn from a representative corpus of authentic texts held in electronic form (Sager 1990: 130).1 A similar development has taken place in machine translation where it is now widely accepted that access to computerised corpora may well hold the key to future success in the field. Again, this ref lects a move away from conceptual and formal representations of language, which have not proved very helpful in the past, to addressing natural language in all its variety and infiniteness. The repeated failure of pre-formulated rules and neat semantic analyses to improve the performance of machine translation systems has led to the gradual realisation that the knowledge required to improve these systems must come from natural language in use (Schubert 1992: 87; Laff ling 1991, 1992). Corpora are not only used by linguists to write better rules for the machines to operate on but also as a direct knowledge source for the machines themselves (ibid). Modern machine translation systems use the principle of analogy to extrapolate from the typical examples held in the corpus to texts that have not been encountered before. The development of corpus-based techniques in terminology and machine translation is encouraging. It goes some way towards fulfilling the growing need for a rigorous descriptive methodology in an attempt to increase the intersubjectivity of the applied areas of translation studies, such as translator training and translation criticism, and of course in the pursuit of a more satisfying theoretical account of the phenomenon of translation itself. It is the potential use of corpora in these theoretical and pedagogical areas that I would now like to address. But before I do so, it is perhaps important to look in some detail at the way in which the words corpus and corpora have been used in the literature in order to avoid possible misunderstanding in the discussion which follows. It might also be useful to give a brief overview of the kind of information that can be obtained from corpora.

2.2 Corpora: definition, types and overview of basic operations 2.2.1 What is a corpus? The word corpus originally meant any collection of writings, in a processed or unprocessed form, usually by a specific author.2 In recent years, and with the growth of corpus linguistics, 3 this definition has changed in three important ways: (i) corpus now means primarily a collection of texts held in machinereadable form and capable of being analysed automatically or semi-automatically in a variety of ways; (ii) a corpus is no longer restricted to ‘writings’ but includes spoken as well as written text, and (iii) a corpus may include a large number of texts from a variety of sources, by many writers and speakers and on a multitude

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of topics. What is important is that it is put together for a particular purpose and according to explicit design criteria in order to ensure that it is representative of the given area or sample of language it aims to account for. Some of these criteria are discussed under 2.3 below.4 One important feature that remains variable in modern corpora is the nature and extent of the texts held. In linguistics, corpora usually consist of running texts, but these texts are not always held in full. For example, the Brown and LOB Corpora consist of fragments of texts, each fragment being approximately 2000 words in length (Hof land and Johansson 1982), selected on a more or less random basis within specified genres (Sinclair 1991a: 23). The British National Corpus consists of text samples, generally no longer than 40,000 words each. These samples are taken randomly from the beginning, middle or end of longer texts, but care is taken to choose a convenient breakpoint, such as the end of a section or chapter, to begin and end the sample in order not to fragment highlevel discourse units (British National Corpus 1991). Other corpora, for example the Cobuild/Bank of English corpus, consist of whole texts, irrespective of the size of any individual text held in the collection. In machine translation, by contrast, a corpus does not necessarily consist of running texts; it may be no more than a set of examples (Schubert 1992: 87). One of the definitions of corpus in this field is therefore “the finite collection of grammatical sentences that is used as a basis for the descriptive analysis of a language” (definition given in the ‘Glossary of Terms’ in Newton 1992: 223). It is also important to bear in mind that the word corpus has often been used in translation studies proper to refer to fairly small collections of text which are not held in electronic form and which are therefore searched manually (Baker 1993a: 241). In what follows, I intend to use corpus to mean any collection of running texts (as opposed to examples/sentences), held in electronic form and analysable automatically or semi-automatically (rather than manually).5

2.2.2 Basic text processing operations A great deal of experience in corpus work has been acquired in the past few decades and a stock of very powerful routines for processing text held in machine-readable form has now been developed. Some of these routines have not only become standard operations which any corpus holder will have access to, but they are also now included in software packages which are readily available to the public at very modest prices. The most popular and versatile of these packages is Microconcord, marketed by Oxford University Press. OUP have so far also released two corpus collections of one million words each and are planning to release more corpora as part of the British National Corpus initiative. Working with corpora is therefore becoming a perfectly viable proposition even at the level of individual researchers.

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The corpus analyst’s stock-in-trade is the KWIC concordance, KWIC being an acronym for Key Word In Context. This is a list of all the occurrences of a specified keyword or expression in the corpus, set in the middle of one line of context each. The following is a KWIC concordance of Greek from the OUP Corpus Collection A (British newspaper texts from The Independent and The Independent on Sunday): THOMPSON in Athens

A ere four sendings-off, three of them There are two more sales today.

ed over oil spill

The ere added to other Christian groups er

ATHENS (UPI) _ The s, it fails to persuade us that with 1012 Storms threaten mild 1011 THEATRE / A spark of well as agriculture, she has studied eration by sunshine and retsina on a r _ alleged to be a rare work of the t this place?” asks the disapproving of the Titans (1981), his foray into ter Lebanon in 1926, they proposed a r Christian groups (Greek Catholics, sarouchis, the doyen of contemporary depicted wearing bull’s horns in the er this constructive interlude, that sion _ it is the first time a former pline by backing bouzouki players in ted by a Wren facade, another by the 04.) Where can you go to church in a three sciences and perhaps Latin and residing over the Everyman’s current e sculpture _ the helmeted head of a election campaign, though low-key by venged unnaturally. This may be more r of riddles.

Why did Alexander like Templeton’s carpet factory or eeds to remember is that the ‘almost sequel. Aspiring to the condition of

greek Greek, Greek Greek (Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek, Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek Greek. Greek Greek Greek Greek ‘Greek” ‘Greek” Greek Greek

air force warrant officer, Michalis P as Bulgaria beat the visitors 4-0 in bidders descended on the sale yesterd captain of a ship responsible for Sun Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenians Chief Justice, Yannis Grivas, was swo drama we are not secular theatre-goer election climate From PETE fire: The Trojan Women - Liverpool Ev History, Philosophy, Astonomy, Mathe island holiday. (They don’t have wint master Skopas. Archaeologists and art matriarch when her grandson returns f mythology.

There must be easier w Orthodox as president, because he wou Orthodox, Armenians and others), the painters, who died early this year, a playwright Euripides’ Bacchae.

Th politics will avoid reverting to thei prime minister has been indicted by p restaurants, or a plethora of cabaret revival.

At best these buildings sarcophagus? (St Jude’s Church, Blyth Home News Page 3