On the need for a new research agenda for corpus-based translation studies: a multi-methodological, multifactorial and interdisciplinary approach

ABSTRACT

Twenty-five years after the emergence of corpus-based translation studies the present paper offers a critical analysis of the current state of the art in corpus-based translation studies, focusing on what it has yielded in terms of description, methodology and theory. This analysis leads to the detection of problem areas which result in limitations to progress in the field. We argue that these limitations can be overcome, by adopting a revised research agenda for empirical translation studies, with a broader methodological scope and more theoretical awareness. At the very heart of this agenda is the description of translation as an inherently multidimensional linguistic activity and product, which is simultaneously constrained by sociocultural, technological and cognitive factors, leading ultimately to a better understanding of what translation exactly is, how it is shaped by varying circumstances, and how it relates to other types of constrained communication. The added value of this research agenda is illustrated in two case studies on optional that in English complement clause constructions.

KEYWORDS:

• Empirical translation studies
• optional that
• translated language
• learner language
• multifactorial statistics

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Laura Penha-Marion for her help with the coding of the tell data and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. The first author is grateful to the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at Ghent University for awarding a sabbatical leave from February to September 2018.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Gert De Sutter is Associate Professor in translation studies and Dutch linguistics in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University. He also heads the research unit EQTIS (Empirical and Quantitative Translation and Interpreting Studies) at the same institution. His research can be broadly characterized as empirical research of linguistic variation in translated and non-translated texts, mainly using corpus data and advanced multifactorial statistical techniques. The overall aim of his research is to get a better insight into the complex interaction of social norms and bilingual cognition in translators.

Marie-Aude Lefer is Associate Professor of translation studies at the Louvain School of Translation and Interpreting, where she teaches translation studies, corpus-based translation studies and English-to-French translation. Her research interests include empirical translation studies, corpus linguistics, contrastive linguistics and lexicology. She has taken part in several corpus collection initiatives at UCLouvain and UBologna. She is the co-director of the Multilingual Student Translation (MUST) project, which aims at collecting a large multilingual corpus of learner translations.

ORCID

Gert De Sutter http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1998-6151

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty Research Fund of The Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at Ghent University.