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This contribution aims to provide an introduction to corpus linguistics for students of translation. Differently from most such introductions, it does not focus on technical and historical issues, nor on tools and resources. Instead, it discusses the theoretical presuppositions (syntagmatic relations, communicative competence, the importance of lexis and phraseology) and fundamental notions of Neo-Firthian corpus linguistics (units of meaning, collocations, colligation, semantic (or evaluative) prosody and semantic preferences). These syntagmatic relations, together with different kinds of general corpus features (frequency indices such as type-token ratio or sentence length, word frequency lists, n-grams lists) can be used in the analysis and comparison of language varieties of different kinds. One such variety, that is especially relevant for translation students, is the language of translation. Through the combined use of a monolingual comparable and a parallel corpus, specificities of translation as mediated communication can be investigated (following Baker's (1993) hypothesis), at the same time taking into account the potential effect of source language interference. The paper concludes by claiming that, far from being a limitation, the cognitive complexity of corpus use can be turned into a pedagogic asset, contributing to future-proof translator education by fostering critical thinking and autonomy and developing analytical skills. |
