Translation oriented corpus-based contrastive linguistics

incl. ref.

The paper aims at studying the relationship between contrastive linguistics (CL) and translation as branches of applied linguistics, on one hand, and the use of computer corpora (C.C) on the other. It also stresses the fact that the boundaries of CL have been redrawn to incorporate the output of C.C in performing various tasks in translation, that goes beyond the traditional methods of CL carried out exclusively on solving problems in foreign language teaching (FLT). The paper supports the call for the manipulation of data obtained from CC in contrastive linguistic projects for the betterment of translation quality. Previously, CL was concerned with linguistic systems rather than language use, but with the introduction of corpora, language use become more easily accessible and the field of CL has expanded. The access to huge amounts of original texts and their translation in electronic format is of great benefit to professional translators, since a wide range of translation solutions for any particular source language are available by a gentle hit on the required tagging key. As for translation-oriented corpus based CL it becomes obvious that the actual contrastive study will be carried out in order to obtain data for explaining the various phenomena in translation. Hence, translation as a communicative event can assume a fully-fledged descriptive discipline if it manages to develop its own descriptive tools of study. Computer corpora can play a decisive role in turning translation into a well-established academic discipline.