Developments in corpus-based translation studies A bibliometric approach

1
Developments in corpus-based translation
studiesA bibliometric approach

• Gernot Hebenstreit
• University of Graz

2
Starting point

• This paper aims at giving an overview of the
  development of corpus based methodologies in
  research on translation and interpreting.
  Analyzing bibliographic data on relevant
  publications this study tries to give answers to
  the following questions Which branches of
  translation/interpreting studies have most
  interest in introducing or incorporating
  corpora? Of what kind are the research questions
  that are to be answered based on information
  provided by corpora? Is there a relation between
  the adherence to a school of thought and the
  interest in corpora? Whats the relation of
  quantitative vs. qualitative research? Which
  methodological questions are being raised? Are
  there preferred design patterns for building
  corpora? What role does tagging play? Of what
  kind are the desiderata voiced in terms of corpus
  technology?

3
Bibliometrics?

• Measuring academic activity
• Publications as indicator of scientific activity
• Only published knowledge is scientific knowledge
  
• Perception of achievements is documented in
  citations
• Derek J. de Solla Price, Eugene Garfield
  (Institute of Scientific Information)
• Mainly used for assessing academic activity

4
Perspectives of bibliometrical analysis

• On Producers
• Authors, teams, institutions, fields, nations
• Scholars as writers choosing occasions, topics,
  methods, arguments, style
• As linkers choosing documents to cite or to
  refer to
• As submitters choosing journals, ways of
  publication
• Collaborators choosing institutions, projects,
  co-authors

5
Perspectives of bibliometrical analysis

• Artefacts
• Articles, books, conference papers, journals,
  conferences
• Concepts
• Words in the titles or texts, terminology,
  purpose or motivation of a citation

6
Methods

• Purely scientometric
• Publication counting
• Citation counting
• Imported from other fields of research
• Word anaylsis
• Text analysis
• Network analysis
• Questionaires
• Interviews
• Mix of quantitative and qualitative methods

7
Considerations concerning the counting of
publications

• Limited to data to be gained from bibliographic
  databases
• Publication rates in a period of time
• Number of authors
• Number of publications
• Number of document types
• Languages of publications
• Publishing houses
• Distribution of articles in journals and
  collecive volumes
• Author's origin in terms of country or affiliation

8
What is a publication?

• Publications available for sale
• Patents
• gray literature
• Audio-visual media
• Articles in online journals
• Internet documents
• Reviews
• Letters to editors
• Thesis, dissertations

9
Counting methods

• Simple or weighted?
• All types of publications to be treated equally?
• Articles
• Monographs
• Edited volumes
• Proceedings
• How to deal with co-authorship?

10
Word counts in bibliometrical analysis

• Words in
• Titles
• Keywords
• abstracts
• Terms/categories reflect a very specific
  perspective of a given body of work
• Indexing external view
• Problem of consistency
• Indexer effect
• Title, abstracts internal view

11
Problem of databases

• Coverage
• Relevant publications
• Selection criteria of database provider
• In time

12
Databases used for this study

• BITRA
• TSA (Translations Studies Abstracts, St. Jerome)
• TSB (Translation Studies Bibliography, Benjamins)
• Abstracts, Keywords
• Search query KW corpus or corpora

13
Number of publications
BITRA TSB TSA
575 691 512
Obviously publications of 2009 and 2010 not yet
covered by databases
14
Comparison of keywords in abstracts
TSB TSA TSB TSA
1 CORPORA TRANSLATORS 14 ANALYSIS EXPLICITATION
2 TRANSLATION TRANSLATOR 15 LSP MULTILINGUAL
3 LINGUISTICS LANGUAGES 16 LITERARY TARGET
4 RESEARCH LEXICAL 17 DIDACTICS SOURCE
5 DISCOURSE LINGUISTIC 18 LANGUAGE TOOLS
6 CONTRASTIVE TRANSLATIONAL 19 TRANSLATOR TERMINOLOGICAL
7 INTERPRETING FINNISH 20 MACHINE PORTUGUESE
8 APPROACH CONTRASTIVE 21 PARALLELISM ALIGNMENT
9 TERMINOLOGY LINGUISTICS 22 GRAMMAR METHODOLOGY
10 THEORY BILINGUAL 23 LEXICOGRAPHY DICTIONARIES
11 EQUIVALENCE ARTICLE 24 AUTOMATIC SEMANTIC
12 TOOL COMPARABLE 25 LINGUISTIC EXPLICITATION
13 COMPARATIVE EQUIVALENTS
15
Keywords diachronically (TSB)
KEYWORDS_TSB_2002_2003 KEYWORDS_TSB_2004_2005 KEYWORDS_TSB_2006_2008 KEYWORDS_TSB_2009_2010
Key word Key word Key word Key word
TRANSLATION CORPUS CORPUS CORPUS
CORPUS CORPORA CORPORA CORPORA
CORPORA TRANSLATION TRANSLATION TRANSLATION
LINGUISTICS RESEARCH RESEARCH PARALLEL
RESEARCH LINGUISTICS CONTRASTIVE TRANSLATOR
TOOL CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS DISCOURSE
MACHINE DISCOURSE DISCOURSE DIDACTICS
CONTRASTIVE COMPARATIVE TOOL LINGUISTICS
AUTOMATIC INTERPRETING COMPARATIVE TRAINING
WEB TERMINOLOGY MACHINE EXPLICITATION
INTERPRETING ANALYSIS AUTOMATIC ANALYSIS
WEBSITE DIDACTICS AIDED LITERARY
TERMINOLOGY PARALLEL INTERPRETING TEACHING
APPROACH AUTOMATIC TRANSLATOR SCIENTIFIC
WWW MACHINE DIDACTICS BITEXT
DISCOURSE LEXICON LITERARY TERMINOLOGY
PARALLELISM BIBLE WEB INTERPRETING
AIDED THEORY TRAINING STYLISTICS
LSP ICT WEBSITE RESEARCH
EQUIVALENCE APPROACH MEDICAL TRANSLATOR'S
DIDACTICS METHODOLOGY WWW TOOL
INTERNET COMPUTER LSP LANGUAGE
THEORY WEB EMPIRICAL EVALUATION
TRANSLATOR TOOL DUBBING EXPLANATION
EMPIRICAL STUDIES PARALLEL MODALITY
16
Keywords diachronically TSA
1991_2001 2002_2003 2004_2005 2006_2008 2009_2010
Key word Key word Key word Key word Key word
CORPORA TRANSLATION CORPUS CORPUS CORPUS
CORPUS CORPORA TRANSLATION TRANSLATION TRANSLATION
TRANSLATION CORPUS CORPORA CORPORA CORPORA
PARALLEL TRANSLATIONAL TRANSLATED TRANSLATED PARALLEL
ENGLISH PARALLEL ENGLISH ENGLISH ENGLISH
TRANSLATORS ENGLISH MULTILINGUAL PARALLEL BASED
BASED LINGUISTICS STUDY FINNISH CONTRASTIVE
LANGUAGE EXTRACTION BASED BASED STUDY
MULTILINGUAL TRANSLATOR TERMINOLOGY STUDY CHINESE
BILINGUAL BILINGUAL NORWEGIAN SPANISH COMPARABLE
TERMINOLOGY STUDIES PARALLEL UNIVERSALS TRANSLATOR
TEXTS CONTRASTIVE EXPLICITATION TRANSLATORS TRANSLATING
EQUIVALENTS TEXTS TEXTS VERBS TRANSLATIONS
ALIGNMENT LINGUISTIC CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS TRANSLATORS
TEXT TRANSLATORS TRANSLATIONS CONTRASTIVE SPANISH
COMPARABLE LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS TRANSLATIONS TRANSLATIONAL
TRANSLATOR TERMINOLOGY SWEDISH TEXTS WEB
TRANSLATED USING INVESTIGATING MULTILINGUAL PHRASEOLOGY
TRANSLATIONS BASED EXTRACTING TEXT TRANSLATED
TRANSLATIONAL TERMINOLOGICAL LANGUAGE SPECIALIZED MODAL
CONTRASTIVE TRANSLATIONS ITALIAN TRANSLATOR PARTICLES
USING TRANSLATED ANALYSIS LEXICAL BILINGUAL
EXTRACTION ANALYSIS TECHNICAL LANGUAGE SPECIALIZED
AUTOMATIC ALIGNMENT TRANSLATE REPRESENTATIVENESS
CREATIVITY WEB LANGUAGES ANALYSIS
17
Indexing compared TSB - BITRA
  BITRA   TSB
1 GENRE 137 CORPUS_LINGUISTICS 155
2 THEORY 135 TRANSLATION 129
3 ENGLISH 126 COMPARATIVE_RESEARCH_CONTRASTIVE_RESEARCH 81
4 LINGUISTICS 98 TERMINOLOGY 78
5 TEACHING 86 MACHINE_TRANSLATION 77
6 TECHNICAL 79 ANALYSIS 73
7 MACHINE_TRANSLATION 72 RESEARCH 64
8 GRAMMAR 70 TOOL_TRANSLATION_TOOL 57
9 DOCUMENTATION 58 TRANSLATION_STUDIES 44
10 PROBLEM 54 EMPIRICAL_RESEARCH_EXPERIMENTAL_RESEARCH_SURVEY 41
11 DICTIONARIES 39 GRAMMAR 40
12 LITERATURE 31 DIDACTICS 39
13 SPANISH 27 TEACHING 39
14 LEGAL 25 LANGUAGE_FOR_SPECIAL_PURPOSES 31
15 GERMAN 21 LSP 31
16 INTERPRETING 21 SEMANTICS 30
17 FRENCH 17 STRATEGY_PROCEDURE 30
18 QUALITY 16 THEORY_TRANSLATION_THEORY_INTERPRETING_THEORY 30
19 TERMINOLOGY 16 PARALLELISM 29
20 PHRASEOLOGY 15 LEXICON 28
21 NORUEGO 14 ASSESSMENT_EVALUATION 27
22 PORTUGUESE 13 METHODOLOGY 27
23 INTERFERENCE 12 EQUIVALENCE_NON-EQUIVALENCE 26
24 MEDICINE 12 ALIGNMENT 25
25 NORMALIZATION 11 CONTRASTIVE_LINGUISTICS 25
18
Indexing diachronic TSB
1991-2001 2004-2005
1 CORPUS_CORPORA CORPUS_CORPORA
2 CORPUS_LINGUISTICS CORPUS_LINGUISTICS
3 TRANSLATION TRANSLATION
4 TERMINOLOGY COMPARATIVE_RESEARCH_CONTRASTIVE_RESEARCH
5 RESEARCH ANALYSIS
6 ANALYSIS MACHINE_TRANSLATION_AUTOMATIC_TRANSLATION
7 COMPARATIVE_RESEARCH_CONTRASTIVE_RESEARCH TERMINOLOGY
8 GRAMMAR LEXICON
9 MACHINE_TRANSLATION_AUTOMATIC_TRANSLATION TRANSLATION_STUDIES
10 TOOL_TRANSLATION_TOOL METHODOLOGY
11 TRANSLATION_STUDIES DIDACTICS
12 LINGUISTIC_APPROACH_LINGUISTICS RESEARCH
13 PARALLELISM TEACHING
14 THEORY_TRANSLATION_THEORY_INTERPRETING_THEORY BIBLE_TRANSLATION_BIBLE_RELIGIOUS_DISCOURSE_
15 EMPIRICAL_RESEARCH_EXPERIMENTAL_RESEARCH_SURVEY COMPUTER_COMPUTER_SCIENCE_IT_ICT
16 EQUIVALENCE_NON-EQUIVALENCE SEMANTICS
17 LANGUAGE_FOR_SPECIAL_PURPOSES STRATEGY_PROCEDURE
18 LSP UNIVERSAL
19 SEMANTICS EMPIRICAL_RESEARCH_EXPERIMENTAL_RESEARCH_SURVEY
20 STRATEGY_PROCEDURE PARALLEL_CORPUS_PARALLEL_CORPORA
21 DIDACTICS PARALLEL_TEXT
22 TEACHING TERM_EXTRACTION
23 TERM_EXTRACTION THEORY_TRANSLATION_THEORY_INTERPRETING_THEORY
24 ALIGNMENT TOOL_TRANSLATION_TOOL
25 LITERARY_APPROACH_LITERARY_DISCOURSE_LITERATURE CASE_STUDY
19
Work in progress

• Refining query
• Interpretation of data
• Among the identified problems
• inconsistency of terminology used by scholars
  (e.g. parallel, comparable corpus)
• Separate contrastive studies publications from
  translation studies publications