Corpus-based Translation Activities for Language Learners

While a number of studies have dealt with the use of corpus linguistics resources in the education of translation trainees, and a large body of literature exists on the use of corpora for second language learning activities, the relevance of corpus-based translation activities in second language learning settings has been explored to a lesser extent. This paper argues that translation can be a legitimate type of activity for ESL learners and that integrating corpus resources into second-language writing and translating means supplementing the traditional learning grammar of "dictionary items + combinatory rules" with a novel learning grammar of "corpora + rules for querying and analyzing them". Examples are presented from a course in English as a foreign language delivered to Italian postgraduate students of international relations. Students were asked to revise an MT translation of a short text from an academic or journalistic source related to international relations, and then write an essay explaining how they used corpora and corpus linguistics techniques to evaluate and revise the translation. Students' performance varied both in terms of the final translation produced and in the way and degree to which they used corpus resources, and it appears that the students who mostly benefited from the course were those who were able to both formulate better hypotheses and linguistic queries, and to analyze the results of different corpus resources. While the course was aimed at language rather than translation learners, the results also have clear implications for the latter.