Corpus-based Translation Studies: Where Does It Come From? Where Is It Going?1

The idea of investigating translation and translating through corpora was first put forward by Baker in 1993. At the time it was envisaged that in this new partnership Corpus Linguistics would provide the methodology for carrying out empirical investigations while translation theory would identify the areas of enquiry and elaborate operational hypotheses. The two partners would work in harmony mainly for the benefit of the advancement of the descriptive branch of the discipline. Since then the partnership has acquired a clear identity with a specific denomination, Corpus-Based Translation Studies (CTS). Its areas of research range from descriptive to applied studies, and concern many different languages. In this paper I will examine the links existing between CTS, Corpus Linguistics and Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) with a view to establishing which claims put forward in the past still hold true and which are the most fruitful areas of longterm CTS research. My paper is organised in three chronological sections, each corresponding to a salient moment in the history of CTS. The first two years 1993-1995 see the dawn of CTS, the period of time between 1996 and 1999 represents what I see as the corpus linguistic turn in Translation Studies, while from 2000 onwards it is plausible to envisage a cultural studies turn in CTS. * University of Bari, Italy. 1 This is an abridged version of my keynote speech delivered at the CorpusBased Translation Studies Conference. Research and Applications, University of South Africa and University of Manchester, Pretoria, 21-25 July 2003, whose proceedings are to be published in a special issue of Language Matters (2004) edited by Alet Kruger. 10 TradTerm 03.pmd 21/9/2010, 14:35 29