Introduction: The ascent of corpus-based translation studies

---

 
Research in Corpus Linguistics
11/2: i–vi (2023). ISSN 2243-4712.  
Asociación Española de Lingüística de Corpus (
AELINCO
) 
DOI 10.32714/ricl.11.02.01 
 
Introduction: The ascent of corpus-based 
translation studies
 
Sara Laviosa
University of Bari Aldo Moro / Italy 
Abstract
– The pervasiveness of corpus-based research in the broad interdisciplinary field of 
translation studies is well attested. This editorial briefly reports on some of the most significant 
academic initiatives undertaken in corpus-based translation studies in recent years. It introduces each 
of the eight papers selected for this special issue of 
Research in Corpus Linguistics 
(RiCL). In doing 
so, the editorial will highlight their distinctive contribution to the interdisciplinarity of translation 
and interpreting studies. 
 
Keywords
– corpus-based translation studies; corpus-based interpreting studies; constrained 
communication; terminology development; audiovisual translation 
Since its first appearance on the scene as a novel approach endorsed and adopted by 
scholars and scholar-teachers in the empirical study of the product, process and function 
of translation as well as translator training, corpus-based translation studies ––as 
originally named by Shlesinger (1998)–– has developed into a fully-fledged area of 
scholarly enquiry that engages with multiple disciplines, thus enhancing the 
interdisciplinarity of translation studies. 
The pervasiveness of corpus studies of translation and interpreting in very recent 
years is amply attested by their substantial contribution to a variety of scholarly 
initiatives. To name but a few:
1)
International symposia and conferences on translation studies, for instance:
a.
International Symposium on Corpora and Translation Education
, 5–6 June 
2021, Hong Kong Baptist University;
b.
6
th
edition of the
 Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies 
Congress (
UCCTS), 9–11 September 2021, University of Bologna; 
c.
10
th
 
edition of the 
European Society for Translation Studies Congress
, 22–
24 June 2022, Oslo Metropolitan University and University of Oslo. 

---

ii
2)
Special issues in journals dedicated to:
a.
English studies, e.g., 
Textus. English Studies in Italy
(Bernardini and Mair 
2019);
b.
translation and translanguaging, e.g., 
Translation and Translanguaging in 
Multilingual Contexts
(Dullion 2017; Flores Acuña and Rodríguez Reina 
2019); 
c.
translation and interpreting, e.g., 
MonTI
. 
Monografías de Traducción e 
Interpretación
(Calzada Pérez and Laviosa 2021);
d.
translation, e.g., 
Translation Quarterly
(Laviosa and Liu 2021). 
3)
Interdisciplinary collected volumes, e.g., 
The Routledge Handbook of 
Translation and Education
(Laviosa and González-Davies 2020), or
The 
Oxford Handbook of Translation and Social Practices
(Ji and Laviosa 2021), 
among others. 
This special issue testifies to the growing interdisciplinary interest in corpus-based 
translation studies worldwide. The eight articles included in the issue represent state-of-
the-art research that has recently been undertaken by international scholars within the 
field of corpus-based translation studies and its offshoot, corpus-based interpreting 
studies. It is worth remembering that the latter was originally advocated and outlined by 
Shlesinger (1998: 490–491, original emphasis), who, in those early days, set the following 
goals for the fledgling field of descriptive corpus-based interpreting studies: 
recourse to interpreting as part of corpus-based translation studies may indeed help to focus 
attention on what sets interlingual mediation apart, 
regardless of modality. 
By the same token, 
however, while continuing to explore the common ground, the corpus-based study of 
interpreting will also help to define what sets it apart. Both aims are very much in keeping 
with the agenda of its parent discipline, translation studies. 
Twenty-five years on, Shlesinger’s research agenda is still being followed and expanded, 
as demonstrated in that three contributions to this special issue deal with simultaneous, 
consecutive, and dialogue interpreting respectively. The first of these,