A Brief Introduction to Corpus—based TranslationTeaching Theory

【Abstract】：As the tool for Linguistics study， electronic corpus has been created with a history about a century. However， it is still new in applied linguistics， particularly in foreign language teaching. Consequently， corpus-based language teaching has been considered as one important study field in foreign language teaching. This thesis analyzes the advantages of corpus-based translation teaching and its development prospect.

【Key Words】 ： corpus; translation teaching; Constructivist Learning Theory;Data Driven Learning （DDL）

1.Introduction of Corpus

Corpus is generally known as the collection of written or spoken texts， both in printed and electronic form. In fact， different corpora are compiled for different purposes， which influence the size， design or contents of the individual corpus. In this thesis， the referred corpora are those within the linguistic field. According to Sinclair "a corpus refers to collections of pieces of language that are selected and ordered to be used as a sample of the language. Kennedy defines a corpus as a body of written text or transcribed speech which can serve as a basis for linguistic analysis and description.

2.Corpus and translation teaching

2.1 The Current Research of Translation Teaching

Translation teaching was firstly proposed by Canadian researcher Jean Delisle （1988）. It gives translation lessons under the guidance of translation theories. From the last decade of the twentieth century on， more and more teachers began to notice the significance of translation theory in translation teaching. In spite of the disagreements， almost all teachers agree that translation theory should be integrated with translation practice in translation class in order to follow market's needs.

2.2 Advantages of Corpus-based Translation Teaching

Many teachers of translation have integrated suitable corpora with translation class in order to raise students' translation accuracy and efficiency and arouse their interest as well. Silvia Bernardini， a Canadian scholar has tried out corpus-based translation teaching with advanced learners of English in their last years of studies as undergraduates at the School for interpreters and translators of the University of Bologna at Forli. These students are required to complete the translation task with the help of the British National Corpus and the software like Wordsmith Tools and some other resources available on the Internet. They are given more freedom in choosing resources， designing queries and deciding translation works. "Results show that corpus-based translation teaching is very encouraging and motivating.

2.2.1 Corpus-based Translation Learning for Students

As we have noticed， classroom concordance with ESL （English as second language） students has been proved to be promising since it emphasizes context-bound regularities and wide information that needed， so that corpora can be used to teach students to interpret instances of language production as samples rather than examples. Students can work with the corpus in their native language which may convince them of some intuition or assumption of their mother tongue. In this way， it changes students' role from \"learner\" to \"researcher\" so that they can share the same interests or competence as teachers or linguists. Been encouraged to become more autonomous in their study， students are required to do the searching seriously and are encouraged to combine observation with participation.

3.2.2 Corpus-based Translation Teaching for Teachers

Corpus-based translation teaching is also useful for teachers.In corpus-based translation class， a teacher is not artificially setting up tasks and requiring students to give information he/she already has， but everyone in the classroom is actively trying to find the solution to a problem， to guess the meaning of an expression or to find the appropriate equivalent of a word， a term or a sentence in a foreign language. In this way， the teacher acts as a learning expert rather than a language expert. Corpus can function as an assistant to help teachers discover new problems or issues that have never been cared which would improve teaching and enlighten further research.

In conclusion， both students and teacher can benefit a lot from corpus-based teaching. Corpus-based translation teaching should be viewed as a valuable added pedagogy and make better use together with the traditional teaching approaches.

3. Theory of Corpus-based Translation Teaching

3.1 Constructivist Learning Theory

As its name may imply， constructivism emphasizes on the building （or constructing） that occurs in people's mind when they learn. Constructivist learning is viewed as the active construction of knowledge relying on learners themselves， rather than the transmission of information from teacher to the learner.

As far as language learning is concerned， learning a new item （e.g. a new word form new concepts based on their past knowledge and deductive and inductive ability. Language learners observe linguistic phenomenon， form hypotheses， and make conclusion relying upon their cognitive structure. Thus in this paradigm， the language teachers should try and encourage learners to discover principles by themselves. The teacher and student should engage in an active dialog; the main Task of the teacher is to present language data to be learned to match the learner's current state of understanding.

3.2 Data Driven Learning （DDL）

In the past fifteen years linguists have used large-scale corpora to study language used in real life. These corpora have improved the quality of teaching reference materials. At the same time， students began to work with \"raw\" information taken directly from corpora as a language learning approach. It is called data-driven learning， DDL in brief. The research evidence' shows that learners encouraged to make their own conclusions will acquire language faster than those who learn language passively by feeding \"rules\".

It has been generally argued that through data-driven learning learners are free to choose various opportunities to use natural language in the corpus， "individually "exploit "authentic "texts "in "different "ways "by nbsp;adopting "the concordance， follow their own steps to form the hypotheses and text them without being affected by teachers or anybody else.

Conclusion

Corpus-based research has given rise to a new way of conceptualizing， studying， and teaching translation. Applied corpus linguistics provides many opportunities for the study of language. "Exploring on current translation teaching modes， different types of corpora can be developed and used to help both students and teachers in the field of translation.

Works Cited

Kennedy， D. Corpora in Translation Studies [A]. Baker M. Encyclopedia of Translation Studies [C]. London： Routledge， 1998.

Kenney， G. An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics[M]. Beijing： Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press， 2000.