Corpus resources for translators: academic luxury or professional necessity

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, corpora have become established as popular and useful translation resources within translator training institutes; however, the uptake of corpora in the world of professional translators appears to have been considerably slower. This article explores the different uses of corpora (including translation memories) in these two sectors and attempts to account for these differences. To determine how corpora are used in academics, a literature survey of papers produced by translator trainers is conducted. With regard to the use of corpora in a professional setting, this study focuses on professionals working in Canada. To find out the extent to which Canadian professional translators make use of corpora, two methods are used. Firstly, a literature survey of publications produced by Canadian translators’ associations is carried out, and secondly, a database of job advertisements is analyzed to determine how many Canadian employers are seeking candidates who are familiar with corpus-based resources. The resulting data are compared and discussed with a view to uncovering and understanding why corpus use differs in academic and professional circles.