Abstract
The technical affordances of corpus linguistics tools have significantly changed the ways of approaching specialist translation/interpreting in recent years and the effectiveness of corpora in translator/interpreter training has been highlighted by numerous studies (Zanettin, 1998; Symseridou, 2018; Fantinuoli, 2018). This paper focuses on the usefulness of virtual corpora or ad hoc corpora (Sá nchez-Gijón, 2009; Herná ndez, 2010) in specialist translation/interpreting and provides a reflective report touching upon several aspects to be considered by trainers based on two case studies. Firstly, it gives an account of two practical, corpus-based training activities developed and offered to 20 Chinese students who were trained at a UK university to become professional translators/interpreters. These two case studies include: a. students' translations of a 1,181-word English engineering document introducing the features of engine Tuning Box systems; and b. students' interpretation of a short video-recorded forum discussion on the topic of treatment strategies of adult and childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. WebBootCaT toolkit and concordance provided by Sketch Engine were used for both studies. Two comparable corpora were built respectively for the translation of Tuning Box systems and the interpretation on the treatment strategies of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Results have shown that students' performance in both translation and interpreting have been largely improved: corpora have helped with translators' understanding of the source texts and production of high-quality target texts; Interpreters benefit from efficient terminological preparations. Secondly, based on the first-hand teaching experience of these two case studies, this paper proposes the following aspects to be reflected and considered by educators: Firstly, in the practice level, the emphasis of training should be on procedures, or methodology of using corpora, taking into account trainees' linguistic-translational competence, their meta-linguistic and meta-translational awareness, observation and reflection skills. For example, in the beginning phase, trainers might help students to identify lexical, grammatical and discourse patterns in both source and target corpora in specialised area, developing students' translational awareness. Some supporting exercises might also be designed to assist students' self-correction of their own translations based on the data from comparable corpora. Secondly, as many corpus tools are not developed specially for practising translators or interpreters in the first place, but for foreign language teachers or translation researchers, etc, trainers should encourage students to develop a critical view about what corpus linguistics tools can achieve, and what they cannot. For example, at what stage, corpora can be effective in verifying or rejecting translation decisions, and at what stage, students should make their own judgements in reaching the ideal translations? Thirdly, trainers should raise students' awareness that corpus is only one of many resources that can be mutually referenced: other types of translation resources, such as dictionaries, multilingual/bilingual terminology databases, even a network of professional translators who have extensive experience and a detailed knowledge of their clients' needs and working methodologies. etc. should be used to triangulate specialist translation/interpreting.