Textual Patterns

“The book provides a wealth of ideas for using the study of words and word-based patterns to help us to analyse and teach texts.”

“ Subtitling Norms for Television is a comprehensive and carefully researched academic study that will soon occupy the bookshelves of translation studies scholars, researchers in AVT and AVT practitioners alike. It takes the time to introduce and contextualise subtitling within AVT, but then moves on into the very specialized area of subtitling norms and extralinguistic cultural references (ECR’s), by the way of descriptive translation studies, drawing on a vast corpus of original material and a sound theoretical framework. Indeed, the book places subtitling, and AVT more generally, squarely within descriptive translation studies, demonstrating the relevance of its concepts and methodology for AVT, but also the relevance of technology-driven AVT for Translation Studies. In addition, Jan Pedersen’s meticulous analysis of subtitling strategies and the parameters that influence them is prime teaching material, and of great interest to practitioners in search of translation solutions. Finally, and equally importantly, the book raises new questions and is written in an engaging and accessible style that I truly hope will inspire many.”

“This is an interesting book which gives the reader the necessary theoretical and methodological background on corpus and Key Words (KW) analysis, as well as illustrating the potential of these research methods in pedagogical settings in a practical way through a number of case studies. It gives a nuanced account, pointing out advantages as well as complexities, and limitations of the types of analysis it deals with. It also makes a strong case for combining quantitative corpus analysis (for example making KW lists) with qualitative analysis (e.g. analyzing concordances for certain KWs) in a balanced way. As a language teacher I found the book inspiring, and it will be interesting to see further applications of this type of research in the area of language teaching in the future.”

“The keyword is a powerful tool for assessing and understanding texts; this book gives a clear and detailed description of its possibilities, mainly through a series of convincing applications to a wide range of texts. Language learners and teachers should find full practical support here for their own investigations, provided by two pioneers of the harnessing of computer corpora to language learning.”

“This book is a delight to read. It is not only an exceptionally clear and cogent account of the procedures of corpus analysis in general, but a convincing demonstration of how revealing these procedures can be when applied to particular texts, literary and non-literary, by focusing attention on features of potential significance for interpretation. Anybody working with texts should make it a priority to read this one.”