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Article published In:
Target
Vol. 35:2 (2023) ► pp.186–214

When Contrastive Analysis meets Translation Studies

A historical perspective

| Shanghai University

Contrastive Analysis and Translation Studies began to merge in the late 1990s through the bridging role of corpus linguistics. This corpus-driven, contrastive-analysis approach to Translation Studies now faces several challenges including the inappropriate use of corpora, a disconnect in the logical relationship between Contrastive Analysis and Translation Studies, and the potential for distorted results caused by translational data. To overcome these difficulties, this article proposes an alternative approach called the corpus-tested Contrastive Analysis approach to Translation Studies, which draws on the typical empirical cycle of observation, induction, deduction, testing, and evaluation. The alternative approach proposed in this article requires both comparable corpora and translational corpora to account for key aspects of Contrastive Analysis and Translation Studies, and ensures the internal logical connection between these two areas, which can be attributed to the entailment law ‘if p, then q’.

Keywords: Contrastive Analysis, Translation Studies, corpus-tested, empirical cycle
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.CA: Defining properties
    • 2.1CA as defined by contrastivists
    • 2.2Separating CA from related fields
  • 3.When did CA meet TS?
    • 3.1Previous linguistic approaches to TS
    • 3.2Two peak periods of CA before the 1990s
    • 3.3The converging of CA and TS
  • 4.Problems with the corpus-driven CA approach to TS
    • 4.1Inappropriate use of corpora
    • 4.2Disconnect in the logical relationship between CA and TS
    • 4.3The potential for distorted results caused by translational data
  • 5.The entailment law and C-CATS
    • 5.1The empirical cycle of C-CATS
    • 5.2C-CATS as a distinct empirical approach
    • 5.3A previous case study of C-CATS
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.20027.sha
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