Article published in:
Target
Vol. 8:2 (1996) ► pp. 275–299

A Translator's Reference Needs

Dictionaries or Parallel Texts?

| University of Cantabria (Spain)
This paper examines how far consulting dictionaries and references cited in the bibliography can solve the problems raised by standardized and non-standardized terms in the translation of medical research reports from Spanish into English. Analysis of two translations representing different types of report (clinical and experimental) showed that use of three references offered greater certainty than using three specialized dictionaries: 71% and 51 % of items were found by the two methods, respectively. A combined method improved coverage to between 85% and 90%, and could guarantee acceptability for 95% of the items. As instances of parallel texts, references provided more and better information than dictionaries, especially at the higher sentence and text levels, as well as giving insight into stylistic aspects of lexical choice for the genre.
Published online: 01 January 1996
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.8.2.05wil
Cited by

Cited by other publications

Bernardini, Silvia & Adriano Ferraresi
2013.  In Building and Using Comparable Corpora, ► pp. 303 ff. Crossref logo
Loock, Rudy
2016.  In La traductologie de corpus, ► pp. 237 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 november 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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