This chapter aims to trace some developmental links between aspects of linguistics in the Firthian tradition and the subsequent use of corpora to study translation and translation-related phenomena. This chapter sets the scene for much of what follows in this book in that it historically roots these developments in the British linguistic tradition of the study of actual texts, including semantic issues. This approach to the study of languages experienced a resurgence, once ever larger quantities of text could stored and processed using computers and software tools.