The application of BCC Chinese Corpus in English-Chinese&nbsp;
translation teaching&nbsp;

SUN Dongyun

Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice ›› 2018, Vol. 162 ›› Issue (3) : 71.

The application of BCC Chinese Corpus in English-Chinese

translation teaching

Author information +

History +

Abstract

Corpus translation studies (CTS) is a hot topic among linguists and teachers in China and is frequently cited as a sound basis for translation teaching. However, parallel corpora have received by far the greatest attention in translation teaching while relatively little attention is paid to Chinese monolingual corpora. Therefore, this study introduces the application of BCC (BLCU Corpus Center) Chinese corpus in English-Chinese translation teaching by case analyses of word choices in non-literary translation. BCC was chosen because of its huge data (15 billion words), free access and user-friendliness. Three sub-corpora, namely, the multi-field sub-corpus, the science and technology sub-corpus and the diachronic query sub-corpus were incorporated to provide corpus-driven evidence for translation. The first two sub-corpora are chosen for their synchronic representativeness of contemporary Chinese and are expected to yield quantitative language evidence to complement the language intuition of native Chinese speakers. The diachronic sub-corpus is chosen for its authoritativeness of diachronic data from People’s Daily and is expected to validate neologism through language contact. This paper reveals that BCC can help native Chinese learners to verify their intuition of Chinese, improve the accuracy of terminology, choose the right words in collocation, and use the right General Words for Specific Purposes. This paper further establishes a BCC Chinese Corpus-driven model for translation teaching and introduces the teaching strategies and techniques, such as using authentic language materials, keeping learner journals and e-portfolios as well as classroom discussions. It is emphasized that learners should be taught to develop the habit of using corpus evidence in substantiating their language instincts so that they can actually improve their translation competence. The paper also envisions the integration of multiple corpora in translation teaching.