Machine readable corpora

This article reviews three areas at the interface between corpus linguistics and translation, namely corpus-based approaches to (1) translation studies, (2) translator education, (3) translation practice. With reference to (1), it surveys approaches, corpus typlogies and findings concerning translation strategies, norms/laws and universals. Moving on to (2), it provides examples of possible uses of corpora (parallel, comparable, learner) in the translation classroom, and points out that building a corpus may in itself be a valid exercise in text analysis and documentation. Finally (3), it considers the role (still rather marginal, but growing) currently played by corpus tools in the translation professions.