Potencialidad del corpus de interpretación EPIC para el análisis léxico, morfosintáctico y semántico

Corpus-based Interpreting Studies have a fairly recent development compared to Corpus-based Translation Studies. By corpus we do not mean mere compilations of texts in electronic format but tools according to corpus linguistics criteria with an interface for semi-automated queries. This delay is mainly due to the 'object' of interpretation: oral speeches whose transcriptions are extremely time-consuming, and the limited access to recordings of original speeches and their corresponding interpretations. Faced with the need to rely on a sufficiently large corpus for the study of interpretation, the EPIC (European Parliament Interpreting Corpus) corpus was created in 2004 at the Department of Interpreting and Translation of Forlì: an online corpus that can be freely consulted at https://corpora.dipintra.it . This article briefly explains the development phases and features of EPIC and focuses on some contributions to the knowledge of interpreting processes, both semantic and morphosyntactic, made possible by this new approach. Firstly, the results of a comparative study on lexical variety and density between Spanish originals and corresponding Italian interpretations are presented: the study showed that the linguistic output of the interpreter is of greater density and variety than that of the speaker. Secondly, the results of study on morphosyntactic asymmetries and ambiguous Spanish structures that may give rise to interferences during simultaneous interpreting are presented. Finally, the results of another comparative study on lexical, morphosyntactic and semantic processes when interpreting simultaneously from the same Spanish speech into another Romance language (Italian) and a Germanic language (English) are presented: transcripts of speakers’ and their interpreters’ speeches have shown that the texts of the latter are generally shorter and slower.