LINGUISTIC CORPORA TECHNOLOGY AS A DIDACTIC TOOL IN TRAINING FUTURE TRANSLATORS

Abstract

The anthropocosmic vector of modern Pedagogy and Linguistics requires development of such tools for future translators that enable as quick as possible processing of huge amounts of information with production of automatically determined frequencies, on the one hand. On the other hand, it demands minimization of the subjective influence of an individual researcher on the received results, giving a chance for detecting and analysing linguistic phenomena unnoticed earlier. Linguistic corpora are a state-of-the-art technology that can solve the outlined problem perfectly, for it opens a broad variety of practical and theoretical research options, and at the same time it is a didactic tool fulfilling purely didactic, cognitive, informative, formative, and testing / checking functions. Therefore, the use of linguistic corpora technology can be considered from two perspectives – learning to use corpora to translate and learning to translate using corpora. Corpora technology employment can enhance both objectivity and reliability of the results researchers obtain when processing language data, too. The application of corpus approach by translators-to-be gives an opportunity to study any language units in different speech genres in different types of discourse, as well as in various contexts in the corpus, without being hindered by the specificity of the studied linguistic unit. Translation students can search for discrete lexical / grammatical units, based on concordances, showing their functioning in different styles and areas of use. Moreover, parallel corpora provide ready solutions for the choice of translation models in certain conditions. The purpose of this article, stipulated by the relevance of the set problem, as well as the lack of ready parallel corpora in Ukraine, covers development of special methodological procedures and exercises for future translators aimed at their mastering of corpus technology as a didactic tool. The paper also describes several technological solutions (Multiconcord, BNC, parallel corpus), which provide the possibilities of such a corpus approach in practice for teaching-learning translators-to-be. In conclusions it is stressed that mastering such linguistic corpora technology at the university is very important for future translators, with a corpus being a useful and convenient didactic tool in their professional area. The prospects for further research can be seen in the development of a set of exercises consolidating future translators’ abilities to successfully process different corpora data.