Corpus-Based contrastive analysis and translation universals: a tool for translation quality assessment Englis-Spanish

Abstract

Assessing translation quality is generally seen as a difficult task because of the inadequacy of the tools available. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of a corpus-based contrastive methodology (ACTRES2 Project) developed at the University of León (Spain) for identifying instances of low-quality rendering of grammatical features when translating from English into Spanish using translation universals. The analysis provides information about: i) the resources available (or absence thereof) in each of the languages to express a given meaning and their relative centrality; ii) the solutions favored by translators to bridge the cross-linguistic disparities and/or gaps; iii) the erroneous or non-existent uses and structures transferred from the source language into the target language. These results can be systematized in terms of simplification, interference, or unique grammatical features. Additional areas that can benefit from this type of research are translation practice, translator training and foreign language teaching (FLT), among others.