Text corpora, professional translators and translator training

Although machine translation software and CAT tools are commonly used both by professional translators and by those involved in the training of translators, the usefulness of electronic text corpora for these purposes is less widely known. Corpora of various types have become much easier to access during the last decade, and the main obstacle to their becoming a standard tool for translators is currently the inertia of both the industry and universities. Translator training in universities can play an important role in promoting new working methods. To study to what extent corpora are present in university translator training programmes, a survey was carried out. The responses show that corpora are indeed becoming part of curricula, at least in EU countries. However, the role of corpora in these programmes is often peripheral. For example, compiling Do-It-Yourself corpora–a very important skill for translators–is still taught in only a few university programmes. For the most part, corpora are used mainly as a research instrument rather than as a tool in practical translation work.