2014, Vol.4, No.

T&I REVIEW 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.52

pISSN : 2233-9221 / eISSN : 2713-8720
https://journal.kci.go.kr/erits

From its inception in the 1990s, corpus-based translation studies or CBTS represents a growing area of research which is largely based on the development of digital research resources and technologies. This paper offers an overview of the development of the field in the last twenty years, highlighting the importance of developing pragmatic and versatile analytical techniques in order to optimise use of corpus resources and tools based on current natural language processing technologies. This includes the development of small-scale yet effective language corpora and the devise of annotation schemes and strategies to serve specific research purposes that are termed as problem-oriented corpus annotation here.

This study aimed at investigating the strategies which Iranian AV translators use for rendition of taboo language in American crime movies dubbed into Persian. The required bilingual corpus was purposively selected based on a pre-determined set of criteria. During data collection, drawing on a Persian-specific set of types of taboo language, the 642 instances in the selected sample of four American crime movies were detected and recorded. Having analyzed the strategies in rendering the original taboos into Persian, a model of four basic strategies was empirically achieved–namely, a) translating the source culture taboo to a target culture taboo, b) deletion of the source culture taboo, c) substituting the target culture taboo with a target culture non-taboo, and d) rendering the source culture taboo to a target culture euphemism. The descriptive statistics showed that the general approach taken by the AV translators was toning down the force of taboo language, following the target culture norms especially by deleting the source culture taboo as the most frequent strategy or replacing it by a non-taboo or euphemism, even though nearly one-thirds of the taboos were kept in the dubbed target product. The findings are useful data within descriptive translation studies; nevertheless, they cannot be generalized since the study is limited by a relatively small corpus and a non-probability sampling technique.

Research Institute for Translation Studies in relation with the curriculum renewal of the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation (GSTI) of Ewha Womans University. 313 graduates participated in the online survey in November 2013. The survey questionnaire comprised of 31 questions asked about their profiles such as their majors and professional experiences as interpreters and translators, and their evaluation of the curriculum and suggestions for the development of Ewha GSTI. The survey results indicate graduates’ overall positive evaluation of the curriculum provided at Ewha GSTI. The graduates’ employment types and professional practices and their suggestions for T&I education curriculum offer valuable information for the discussion on the renewal of T&I curriculum of Ewha GSTI. (Ewha Womans University, South Korea)