Corpus-based translanguaging for translation education

Corpora take centre stage in the digital era both as linguistic resources in their own right and as a component of Computer-Aided Translation (CAT) technology. So, corpora are an essential component of the toolkit of the translator trainer, translator trainee and professional translator, as well attested by a survey carried out by Daniel Gallego-Hernández (2015) from January to May 2013. The study shows that 50% of a sample of 526 certified translators in Spain use computer corpora on a regular basis for professional purposes. It is therefore quite evident that undergraduate and graduate students, be they enrolled in degree courses in Modern Languages or Translation Studies, need to be acquainted with these resources during their university education. Against this backdrop, the aim of the present chapter is to report on a case study un¬dertaken during the teaching of a third-year undergraduate course in English language and translation from October 2014 to May 2015. This nine-credit course is part of the curricular design of the Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree in Modern Languages at the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy. First, I introduce the notion of translanguaging and define its place and role in the language and translation classroom at university level. Next, I outline the rationale for carrying out the case study and examine the findings we obtained collaboratively using this procedure with advanced level learners of English. Finally, I make some suggestions for further research into corpus-based translanguaging in translation education.