Textual and Contextual Analysis in EmpiricalTranslation Studies

Textual and Contextual Analysis in Empirical Translation Studies is a volume co-authored by world's leading scholars of empirical translation studies. The central argument made in this book is that current translation studies, especially the corpus-orientated branch, represent a mixed use of qualitative and quantitative analysis (Chaps. 1 -3), and an important feature of latest research developments is the exploration of the relationship between detected translational features and contextual variables to fill a critical gap in current quantitative translation studies. More specifically, the opening chapter by Sara Laviosa gives an overview of the growth of empirical translation studies since the 1990s. This is followed, in Chapters. 2 and 3, by Hannu Kempannen’s detailed review and discussion of critical analytical concepts developed in early empirical translation studies such as keyword analysis. Chapter 4 (Adriana Pagano) and Chapter 5 (Meng Ji) focus on the introduction and use of exploratory statistics in quantitative translation studies. These include descriptive analysis such as keyword list gener¬ation and multivariate analyses (MVA) such as cluster analysis, principal compo¬nent analysis and confirmatory MVA. There is no doubt, in our view, that the establishment of these new analytical techniques for the empirical investigation of translation will receive some criticism and become the object of scholarly debate, as was the case with the introduction of corpora in translation studies in the 1990s.