Hardwiring Corpus-Based Translation Studies: Corpus Encoding

In this chapter, I try to answer three main questions. The first question is, ‘Do corpora for descriptive translation studies need encoding?’ I think they do, and I try to explain why. The second question is ‘What needs to be encoded?’ In order to answer this question, I propose a model consisting of multiple layers of annotation. Finally, in response to a third question, ‘How to encode?’, I suggest the adoption of standards for electronic texts. In particular, I examine XML/TEI. I begin by providing some terminological background as to what is meant by corpora and encoding, and examine which types of corpora have been used in translation research in relation to corpus encoding. I focus on corpus-based research in descriptive translation studies, and consider the different stages involved in the creation of a corpus as a resource. I then in turn consider the why, what and how questions. Finally, I show examples of texts encoded using the XML/TEI standards. These examples are taken from the CEXI project, carried out between 2000 and 2004 at the School for Translators and Interpreters of the University of Bologna and aiming at the creation of a bidirectional parallel English–Italian corpus.