English-Greek Translation Teaching Activities with the Data-Driven Learning (DDL) Approach

Elpiniki Margariti, Eirini Chatzikoumi

UOA-NTUA, UOA-NTUA
elpimargariti@gmail.com, chatzikoumi@gmail.com

Abstract
We present two English-Greek translation teaching activities with the
DDL approach. In these activities we use monolingual corpora with
integrated language processing tools (BNC, HNC, Corpus of Greek
Texts). In the first activity, we check how appropriate a lexical choice is
in the target language by using concordance tables in both languages.
The second activity consists in choosing between two or more possible
appropriate words in the target language depending on the context
shown in concordance tables in both languages. The use of linguistic
corpora in translation teaching thus proves to contribute to the
improvement of the translation product.

Activity: Checking how appropriate a lexical choice is in the target language

with the use of concordance tables in both languages
Words for the translation of which the translator has come to certain possible
translation equivalents, which he/she has to verify. Verification is performed by
searching through the corpora in both languages and comparing the contexts in
which the supposed equivalents are found.
Example: the Panama Canal has been a key link in international shipping routes,
handling an estimated 5% of world trade each year | Main shipping route
(paragraph heading) | shipping route ->
The search in the BNC confirms the hypothesis that its is a collocation and actually a
collocation only encountered in the plural form.

Data-Driven Learning (DDL)

The proposed activities fall within the framework of Data-Driven Learning, a
term originating in the field of informatics (Smith, 2009). The data, in the
case of language teaching, are the coprora. Corpora are text collections
aiming at characterising a concrete language variety (Sinclair, 1991) or a
collection of fragments of discourse structured according to specific criteria
(Sinclair, 1996). Nowadays, by corpora we mean electronic corpora,
since texts are in electronic form.
It is a learner-centred teaching method based on exploration (Chujo,
Anthony, Oghigian & Uchibori, 2012), whose father is considered to be Tim
Johns. It provides the learner the opportunity to have access to linguistic
facts and its most important tool is the concordance table in KWIC
(keyword-in-context) format. Its innovation lies in the use of the
concordance table in the teaching process, as for many years it was limited
to research purposes.

Monolingual Corpora
in Translation Teaching

However, the search for the supposed equivalent in the HNC has 0 hits,
so we search, in order to find another collocation in Greek. Thus, we search in the HNC
and the Corpus of Greek Texts the collocation , which is indeed
confirmed. It is worth remarking that the collocation is also encountered only in plural in
Greek.

Monolingual copora used in this project

BNC (British National Corpus) (http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk)

Its building started in 1991, while its first version was completed in 1994 and its
most recent version was launched in 2007. It is comprised of 100 million words
(90% written discourse and 10% oral discourse). It contains, apart from British
English words, words of other languages as well as non-British English words. It
is a synchronic general sample corpus.

HNC (Hellenic National Corpus) (http://hnc.ilsp.gr)

The HNC (ILSP) is comprised of 47.000.000 words and it is progressively
growing. It comprises only written texts. In the material used for its building, texts
written after 1990 and published in media with a great number of readers were
preferred.

Corpus of Greek Texts (http://sek.edu.gr)

Built by the University of Athens in collaboration with the University of Cyprus.
According to the article D. Goutsos (2003), its aim was to comprise 30.000.000
words, 10% of which from oral discourse and 90% from written.

The aim of this project was to develop teaching activities

which could prove that corpora can be an integral and
indispensable part of teaching translation. Concordance
tables and the other tools provided by Corpus
Linguistics offer translators the opportunity to handle
problems not successfully handled with the traditional
methods of search, such as dictionaries, as well as
more recents methods, such as the Internet and search
engines.
In summary, we can observe that the BNC for the
English language is a corpus comprised of different
kinds of texts and one can search authentic language in
various phenomena. On the contrary, the Greek
resources (HNC, Corpus of Greek Texts) are not yet at
an equivalent level and it is highly likely that they do not
meet a translator's needs to the same extent. However,
we proved that even with the given resources, the
results of our searches are significantly improved.
Finally, corpora have been in the focus of interest the
last years, especially when it comes to foreign language
and translation teaching.This filed of linguistics proves
that it can change the traditional teaching methods.
However, if they are to be established as a teaching
resource, Greek corpora have to be enriched and
teachers have to be appropriately trained.

Bibliography

Teaching Activity 2
Activity: Choosing between two or more possible appropriate words in the target
language depending on the context by using concordance tables in both languages

Theoretical Background
Monolingual corpora are nowadays used to a great extent in foreign language
teaching, in which their study has been mostly exploited in the field of teaching
material development and teaching methodology (Granger, 2002).
Advantages of using authentic linguistic material:

The real use of linguistic phenomena and words is presented

The learner acquires a role of researcher of lexical, semantic and syntactic

issues (Lawson, 2001)

Inductive learning method

Conclusions

Teaching Activity 1

The translator has ended up with more than one possible translation equivalents and, in
order to choose, he/she searches through the coprora in both langauges.

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Example: Two new 3-chamber locks are to be built at the Pacific and Atlantic ends of the
canal | lock: a section of a waterway, such as a canal, closed off with gates, in which
vessels in transit are raised or lowered by raising or lowering the water level of that section
-> /
In the HNC environment one can search with a second criterion. So, we search for the
word (one of the translation equivalents of lock) along with the word
(one option for canal), however with no results. The search for the word along
with the word (another word for canal) has two hits. Finally, the search for
with no other combined criterion has many hits. The word (the
other option for lock) has no hits at all, nor in the HNC nor in the Corpus of Greek Texts.
Therefore, our final selection is the word .

, . [Goutsos, D]. 2003.

: .
6
(6th ICGL),