Analysis of compound nouns as specialized vocabulary in a corpus of journalistic texts used in translator training

Abstract

This work is part of a national research project in the fields of language acquisition and translation which focuses on the identification of discursive features in a corpus designed with texts in English and Spanish used in translation training (“University”, “Country”). It is centered in the analysis of journalistic articles and letters to the editor about ice-sheet melting, published online and produced by students. The aim is to observe the recurrence of compound nouns within the terms deemed as specialized vocabulary. This corpus-based approach aims to provide translators with additional strategies in light of the limited representation of compound nouns in conventional terminological resources. To this aim, the theoretical-methodological framework of Corpus Linguistics is applied. First, a qualitative analysis involves labeling a source text using a taxonomy to classify communicative, formal and rhetorical features. Then, a quantitative analysis of key words in context is carried out. Finally, a recontextualized qualitative analysis of some texts is performed. Results show a high occurrence of compounds among specialized terms, with differences across genres and languages. Future research should focus on further analysis of this and other linguistic input in the corpus, as well as on the design of didactic materials and guidelines for translator training.