Documentary research in specialised translation
studies
Geneviève Bordet
Paris Diderot University , Sorbonne Paris Cité, CLILLAC-ARP EA 3967
F-75205, Paris, France
Terminologija i specijalizirano prevođenje u službi međukulturne strukovne
Komunikacij – August 22-23 2014 – University of Zadar
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Outline
1 What is the point of documentary research for translation?
- why is it necessary
- a double objective for a double corpus
- information as data for translation
2 How does it work?
- identifying a domain and discovering a documentary landscape
- 5WH: a methodology
- tools and techniques
3 How is documentary research applied to translation?
-
Terminology
-
Translation problem solving
-
Using process tracing to become a translator
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1. Documentary research and specialized translation

Why is it necessary?
 What is specialized translation: transfer from one “langueculture” to another for the transmission of information via a text
 Requires the collection and assimilation of textual information
as to a specialized domain and a discourse community
 The “langue-culture” is made of a specific vocabulary but also a
specific handling of general language, and terms’ combinations
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1. Documentary research and specialized translation

A twofold objective
 Collect, connect information required for the understanding of a
field of human activity (scientific, technical, economic, ...)
 Collect a corpus made of documents that are representative of the
diversity of the discursive production of the considered field of
activity
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1. Documentary research and specialized translation

A twofold corpus
 Popularization and didactic documents, images, videos, charts
etc…
 A comparable corpus of specialized documents in the source and
the target language
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1. Documentary research and specialized translation
 Collected data as a material for translation decisions
 Identification of the specific terms
 Identification of the specific use of general
language terms (including verbs)
 Identification of terms’ recurrent combinations
(collocations, colligations)
 Identification of specific clausal and textual
structures that are representative of the studied
domain
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1. Documentary research and specialized translation
 Collected data as a material for translation decisions
 Identification of the specific terms
 Identification of the specific use of general
language terms (including verbs)
 Identification of terms’ recurrent combinations
(collocations, colligations)
 Identification of specific clausal and textual
structures that are representative of the studied
domain
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2. The documentary research process
 A circular process
Domain
Terminology
Translation
 A complex process
Complexity of a domain made up of a diversity of actors, interests,
issues and discursive genres
 The 5 Ws and 1H methodology
• A domain representative corpus
• Validation of terminological information sources
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2. The documentary research process
 What is “conflict diamonds trade”?
 Who is involved? Who are the actors?
 Where does it take place?
 When (or since when) does it happen (exist)?
 Why does it happen (exist)?
 How: how does it work?
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2. Part of the research process: establishing the
documentary landscape
French Corpus: Genre
certification
manual
1%
industry reports
political
speech/debate
contract
technical report 2%
2%
1% 1%
KP workshop
3%
organisation rules
5%
university papers
47%
official (mostly
UN) reports
7%
legislation
15%
NGO reports
16%
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2. Part of the research process: establishing the
documentary landscape
professional
English Corpus: Genre association
showroomprive
sale
1%
trial (Charles
Taylor)
35%
report
1%
political
legislation
speech/debate
2%
3%
organisation
rules
3%
KP compliance
verification
3%
UN report
4%
certification
manual
6%
industry reports
8%
university papers
14%
technical reports
10%
NGO reports
10%
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2. Part of the research process: establishing the
documentary landscape
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2. The documentary research process
 A wide range of tools
 The Web and the libraries
 Databases (ex: repec.org for economy) and search engines
(Google Scholar)
 Open and off-campus access resources
 An interrogation syntax
 Research equations
ex : « monetary funds » AND regulation AND date >2005 ET (types of
documents= periodical papers OR reports)
 Database interrogation tools
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2. Research process: Google’ search tools
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2. Research process: Google’s advanced search
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2. Research process: advanced search results
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2. Research process: Google’s instant search
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2. Research process: Google Images
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2. Research process: Google Scholar
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2. Research process: a human sciences search engine
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2. Research process : off-campus access to library
resources
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2. Research process : national network of university
libraries
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2. Research process: Factiva a news database
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2. Research process: Revues.org open-access
database
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2. The documentary research process
 An adequate choice of terminology for requests:
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2. Research process: the experts
 Consultation with technical experts: oral and written resources
(synonymy, neology)
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2. Research process: information watch
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3. Application to specialized translation
 Establishment of a specialized terminology
 Creation of definitions and technical remarks
Example:
- Definition of “credit intermediation”
a funding process in which an institutional unit acquires financial assets and at
the same time invests them on the market through credit, maturity or
liquidity transformation
- Additional remark:
The definition applies both to the shadow banking system and the traditional
banking system. Although the credit intermediation in the traditional
banking system is performed in an integrated way, the shadow banking
credit intermediation is performed through a multi-step process in which
each shadow bank has a particular role to play and uses specific
techniques.
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3. Application to specialized translation
 Creation of tree diagrams based on the understanding of each
term’s semantic status
Remark: financial intermediation" (intermediation performed by
financial entities), together with "banking intermediation", is part of
the "credit intermediation".
However, banking intermediation refers exclusively to the
intermediation performed by banks and is rarely used by American
authors (the US financial system relying less on banking institutions
than the European financial system).
→
financial / banking intermediation are the meronyms of credit
intermediation
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3. Application to specialized translation
 Identification of collocations
Ex: to perform / to conduct a credit intermediation
“Like the traditional banking system, the shadow banking system
conducts credit intermediation . However, unlike the traditional
banking system, where credit intermediation is performed “under
one roof”—that of a bank—in the shadow banking system….”
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3. Application to specialized translation
 Identification of various types of synonyms
Ex: credit transformation / credit enhancement
Comment:
"credit enhancement" has a more general meaning than "credit
transformation" and refers to the attempts by a financial institution to
reduce the credit risks of its assets, thereby improving its credit worthiness:
collaterals, credit risk transfer or credit tranformation are credit enhancing
tools.
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3. Application to specialized translation
 Comparing terms: shadow bank / nonbank
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3. Application to specialized translation
 Comparing terms: shadow bank / non bank
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3. Application to specialized translation
 Translation problem solving: making decisions
In the domain of “mergers and acquisitions”, translating
from French to American English:
 Knowledge of the institutional context helps filling in the
gaps for the target audience so as to make up for
cultural differences
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3. Application to specialized translation
 Taking into account cultural and economic specificities
Ex: Translating the word “concentration” from French to
English
Problem:
- “concentration” (French) is a process
Ex: réaliser (to realize) une concentration
- “concentration” (English) is either a process
Ex: to realize a concentration
Or a result:
Ex: a newly merged concentration
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3. Application to specialized translation
The student’s comment:
After learning much more about merger control and competition law,
and spending much more time studying the corpora, I realized that
in English, occurrences of “concentration” as a process only
seemed to appear in European texts.
The European use of the word “concentration” in English actually
corresponds to what North American authors refer to as mergers
and acquisitions (M&A)
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3. Application to specialized translation
Conclusion:
Since the text is a French paper dealing with the
European situation: the translation’s targeted
audience is American
the French term “concentration” should be
translated by “mergers and acquisitions”
Decision = comparative analysis of economic context +
identification of the translation’s targeted audience
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3. Application to specialized translation
 Translating a neologism
In the domain of “celebrity marketing”
(as in Nespresso with George Clooney!)
Translating the following sentence:
In a co-branding situation, either between two product brands or
between a product and a human brand, the separate relevant
brand attributes tied to each brand come together.
Problem: the term “human brand” has no exact equivalent
in French
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3. Application to specialized translation
 Solution:
The student coins a new term: “marque – célébrité” based
on the study of the corpus using a concordancer:
 Avoids the ambiguity in French of “marque humaine”
 Reproduces the observed recurrent structure in French:
“marque – x”
 Confirmed by an expert who uses this neonym in an essay included
in the corpus
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3. Application to specialized translation: process
tracing
 A process tracing approach to become a translator
 A 3 parts report:
 Documentation: commentary
 Terminology: dictionary and commentary
 Translation: aligned translation and commentary
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3. Application to specialized translation
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3. Process tracing: extracts of a student’s report
Choosing a Field of Study
“At that point, I was not aware that this subject incorporated a significant legal
aspect. Once I started to translate small parts of the article to see exactly
what kinds of issues I might have with terminology, I realized that there
were many references to legal matters and texts. Little by little I
discovered that I was dealing with an interdisciplinary field called
competition law. It included several different sub-fields of economics, and
the administrative bodies that regulate the economy in France and the
European Union. I would have to learn basic concepts from several of
these different subjects and put them all together to get a good enough
understanding of the relevant issues in order to translate an article about
them.”
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3. Process tracing: extracts of a student’s report
Search Methods
Online Resources
“Since the article to be translated was from an academic journal, I wanted to
find a lot of texts from the same kind of documents written in the same
register. For this reason, I chose to use search engines such as Google
Scholar, the “Catalogue +” search function on the Université Paris Diderot
website, Sudoc, and the CAIRN and Science Direct17 databases. Search
terms were first chosen based on the article to be translated. The following are
some examples of the first ones I used:
“competition law” + mergers
"industrial organization" + "competition policy"
“contrôle des concentrations”
“économie industrielle” + concentrations
“droit de la concurrence” + fusions »
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3. Process tracing: extracts of a student’s report
Types of Documents Available in the Field
It is not surprising that the most documents produced about French merger
control and competition policies come from the government agencies
responsible for monitoring markets in that country. The Autorité de la
concurrence issues opinions about the state of competition, and makes
decisions regarding proposed mergers and acquisitions. They also issue press
releases about the result of certain cases, or their recommendations for
improving the state of markets in certain industries.
Everything that comes from the Autorité is important to those working
in the field of competition law, and the firms affected by that law
because it sets the tone for what is considered acceptable and what is
not.
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3. Process tracing: extracts of a student’s report
CONCLUSION
(…) Although one could hardly say that the terminology in the field is volatile,
this mix of subjects in the context of the European Union creates a confusing
situation for the use of terms in English. Once I realized this, it definitely
affected the way I did my research and decided which documents to take into
account when choosing terms. In this way, I was confronted with the reality of
translating in a country that is part of a larger framework where languages
meet and mix, resulting in often very unique English vocabulary that is not
necessarily understood by those who are not familiar with it.
It makes me wonder how often translators with deadlines who are not
familiar with these differences use vocabulary from the European
Commission when it may not be the best choice if one’s goal is
widespread comprehension.
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Conclusion

information research
document collection
specialised language
discourse community
domain
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Conclusion
Corpus
Terminological / phraseological query
Translation decision
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On-line resources
 My course: http://www.eila.univ-paris-
diderot.fr/enseignement/lea/cours/rech-documentaire/gbordet2
 A selection of useful resources: http://www.eila.univ-parisdiderot.fr/enseignement/lea/cours/rech-documentaire/l3
 Research methodology for the Internet:
http://ccfd.crosemont.qc.ca/cours/trousse/carte/index.html
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Hvala na vašoj
pozornosti!
Documentary research
in specialized translation studies
Geneviève Bordet
Paris Diderot University , Sorbonne Paris Cité, CLILLAC-ARP EA 3967
F-75205, Paris, France
gbordet@eila.univ-paris-diderot.fr
Terminologija i specijalizirano prevođenje u službi međukulturne strukovne
Komunikacij – August 22-23 2014 – University of Zadar
50