Parallel corpora and concordances

This might be tl;dr … If you are just looking for a list or some links to parallel corpora, please go to the end of this post.

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In response to my presentation at this years ETJ Tokyo conference, where I talked about the parallel corpus and DDL tool called SCoRE, I was asked whether there were parallel corpora available in other languages. Short answer: Yes! Caveat: They are not always straightforward to use.

First of all, a quick explanation of what is a parallel corpus. It is a kind of bi- or multilingual corpus. A parallel corpus is a corpus that contains text from one language that is aligned with translations from one or more other languages; so, for example, if I query talk * in the Japanese interface of SCoRE I will get concordance lines in English that contain talk+ any word and concordance lines in Japanese that are translations of those English lines. These are parallel concordances.

English-Japanese parallel concordancing in SCoRE

Here is another illustration  showing a sample of a concordance from the Portugese-English parallel corpus COMPARA. The query terms were “talk” “.*” (this is the syntax for the talk + any word search in COMPARA, quote marks included).

Parallel concordancing in COMPARA

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Parallel corpora are often used in translation and contrastive studies [see McEnery, A., & Xiao, R. (2007). Parallel and comparable corpora: What is happening. Incorporating Corpora. The Linguist and the Translator, 18-31]. Although they are not used as much in language learning, there has been promising work recently, particularly (as far as I’m aware) here in Japan [see Anthony, L., Chujo, K., & Oghigian, K. (2011). A novel, web-based, parallel concordancer for use in the ESL/EFL classroom. In Corpus-based studies in language use, language learning, and language documentation (pp. 123-138). Brill.; see also Chujo, K., Kobayashi, Y., Mizumoto, A., & Oghigian, K. (2016). Exploring the Effectiveness of Combined Web-based Corpus Tools for Beginner EFL DDL. Linguistics and Literature Studies, 4(4).]

Parallel concordancing can used for activities like translation tasks, of course, but they are also useful for DDL, at least in certain situations. In my experience, having translations of English concordance lines available in students’ L1 is very helpful for both lower-proficiency students and novice DDL students. Both the content and format of concordance lines can be difficult for such students, but in both cases the L1 support offered by parallel corpora allows students to quickly grasp the meaning of the English lines, letting them focus on the context or patterns in the lines. Even if they don’t always need the L1 support to really understand the English lines, they often feel more comfortable and are more receptive to doing activities and work that they are generally unaccustomed to doing. Perhaps as they become more familiar with concordance lines they can switch to monolingual lines.

Another benefit is that they can get a sense of how differently (or similarly) concepts, ideas, or notions may be expressed in the L2 as compared to their L1. Students can pick up on shades of meaning, nuance, and usage. I’ve seen this lead to lexical development where students have commented that they found a phrase or new (and natural-sounding) way to express something they had previously expressed inaccurately due to L1 interference, or had been completely unaware of because it wasn’t covered in any traditional way (i.e. it really is something they discovered for themselves). It’s only anecdotal, but I have spoken with my students about these mini ‘light-bulb’ moments and they react very positively to them.

There can be issues, though. There needs to be some understanding of, say, the directionality and relationship of the source material to the translations, or where the translations have come from and their quality, and of course that the translation seen in a concordance line is almost certainly not the only potential/accurate way to translate the source text. And another thing to keep in mind is that students’ need to share a single L1 unless the corpus is multilingual with translations available for all of the students’ L1s (which would overcome one issue but possibly raise others).

But still, parallel concordances can be quite useful and make it easier for students to get involved in doing DDL work. For more info about uses and issues with parallel corpora/concordances I recommend reading ‘Frankenberg-Garcia, A. (2005). Pedagogical uses of monolingual and parallel concordances. ELT Journal, 59(3), 189-198.’

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Finally, where are these parallel corpora? A simple google search will turn up numerous parallel corpora available for download, such as the Open Parallel Corpus (OPUS), but that means you need to run your own parallel concordancing software. Something like AntPConc might be a relatively easy-to-use piece of software for this. However, even if you are comfortable running an application like AntPConc, the parallel corpora you find might not be appropriate for your students unless you are in an ESP environment with students learning language for, say, international legal or technical contexts (like the EuroParl corpus).

Alternatively, I’ve compiled a very brief list of some parallel corpora and projects that have web-based interfaces. A caution, though, I am familiar only with the English-Japanese corpora on this list; although some of the others have been used for language learning, or designed with language learning as a goal, I cannot vouch for the pedagogic applicability or accuracy of the other language combinations here (I’ll leave that to folks who understand the languages in these corpora).

Note: All of these are combined with English

Japanese

SCoRE (and WebSCoRE); WebParaNews

Chinese

E-C Concord (more info can be found here); BFSU CQPweb has several parallel corpora (for guests the user ID and password are both test)

Korean

MOA

Thai

ETPC

Polish

PACO for EPPC

Portugese

COMPARA (further information about COMPARA is available here)

Multilingual

Tatoeba; Linguee; Reverso Context

Learner Language

ENEJE (this parallel corpus aligns essays by Japanese EFL students with edits made by native English speakers)

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I’m sure there are many more. Feel free to list others in the comments 🙂

 

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