Creating parallel and comparable corpora for work in domain specific areas of language

Comparable corpora – Perceived needs

• Texts as:
• Examples of ‘natural’ original text in the source language culture
• E.g.
• Legal texts written according to local conventions
• Socially conventional texts: e.g. the ‘deaths column’ and advertisements for houses and jobs.
• Academic / scientific texts – different cultural conventions

Comparable corpora – Advantages

• Availability
• More texts
• Greater variety
• Versatility - applications for research in:
• Discourse analysis
• Pragmatics
• Information retrieval
• Knowledge engineering

What makes
texts /corpora
COMPARABLE?

EAGLES - quotes

• “A comparable corpus is one which selects similar texts in more than one language or variety”.
• Similar - in more than one language

AND/OR

• Similar - in variety

“...similar circumstances of communication..”

Similarity – Form/content?

• Form
• Size, no. of words, sentences, paragraphs
• Length of texts
• Format - .txt, .doc, .html,.xml
• Content
• General language
• Specialised domains

Similarity- Structure/Function?

• Structure
• Formal, carefully constructed texts – e.g. Legal texts
• Informal, loosely organized discourse – e.g. transcriptions of conversation
• Function
• Social
• Cultural

Similarity- Register?

• Register
• Field – situation, subject matter etc
• Tenor – interpersonal relationships
• e.g. formal/informal, politeness, etc
• Mode
• Spoken: e.g. speech, formal dialogue, conversation
• Written: e.g. book, essay, instruction manual
• Multimedia: e.g. Encarta, films