Searching for Statesmanship: A corpus-based analysis of a translated political discourse

With its connotations of superior moral integrity, exceptional leadership qualities and expertise in the science of government, the modern ideal of statesmanship is most commonly traced back to the ancient Greek concept of πολιτικός (politikos) and the work of Plato and Aristotle in particular. Through an analysis of a large corpus of modern English translations of political works, built as part of the AHRC Genealogies of Knowledge project (http://genealogiesofknowledge.net/), this case-study aims to explore patterns that are specific to this translated discourse, with a view to understanding the crucial role played by translators in shaping its development and reception in society. It ultimately seeks to argue that the model of statesmanship presented in translations from ancient Greek is just as much a product of the receiving culture (and the social anxieties of Victorian Britain especially) as it is inherited from the classical world

From Text to Data: Mediality in corpus-based translation studies

This paper seeks to promote deeper reflection within the field of corpus-based translation studies (CTS) regarding the digital tools by means of which research in this discipline proceeds. It explicates a range of possibilities and constraints brought to the analysis of translated texts by the keyword in context (KWIC) concordancer and other data visualisation applications, paying particular attention to the ways in which these technological affordances have actively shaped central theoretical hypotheses within CTS and related fields, as well as the general principles of corpus construction. This discussion is illustrated through a small case study which applies the suite of corpus analysis tools developed as part of the Genealogies of Knowledge project to the investigation of two English translations of the Communist Manifesto