Analysing, Revising and Teaching LSP Phraseology: An Integrated Approach

Alongside terminology, phraseology is generally considered as the main element and obstacle in the development of one of the core components of any model describing translation competence, i.e. thematic competence (EMT Expert Group 2009, 2017). This implies that any LSP translation course should focus on and help acquire and retrieve the specific phraseology adopted in the different subject fields considered. This paper will propose an approach to the analysis and revision of phraseological errors in LSP translation using translationQ (van Egdom 2021; van Egdom et al. 2018) that can be easily and successfully integrated in the didactic setting. The study will first explain how the software can be used for the revision and assessment of multiple translations of the same source text (ST) and will then show how phraseological errors can be retrieved for analysis and teaching purposes. More specifically, the study will analyse the Italian phraseological units and any phraseological errors in a corpus of multiple translations of the same English STs (i.e. a popular science article on astronomy and a specialised magazine article on information technology) made by the same group of first-year MA translator trainees. The study will adopt both a quantitative and qualitative approach by considering the number and type of errors made by the different translators in the sample. The data will also be analysed diachronically to check whether and to what extent specific training in LSP contribute to the development of the necessary skills in the identification and retrieval of LPS phraseology.