Do-it-Yourself Corpora: what are they and who are they for?

Abstract

The use of corpora in translation, teaching, and academic writing has been increasing significantly over the last years. Do-it-yourself (DIY) corpora are particularly useful to those areas. This paper presents a theoretical review and discusses the use of DIY corpora in translation, in language teaching, and in academic writing. Evidence shows that, with the aid of computational tools, DIY corpora provide translators with better options for translating texts and extracting terminology. At the same time, it can be a resourceful tool for teachers planning their language for general or specific purposes classes, or for researchers who aim to observe the structure and language patterns of their own areas of research. The studies described show that DIY corpora are resourceful tools that can be used in different but correlated contexts.