An approach to corpus-based interpreting studies: developing EPIC (European Parliament Interpreting Corpus)

Empirical research on simultaneous interpreting is hampered by the problem of collecting sufficient material (recordings of source speeches and interpreted target speeches) for the testing of hypotheses and validation of existing theories. In other words, corpora have long been awaited in the field of Interpreting Studies. In January 2004 a research group on corpus-based interpreting studies was set up in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Cultures (SITLeC) of the University of Bologna at Forlì, in order to create an electronic parallel corpus with source and target speeches in Italian, English and Spanish. The main research interest of the group is the study of interpreters’ strategies across different language directions (directionality) and language-pair related difficulties. In this paper, the authors illustrate the various stages of development of the EPIC corpus, highlighting both research and pedagogical applications of this “multidimensional” tool comprising video, audio and written materials, which can be retrieved, selected and analyzed by using corpus linguistics techniques.