Du texte aux ressources multimodales: faire avancer la recherche en interprétation à partir d’un corpus déjà existant

Abstract

Corpus linguistics generally relies on textual sources to analyse representative instances of language use, be it written or spoken. However, the fundamental role of nonverbal and multimodal resources has come to the fore as they contribute tremendously to meaning-making processes, in both direct and mediated communication. This is all the more relevant in Interpreting Studies, where transcripts of mediated interactions can only reveal a partial picture of the communicative exchange. That is why attempts have been made to include multimodal resources (for instance, extralinguistic information, video and audio recordings) in corpus projects such as the European Parliament Interpreting Corpus (EPIC), which set the basis for further interpreting corpora. This paper focuses on such developments and illustrates three more interpreting corpora, namely the Directionality in Simultaneous Interpreting (DIRSI) Corpus, the European Parliament Translation and Interpreting Corpus (EPTIC), and the Anglintrad Corpus and platform. These linguistic resources take advantage of multimodality to a different extent, offering textual and multimedia materials either separately or aligned to each other. All these examples are evidence of how important it is to maintain flexible formats and structures when developing an interpreting corpus, so that existing resources can be the springboard for further progress in the study of interpreting beyond the textual level.