The search for universals of translation has experienced a surge of research interest since the mid-nineties, in particular since the advent of electronic corpora as research tools in translation studies. The seminal paper was Mona Baker's (1993) article where she suggested that large electronic corpora might be the ideal tool for investigating the linguistic nature of translations: either in contrast to their source texts or in contrast to untranslated target language texts. Baker saw in electronic corpora a useful testbed for a series of hypotheses on universal features of translation that had been put forward by other scholars on the basis of small-scale, manually conducted contrastive studies only.

Introduction

I. Conceptualising universals

Probabilistic explanations in translation studies: Welcome as they

are, would they qualify as universals?

Gideon Toury

Beyond the particular

Andrew Chesterman

When is a universal not a universal? Some limits of current

corpus-based methodologies for the investigation

of translation universals

Silvia Bernardini and Federico Zanettin

II. Large-scale tendencies in translated language

Corpora, universals and interference

Anna Mauranen

Untypical frequencies in translated language: A corpus-based study

on a literary corpus of translated and non-translated Finnish

Sari Eskola

Untypical patterns in translations: Issues on corpus methodology

and synonymity

Jarmo Harri Jantunen

111. Testing the basics

Translation-specific lexicogrammar? Characteristic lexical and

collocational patterning in Swedish texts translated from English

Per-Ola Nilsson

Explicitation: A universal of translated text?

Vilma Papai

Explicitation of clausal relations: A corpus-based analysis of clause

connectives in translated and non-translated Finnish children's literature

Tiina Puurtinen

Unique items - over- or under-represented in translated language?

Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit

IV. Universals in the translation class

What happens to "unique items" in learners' translations?

"Theories" and "concepts" as a challenge for novices' views

on "good translation"

Pekka Kujamfiki

The fate of"The Families of Medellin": Tampering with a potential

translation universal in the translation class

Riitta Jaaiskelaiinen

Author index

Subject index