using the web

Using the web as a linguistic resource.

Approaches and methods

• Glossaries/Dictionaries• Translation-Oriented Web Search• Using traditional corpora online• Concordancing the web• The mega-corpus/mini-web approach• Building and using monolingual/comparable

corpora

Glossaries


corpora

Translation-oriented Web Search

• Basic issues in web search

• Case studies:- evidence of attested usage; - investigating phraseology; - testing translation candidates

Problems and limitations of search engines

• limited number of results• format• ranking• normalization, punctuation, special characters• informational, navigational, transactional

needs

Sintassi di GOOGLE

+ > co-occorrenza di due o più parole- > esclude la presenza di una parolaOR > una qualsiasi fra due o più parole

“” > frase esatta * > una parola qualsiasi in una posizionenazione (.uk; .it; .fr…)istituzione (ac.uk; .edu; .org…)

Web pages evaluation (4)

Imparare a leggere gli indirizzi:

• .it – Italy• .uk – Great Britain • .us – United States• .ca – Canada • .au – Australia • .ie – Ireland (Eire)

Imparare a leggere gli indirizzi:

• .edu – restricted use by educational sites (usually a university or college)

• .com – general use by commercial business sites • .gov – restricted use by U.S. governmental/non-military

sites • .mil – restricted use by U.S. military sites and agencies • .net – general use by networks, internet service providers,

organizations • .org – general use by non-profit organizations and others

• Some specific portals:• Pubmed > site:. .ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed• Wlsecier > site:.elesevier.com

The kleene star

• By placing an asterisk (kleene star) within quotes one can explore phrases:

e.g. the key to/for success?“the key * success”- For 1,340,000- To 90,000,000e.g. linee cellulari di/dell’epatoma umano“linee cellulari * epatoma umano”? linee cellulari di epatoma umano!

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22linee+cellulari+*+epatoma+umano%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:it:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb



1. Exploring collocationPAESAGGI SUGGESTIVI

Exploring collocationPAESAGGI SUGGESTIVI

Complex query

• Geographical position: UK• Exact phrase: «suggestive landscapes»• Co-occurrence: travel OR tourism OR holiday• Language: English• Provenance: United Kingdom• Domain:.uk

Google search…

2. Valdating translation candidates

You are into English an Italian article on cancer and you encounter the phrase “sede di insorgenza”.

Sede = siteInsorgenza = onsetONSET SITE vs SITE OF ONSET

“onset site”

cancer “onset site” (relevance)

cancer “onset site” site:elsevier.com(relevance + reliability)

cancer “site of onset” site:.elsevier.com

«onset site» > 8700cancer «onset site» > 1170cancer «onset site» site:.elsevier.com > 36

• «site of onset» 29500• cancer «site of onset» 10100• cancer «site of onset» site:.elsevier.com > 55

• «onset site» cancer Google Books

• «site of onset» cancer Google Books

3.Exploring PhraseologyLA FREQUENZA … E’ IN AUMENTO

• La frequenza del carcinoma a cellule squamose della mucosa orale è in rapido aumento; inoltre, il suo comportamento clinico è difficilmente prevedibile basandosi solo sui classici parametri istologici.

Draft translation • The frequency of squamous cell oral cancer is

rapidly increasing…But… • Do people really say that “the frequency of something

is increasing”? • Would people say this when talking about cancer?

Step 1: in put a string to be tested“The frequency of * is increasing”

50,000 matches

Step 2: add context (“cancer”) to boost relevancecancer “The frequency of * is increasing”

9000 matches

Step 3: add domain (e.g.: .ac.uk) to boost reliabilitycancer “The frequency of * is increasing” site:.ac.uk

4 matches

Step 4 – Search for a more specific pattern:“the frequency of * cancer is increasing” site:.ac.uk

0 hits

Step 5 - Move the kleene star to further explore phraseology

e.g. “The * of * cancer is increasing”…

“the * of * cancer is increasing"

The incidence of * cancer is increasing


corpora

USING THE BNC

- Go to http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

- Register as: “Graduate student: not languages or linguistics”

http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

Collocation

Colligation

Semantic preference

Semantic prosody

Compare collocates


corpora

www.webcorp.org.uk

Results for LANDSCAPEfrom WebCorp

Exercises

• Explore collocationVolatilitySpread

• Explore neologismsFlexicurityStaycation

• Explore phrasal creativity Everyone and their * knows

• Explore Computer-Mediated-Communication l8r … dunno… IMHO

Volatility - chemistry

Volatility - market

More examples from blogs:

• Dunno• IMHO

WebCorp Linguist’s Search Engine

http://www.webcorp.org.uk/live/wlse.jsp

REGISTER FOR FREE



• Synchronic English Web Corpus, a corpus consisting of 467,713,650 words from web-extracted texts covering the period 2000-2010;

• Diachronic English Web Corpus, consisting of 128,951,238 words covering the period Jan 2000 - Dec 2010, with each month containing approximately 1 million words;

• Birmingham Blog Corpus, consisting of 628,558,282 words from blog texts.

Synchronic English Web Corpus

• Mini-web Sample > 339,907,995 words corpus compiled from 100,000 randomly selected web-pages to form a sample of the distribution of texts throughout the web.

• Domains > 127,805,655 words from 56,000 pages selected from 14 domains on the basis of the Open Directory classification of web pages.

http://www.dmoz.org/

Domains in the Synchronic English Web Corpus

SPREAD

• Spread > health• Spread > business

balkanis/zation

Birmingham Blog Corpus

• kinda

kinda feel + adj

kinda sorta + verb

using the web

Documents