1. Introduction

This article reviews the 30-year development of Corpus Based Translation Studies (CBTS), starting from Mona Baker's concept proposed in 1993, through rapid development in the early decade of the 21st century, to breakthroughs and expansions in the past decade. CBTS has evolved from describing the formal features of translation language to delving deeper into semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic aspects, with increasingly diverse research tools and methods. At the same time, it pointed out the bottleneck problems faced by current CBTS, such as topic concentration and method convergence, and looked forward to three cutting-edge trends to guide future research directions.

The 30-year process of corpus translation studies

A detailed review of the 30-year development of corpus translation studies was conducted, showcasing the growth and evolution of this field through a series of key events and achievements. In 1993, Baker first proposed the application of corpora in translation research, laying the foundation for corpus translation studies. In 1995, the establishment of the first Translation English Corpus (TEC) promoted the development of research on translation commonalities. In 1998, the corpus specific number of Meta journals marked the establishment of disciplinary status. In 2000, Baker proposed the study of translator style, opening up a new research field. In 2004, the first international conference on corpus translation studies and the establishment of the Beijing Foreign Studies University General Chinese English Corresponding Corpus promoted the development of corpus translation studies in China. In 2008, the first International Symposium on Language Comparison and Translation Research Using Corpus was held, which further promoted the development of the discipline. In 2011, the publication of "Corpus Translation Studies: Research and Application" and the release of the "Corpus Translation Studies Library" series showcased the research achievements of the first decade of the new century. In 2017, the construction of the massive "Chinese English Chinese Parallel Corpus" with 100 million words provided new impetus for the development of corpus translation studies in China. In 2022, the publication of the collection "Expanding the Research Field of Corpus Translation Studies" showcased the latest research perspectives and methods.

3. The forefront of corpus translation studies in the new era

In depth analysis of the cutting-edge development of corpus translation studies in the new era, covering interdisciplinary research, innovative research methods, diversified research objects, and refinement and expansion of research topics.

4. Conclusion

The advancement of modern technology and the diversification of translation phenomena have driven changes in the disciplinary environment of corpus translation studies, expanding research scope, diversifying perspectives, enriching objects, and expanding territories. Expanding research from product to process and function, interdisciplinary perspectives bring new insights. The diversification of corpus leads to changes in corpus types and comparison patterns. The research method has shifted from a single corpus approach to combining corpus with experiments, and statistical analysis has moved from descriptive to inferential and exploratory, improving accuracy and validity. Corpus translation studies have entered an interdisciplinary stage supported by diversified translation "big data", posing challenges and opportunities for researchers in terms of knowledge structure and methodological system.