User:Savla94/sandbox

=Concordancer=

A concordancer is a computer program that automatically constructs a concordance; that is, it finds all of the occurrences of a search word or pattern in a corpus and displays them in context. The output of a concordancer may serve as input to a translation memory system for computer-assisted translation, or as an early step in machine translation. Concordancers are also used in Teaching English as a second or foreign language, and in corpus linguistics to retrieve alphabetically or otherwise sorted lists of linguistic data from the corpus in question, which the corpus linguist then analyzes.

Use in translation
The concordancers used in translation are typically bilingual or multilingual. Bilingual concordancers search for translations of the same sentences from the corpora, and highlight the translation of the search term. This allows the translator to not only find terminology and idiomatic language, but also to find the most common term when there are several equivalents; essentially, translators are able to confirm or reject what they find using other tools, such as dictionaries and their own intuition, to find the most appropriate equivalent. The resulting translations can be stored in translation memory systems or added to the translator’s personal corpus.

Use in teaching English as a second or foreign language
English language teachers often rely heavily on intuitive language knowledge, especially when it comes to student questions. Concordancers are used to check these assumptions, along with finding the most up-to-date collocations, expressions, and uses of language. Teachers also use concordancers to find relevant, real examples of the concepts being taught.

Concordancers can also be used by students, both as teaching materials and also as a research tool. Students who consistently make the same mistakes can search the root word and find out for themselves. The advantages for students are similar to those for teachers: they can find genuine examples, find and understand different meanings for the same words, and explore collocations.

The disadvantages of concordancers in English language teaching include the corpus being far too advanced for lower-level students (as they are based on authentic language use), their inaccessibility without internet access (although downloadable software packaged exist, most concordancers are internet -based), and interfaces that are very complex to use and not user-friendly.

Use in corpus linguistics
Concordancers are often used in corpus linguistics to find data on naturally occurring language in corpora, or systematic collections of text. Concordancers do in a few seconds what used to take hours or even days when performed manually. The information concordancers provide on the occurrence of certain words or strings and their contexts is vital for corpus linguistics. Results from concordancers are analyzed for frequency of use, collocations, regional variations, and so on. Different corpora are analyzed for different insights, such as reference versus specialized corpora, and English learner, regional, spoken language, historic, and bi- or multilingual corpora. Corpora then fall into a further two categories, based on the treatment of the text: in annotated corpora, some form of linguistics analysis has already been performed on the texts, while in orthographic corpora the text is left as is. Linguistic items are investigated in context, and as a result their patterns are more readily visible.