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Dr. Amal Metwally delivered a presentation titled “Exploring Practical Applications of Sketch Engine in Corpus-Based Translation Research” during a webinar organized by the Scientific Research, Innovation, and Graduate Studies Unit of the College of Languages and Translation at King Khalid University on January 29, 2025. Her presentation focused on her investigation into the efficacy of Sketch Engine as a tool for corpus-based translation research.

Dr. Metwally elucidated how this corpus analysis tool can enhance translation research by bridging linguistic theory and practice. Prior to demonstrating the tool’s effectiveness, she provided a detailed explanation of corpus linguistics and corpus-based translation research. According to her, corpus linguistics primarily focuses on analyzing text collocations, uncovering patterns, and examining language usage in real-world data. Conversely, corpus-based translation research validates linguistic choices through empirical evidence, thereby integrating theory and practice by illustrating how words and phrases function within their context—ultimately leading to greater precision and fluency in translation.

The presenter also highlighted her observations from various research studies concerning the effectiveness of Sketch Engine. She cited Stewart (2024) and Ashfia et al. (2023), whose findings underscored the tool’s potency in corpus analysis, particularly in identifying collocations, frequency patterns, and other lexical features. Dr. Amal emphasized the user-friendliness and robust capabilities of Sketch Engine for corpus analysis. She further noted that the interface is designed to accommodate both novice and experienced users, thereby facilitating ease of navigation. Additionally, she demonstrated its applicability across various fields, including linguistics and language studies, teaching and research, discourse analysis, and translation research.

The presentation showcased the advanced applications of Sketch Engine, emphasizing its key functionalities—Word Sketch, Thesaurus, concordancing, and parallel concordancing. In a subsequent practical session, participants explored how Word Sketch elucidates grammatical and collocational patterns, how the Thesaurus function facilitates vocabulary instruction, how concordancing supports the analysis of word usage across various contexts, and how parallel concordancing ensures translation accuracy by comparing source and target texts. This hands-on experience demonstrated how Sketch Engine enhances linguistic analysis and translation workflows by equipping users with data-driven tools that promote precision and consistency.

The presenter demonstrated the engine's interface by illustrating the operational functions of its tools. She further showcased its practical application by presenting her analysis of the translation of the awareness guides featured on the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah website.

Dr. Amal Metwally concluded that Sketch Engine is unquestionably an essential tool for corpus-based translation research, offering a comprehensive suite of features for linguistic analysis.

Overall, the webinar proved to be highly engaging and a great success.