Parallel corpora can be used in translation research in at least two ways: as the main source of data or as a supplement to data retrieved from a comparable corpus, enabling data triangulation. In the former scenario, they may throw light on contrastive aspects or on translator techniques and methods. In the latter they will tend to be searched to account for differences perceived between the two components of a comparable corpus. Two case studies will be put forward in order to illustrate these two uses of parallel corpora. Both draw on the English-Catalan subcorpus of COVALT (Valencian Corpus of Translated Literature). The first analyses the translation of meal names whereas the second focuses on the -ment adverb + adjective construction.