Teaching machine translation and translation technology: a contrastive study

The Machine Translation course at Dublin City University is taught to undergraduate students in Applied Computational Linguistics, while Computer-Assisted Translation is taught on two translator-training programmes, one undergraduate and one postgraduate. Given the differing backgrounds of these sets of students, the course material, methods of teaching and assessment all differ. We report here on our experiences of teaching these courses over a number of years, which we hope will be of interest to lecturers of similar existing courses, as well as providing a reference point for others who may be considering the introduction of such material

MOTYWACJA I MEDIA ELEKTRONICZNE W NAUCZANIU TŁUMACZEŃ SPECJALISTYCZNYCH

Expansion of IT-media in every field of human activity is one of the essential characteristics of modern time. This paper aims at presenting the role of electronic media in teaching translation in the field of law at the University of Osijek, Croatia, and analysing their impact on the motivation of the target group of students in the teaching process. The paper endeavours to provide some insight into the modern teaching practice and to analyse the interconnectedness of the use of electronic media and student motivation rather than to present some empirical research in the field. In the first part of the paper, a theoretical approach to teaching legal translation today is offered. In the main part, teaching legal translation by using modern media is presented on the examples of the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists at the Faculty of Law Osijek, and the course on legal translation within the German Language and Literature Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Osijek. The usage of electronic media in translation teaching is discussed with reference to the courses Introduction to the Theory of Legal Translation and Online Translation Tools and EU Vocabulary. Specific types of online materials, translation tools and sources are discussed from the point of view of student motivation. New media are also discussed from the perspective of their efficiency at different stages of translation teaching. In the concluding part, application of modern technologies in teaching legal translation is compared with other teaching methods, approaches and techniques. Finally, the author questions using IT as motivation tools in the higher education teaching discourse and argues for application of “moderate approach” in the teaching of legal translation.Ekspansja mediów informatycznych w każdej dziedzinie życia jest jedną z podstawowych cech współczesnego życia. Niniejszy artykuł ma na celu przedstawienie roli mediów elektronicznych w nauczaniu przekładu prawniczego na Uniwersytecie w Osijek w Chorwacji oraz przeanalizowanie ich wpływu na motywację grupy docelowej studentów w procesie nauczania. Autorka stara się przedstawić nowoczesną praktykę dydaktyczną i przeanalizować wzajemne powiązania korzystania z mediów elektronicznych i motywację studentów. W pierwszej części artykułu zaproponowano teoretyczne podejście do nauczania tłumaczenia prawniczego. Na przykładach programu „Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists” na Wydziale Prawa Osijek oraz kursu tłumaczenia prawniczego w ramach „German Language and Literature Studies” na Wydziale Nauk Humanistycznych i Społecznych w Osijek autorka prezentuje nauczanie tłumaczenia prawniczego przy użyciu nowoczesnych mediów. Wykorzystanie mediów elektronicznych w nauczaniu tłumaczeń omawia się w odniesieniu do kursów „Wprowadzenie do teorii tłumaczenia prawniczego i narzędzi tłumaczenia online oraz słownictwa UE”. Konkretne rodzaje materiałów online, narzędzi tłumaczeniowych i źródeł omawia się z punktu widzenia motywacji studentów. Nowe media są również analizowane pod kątem ich skuteczności na różnych etapach nauczania przekładu. Podsumowując, zastosowanie nowoczesnych technologii w nauczaniu tłumaczenia prawniczego porównuje się z innymi metodami, podejściami i technikami nauczania. Na koniec autorka kwestionuje zasadność wykorzystania narzędzi IT jako motywatorów w dyskursie dydaktycznym szkolnictwa wyższego i opowiada się za zastosowaniem „umiarkowanego podejścia” w nauczaniu tłumaczenia prawniczego

Computer-Assisted Program Reasoning Based on a Relational Semantics of Programs

We present an approach to program reasoning which inserts between a program and its verification conditions an additional layer, the denotation of the program expressed in a declarative form. The program is first translated into its denotation from which subsequently the verification conditions are generated. However, even before (and independently of) any verification attempt, one may investigate the denotation itself to get insight into the "semantic essence" of the program, in particular to see whether the denotation indeed gives reason to believe that the program has the expected behavior. Errors in the program and in the meta-information may thus be detected and fixed prior to actually performing the formal verification. More concretely, following the relational approach to program semantics, we model the effect of a program as a binary relation on program states. A formal calculus is devised to derive from a program a logic formula that describes this relation and is subject for inspection and manipulation. We have implemented this idea in a comprehensive form in the RISC ProgramExplorer, a new program reasoning environment for educational purposes which encompasses the previously developed RISC ProofNavigator as an interactive proving assistant.Comment: In Proceedings THedu'11, arXiv:1202.453

E/Valuating new media in language development

This paper addresses the need for a new approach to the educational evaluation of software that falls under the rubric "new media" or "multimedia" as distinct from previous generations of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software. The authors argue that present approaches to CALL software evaluation are not appropriate for a new genre of CALL software distinguished by its shared assumptions about language learning and teaching as well as by its technical design. The paper sketches a research-based program called "E/Valuation" that aims to assist language educators to answer questions about the educational effectiveness of recent multimedia language learning software. The authors suggest that such program needs to take into account not only the nature of the new media and its potential to promote language learning in novel ways, but also current professional knowledge about language learning and teaching

ICT in higher education in Portugal. Call computer assisted language learning

Este artículo pretende explorar el Aprendizaje de Lenguas Asistido por Ordenador (CALL, Computer-Assisted Language Learning) en Portugal. Para ello, se centrará en el nivel de educación superior. La escasa explotación del CALL en Portugal ha sido ampliamente estudiado en varios informes, por ejemplo, el informe encargado por la UE titulado The Impact of Information and Communications Technologies on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and on the Role of Teachers of Foreign Languages (2002: 5): "The use and employment of ICT in FLT and FLL is far from satisfactory, as ICT resources are traditionally reserved for '(computer) science' subjects, and rarely assigned to art subjects. A general lack of appropriate training of language teachers in meaningful uses of ICT tends to strengthen this trend". Este artículo abordará dichas necesidades centrándose en los resultados de proyectos europeos como POOLS. Analizaremos cuestiones relativas a los materiales en línea que pueden utilizarse para desarrollar contenidos de clases de lengua, hacienda uso de las ventajas del e-Learning.G.I. HUM 767 (ayudas a Grupos de Investigación de la Junta de Andalucía) / Editorial Comares (colección interlingua

Researching language learning processes in open CALL settings for advanced learners

This article reports on a project (electronic role-play) run at Nottingham Trent University. It investigates how knowledge can be constructed collaboratively in an open setting based on computer-mediated communication (CMC) and the internet as primary source for material. The analysis will concentrate on evidence of (1) focus on language form and (2) acquisition of content. Furthermore, it reports about observations made regarding the way in which students utilize the electronic environment during the learning process, namely (3) the flow of information within an open CALL framework and (4) the non-linear composition of text