Blending Technologies and Translation Strategies to Optimise Learning Processes

Ponencia presentada pendiente de que se pida para publicaciónTrainers should accept the growing dependence of learners, especially in the case of beginners, have on the use of translation tools and all kind of automatic resources to save time and also to easily find terminology. However, translation strategies, culture competence and terminology pose challenges that must be faced with the right skills beside web basic aids. We are conducting research on the use of corpora tools by students and their competences, first by using surveys and, later on, giving then the instructions to elaborate their own parallel or comparable corpus ad hoc to work with translation assignments. This research focus on the elaboration of glossaries in the legal field using corpora tools and the feedback of students’ awareness of the benefits of technologies when they are properly managed from the beginning of their training. Paradoxically, although technologies appear to have a widespread use in training and learning activities, we found that an intensive training is often needed to optimize students’ translation skills by using translation program and resources.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Second language learning: finding ways to successfully integrate ICT resources and right strategies for language learning, translation and interpreting

Second language learning: finding ways to integrate ICT resources and right strategies for language learning, translation and interpreting Second language learning has gained importance as language accreditations have become imperative for any profession or academic career. Undergraduate students in Philology, Translation Studies, Tourism Studies or the like follow language accreditation programmes in order to be able to compile a valid and solid CV when they complete their degrees, master or PhD programmes. In the case of Translation students, they are subjects with strong motivation for language learning applied to translation or interpreting tasks. Language technologies and tools constitute an essential part of their learning processes and language teachers should find a way of optimising the use of these resources. For this purpose, we have conducted a survey among students, trying to find out which web resources they use, how they use them (or not) and why. Using these data, we considered new strategies to help students get the most out of these tools; in particular, we analysed the pros and cons of machine translation tools, such as deepL and Google Translator, as well as corpus linguistics tools.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Dublin City University at CLEF 2007: Cross-Language Speech Retrieval Experiments

The Dublin City University participation in the CLEF 2007 CL-SR English task concentrated primarily on issues of topic translation. Our retrieval system used the BM25F model and pseudo relevance feedback. Topics were translated into English using the Yahoo! BabelFish free online service combined with domain-specific translation lexicons gathered automatically from Wikipedia. We explored alternative topic translation methods using these resources. Our results indicate that extending machine translation tools using automatically generated domainspecific translation lexicons can provide improved CLIR effectiveness for this task

TRANSLATION TOOLS AS CONTRIBUTORS TO TRANSLATION QUALITY

U članku se s translatološkog i komunikološkog aspekta analizira intenzivna i revolucionarna strategija razvoja informacijsko-digitalne tehnologije i njezin utjecaj i primjena u području prevoditeljske struke. Brzi razvoj jezičnih tehnologija bitno je utjecao na prevodilačku industriju i prevodilačku profesiju omogućavajući efikasnije i brže obavljanje profesije. Informacijska je tehnologija promijenila način i diseminaciju informacije. Internet i međunarodne web-stranice otvorili su prevođenju nove putove i perspektive. Suvremeni profesionalni prevoditelj za optimalan prijevod ne koristi isključivo tradicionalno-klasična pomagala kod prevođenja – tiskane rječnike, glosare, enciklopedije i druge tiskane materijale. Računalno potpomognuto prevođenje (engl. CAT = Computer-Assisted/Aided Translation) i strojno prevođenje (engl. MT = Machine Translation) kao i online prevodilački alati i resursi, poput e-rječnika, glosara, korpusa, terminoloških baza, prijevodnih memorija i online bilingvalnih tekstova neophodan su dio suvremene prevodilačke prakse. Autorica u članku naglašava značenje i utjecaj nove globalno-tehnološke paradigme na profesiju prevoditelja i potrebu usvajanja novih vještina i znanja za efikasno i kompetentno obavljanje posla na konkurentnom i višejezičnom tržištu. U svrhu ovog rada provedeno je empirijsko istraživanje, koje polazi od pretpostavke da uporaba i korištenje prevodilačkih alata te resursa doprinosi bržem, kvalitetnijem i konzistentnijem prevođenju. Analizira se kvaliteta i konzistentnost prijevoda uz pomoć online prevodilačkih alata kao što su Evrokorpus i Evroterm koji su besplatni i dostupni na www.evrokorpus.gov.si i www.evroterm.gov.si, a nastali su kao rezultat prevođenja pravnih akata EU od strane Sektora za prevođenje Vlade Republike Slovenije. Provjerit će se hipoteza, da li suvremeni elektronički prevodilački alati doprinose kvaliteti i konzistentnosti prijevoda te stjecanju novih kompetitivnih znanja i vještina prevoditelja.This paper analyses an intense and revolutionary development strategy of information and digital technology from translational and communicational points of view, as well as its impact and application in the field of the profession of translation. Rapid advances in the field of information and computer technologies made a significant impact on the field of translation, and information technology has changed the way information is produced and disseminated. The Internet and international web sites have created new methods and perspectives for translation. Translation professionals don\u27t use just the traditional and classical translation support tools – printed dictionaries, glossaries, encyclopedias and other printed tools. CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation), Machine Translation and online translation tools and resources like electronic dictionaries, terminology databases, translation memories, online bilingual text databases and other computerized tools are resources used on a daily basis in the modern translation practice. In this paper, the author is trying to underline the importance and influence of a new global and technological paradigm on the professional translator, concluding that the translator has to acquire new skills in order to remain efficient on the competitive multilingual market. In the second part of the research the article analyzes the quality and consistency of translation using electronic translation tools such as Evrokorpus and Evroterm – free tools accessible through www.evrokorpus.gov.si and www.evroterm.gov.si that are a result of the translation of EU legal acts by the Translation Sector of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia. The article checks the hypothesis whether modern electronic translation tools contribute to quality and consistency of translation and gaining new, competitive knowledge and skills of translators

Identifying the machine translation error types with the greatest impact on post-editing effort

Translation Environment Tools make translators' work easier by providing them with term lists, translation memories and machine translation output. Ideally, such tools automatically predict whether it is more effortful to post-edit than to translate from scratch, and determine whether or not to provide translators with machine translation output. Current machine translation quality estimation systems heavily rely on automatic metrics, even though they do not accurately capture actual post-editing effort. In addition, these systems do not take translator experience into account, even though novices' translation processes are different from those of professional translators. In this paper, we report on the impact of machine translation errors on various types of post-editing effort indicators, for professional translators as well as student translators. We compare the impact of MT quality on a product effort indicator (HTER) with that on various process effort indicators. The translation and post-editing process of student translators and professional translators was logged with a combination of keystroke logging and eye-tracking, and the MT output was analyzed with a fine-grained translation quality assessment approach. We find that most post-editing effort indicators (product as well as process) are influenced by machine translation quality, but that different error types affect different post-editing effort indicators, confirming that a more fine-grained MT quality analysis is needed to correctly estimate actual post-editing effort. Coherence, meaning shifts, and structural issues are shown to be good indicators of post-editing effort. The additional impact of experience on these interactions between MT quality and post-editing effort is smaller than expected

Integrating Translation Technology in the Specialised Translation Classroom to Contextualise Learning

Recent approaches to translation training have emphasized the need to include in the classroom a real working context and to promote situational learning (cf. Kelly, 2005: 16-18 ). For the specialised translator, new technologies and, consequentially, the instrumental-professional sub-competence, have become as important as linguistic-cultural knowledge. For this reason, in this contribution, a didactic proposal will be presented to incorporate new technologies (computer-assisted translation and localisation tools) in the scientific/technical translation classroom, as well as a proposal to coordinate different subjects in the curriculum to promote horizontality in contents. Modality and type of translation are not mutually exclusive. For this reason, the main objective of this contribution is to merge both concepts with a learning proposal in which new technologies become another essential working tool in the specialised translation classroom. Nowadays, the meaning of localisation goes beyond the translation of software, video games and websites and it has caused important changes in the translation process and the translation industry. In Spain, it is compulsory to include in the Translation and Interpreting curriculum subjects such as documentation, terminology and computer science. These subjects are normally offered in the first years of the degree, when students have only basic knowledge of translation. If these skills are not put into practice in later years of the degree, students will not understand the operating principles of these tools. In this regard, it is essential that the different subjects in the curriculum are coordinated to ensure learning contextualisation and the employability of future graduates. Different activities directly related to computer-assisted translation and localisation will thus be presented in order to integrate and improve the knowledge acquired in previous years and new skills regarding specialised translation.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Pattern-Based Context-Free Grammars for Machine Translation

This paper proposes the use of ``pattern-based'' context-free grammars as a basis for building machine translation (MT) systems, which are now being adopted as personal tools by a broad range of users in the cyberspace society. We discuss major requirements for such tools, including easy customization for diverse domains, the efficiency of the translation algorithm, and scalability (incremental improvement in translation quality through user interaction), and describe how our approach meets these requirements.Comment: 8 pages, latex + aclap.st