Credit Points 10

Legacy Code 101750

Coordinator Anita Byrnes Opens in new window

Description This unit aims to equip students with the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to effectively apply information and communication technologies to translation and other language related tasks. It focuses on translation memory and terminology management systems, and on the workflow involved in the handling of multilingual content. Emphasis is also put on uses of the Internet as a resource tool, and to the principles of controlled language for text to be processed by machine translation (MT). Tutorials will be conducted in a computer lab where students will familiarize themselves with leading computer-assisted translation (CAT) software applications.

School Humanities & Comm Arts

Discipline Translating and Interpreting

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 1 10cp

Level Postgraduate Coursework Level 7 subject

Restrictions

Students must be enrolled in a postgraduate program.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. Examine in some depth the fields of translation memory (TM) and terminology management, showing the skills required to compare applications and make informed judgments.
2. Describe the workings of one of the leading TM software packages and develop transferable troubleshooting strategies.
3. Explore the possibilities and limitations of machine translation (MT) by looking at the relevant literature and by analysing the outcome of some of the freely available engines on the internet.
4. Apply the principles of controlled language to the writing of source text to be processed by TM or MT.
5. Consolidate your expertise in internet mining, in particular for parallel corpora, terminological data and subject matter information.
6. Outline the workflows involved in multilingual content management, and explore the big-picture concepts of globalisation, internationalisation and localisation.

Subject Content

1. Overview of the principles of language engineering, and computer-assisted translation
2. Basic 'generalist' computing skills of particular relevance to translators, in particular those related to data digitalisation, exchange and protection
3. Desktop TM: components, workflow, and useful troubleshooting strategies
4. Server TM: open standards for database content exchange, interface with multilingual content management
5. Capabilities and limitations of MT engines
6. The principles and practice of writing in controlled language for TM and MT
7. Internet mining for parallel corpus, terminology data and specific subject matter