Application of Computer-Aided Translation Technology in Translation Teaching

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.BACKGROUND

21st century is an era of information explosion and global integration. Along with the development of econo-my, science and culture and the booming of international exchange, the demand on translation in various fields is increasingly swollen, which calls for more and more trans-lators competent in translating large quantity of materials in various applied fields. However, the traditional transla-tion class, as teacher-centered, is oriented in teaching of translation theories and techniques, but neglects the prac-ticability of translation course and the ultimate goal of cultivating students’ translation ability. Therefore, it be-comes a crucial issue to reform the traditional translation class so as to meet the development of society. Since 1980s, with the popularity of multimedia com-puters and the emergence of global network, computer-aided translation (abbreviated as CAT hereafter) technol-ogy has aroused great interest among researchers, and the huge potential of CAT teaching in translation class has been recognized by many language teachers. It is a must to apply the fruit of advance in science to traditional trans-lation class and establish a CAT teaching mode in modern information age.This paper, by introducing the development of CAT technology and such concerning concepts as MT (Ma-chine Translation) and TM (Translation Memory), advo-cates the application of CAT technology in translation teaching and, by proposing a practicable mode of CAT teaching, holds that, students majoring in translation, only after being able to use different CAT software, can claim to be a translator competent enough to meet the requir ments of the market.

Key word: CAT (Computer-Aided Translation)

DISCUSSION

CHAPTER II

A.NECESSITY OF APPLYINGCAT TECHNOLOGY IN TRANSLATION TEACHING

It is widely acknowledged that the purpose of educating students is to meet the demand of society. In this infor-mation explosion era, when CAT becomes a dominant technology in translation industry, it is of great necessity for educators to acquaint the students majoring in transla-tion with CAT technology which will be demonstrated as follows:

     a)      Trend for the development of translation as a disciplineCAT technology represents the trend for the develop-ment of translation as a discipline in this information age. As was discussed above, nowadays it has become an in-dispensable ability for translators to utilize CAT tools so as to produce high-quality, high-efficiency translations in limited time. Therefore, in order to cultivate students ma-joring in translation who can catch up with the develop-ment of society, educators in the university must take ac-tions in applying CAT teaching in translation course. Only when the students majoring in translation acquire CAT technology at school can they meet the new requirement of the future society on translation and produce satisfacto-ry translations after graduation.

   b)      Advantage in job-huntingIt becomes a big advantage for translation students in job-hunting if they’ve acquired CAT technology. Nowa-days, most translation companies require that their em-ployees, whether full-time or part-time, should master the skill of translating with the aid of CAT software such as TRADOS and Déjà Vu, etc. and receive and submit their work by internet. If students majoring in translation don’t learn to utilize those main CAT tools at school, it will be extremely hard for them to be adapted to the working pro-cedure of translation companies and face the fierce com-petition in the future job-hunting market after graduation.

    c)       Powerfulness in terminology managementThe traditional translation course still focuses on themes of literature and humanities. However, according to statistics, in the present translation market, the non-literary translation amounts to 95% of the total output,which covers fields such as insurance, telecommunication, law, costume, engineering, aeronautics, chemical industry, metallurgy, environmental protection, finance, economy and energy, etc. In these fields, there are a lot of fixed terminology and expressions, which requires terminology management of CAT tools to standardize the work of translators. 

     d)     Activeness in interactionThe traditional translation class, as teacher-centered, focuses on exploration of translation theories and tech-niques, but ignores the practicability of the translation course and the ultimate goal of cultivating and improving students’ translating ability. By adopting CAT teaching system, a student-centered, computer-and-internet-based translation teaching platform can be founded to establish and continuously enrich the resource base of translation teaching, and to carry out active interactions between teacher and students and among students, which will not only improve the teaching effects, but also stimulate stu-dents’ positivity in learning translation.E.Cultivation of comprehensive abilityThe traditional translation class succeeds in teaching students various translation theories and techniques, but fails in cultivating students’ comprehensive ability of ap-plying what they’ve learnt in class to analyze and solve concrete problems in their practice of translation. CAT teaching system, based on huge translation resources, dis-cussion between teacher and students and online exchange among students, can profoundly ameliorate the situation.by improving students’ ability in language switch, text comparison and information acquisition.by improving students’ ability in language switch, text comparison and information acquisition.

B.DESIGN OF CAT TEACHING MODULES

A practical CAT teaching module is designed to form a comparatively comprehensive teaching content system, which can be divided into the following four modules.

    1)      Translation information technologyThe emergence of CAT system is treated as the most significant technology renovation in translation industry, which is highly valued by translation researchers. Monte-rey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) proposed that “computer is an essential tool for translators.”There-fore, the first CAT teaching module concerns translation information technology. A fluent mastery of digital word processing technology is the pre-requisite for students majoring in translation to use CAT system, the teaching of which consists of the following five sub-modules.Advanced word processing skills: Modern word pro-cessing software is no more treated as a typewriter trans-planted to the computer. However, according to a survey conducted by IT industry in 2009, 80% of the computer users only know 20% of the functions in Word, which means there are a lot of unknown advanced techniques “hidden” in the word processing system. And it is these techniques that help improve the working efficiency of translation. The word processing techniques learners of CAT technology in translation class must acquire mainly include advanced searching & replacing, automatic gener-ation of catalog & index, cross reference, macro, revision of marked documents, automatic sequence and so on.Digital text accessing skills: Using CAT system re-quires having the electronic document in the source lan-guage before the process of translation. However, a great number of documents to be translated are presented in hard copy to translators in reality. In order to convert the hard copy into the electronic form, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Technique is needed. Students major-ing in translation are required to learn the differences of various OCR software, their applied occasions and how to get the optimal recognition effect, etc. Besides, they are supposed to be taught how to get the reliable electronic documents by web P2P or contacting the publisher or the author.Input technology: Although English has no so-called “input method”, Chinese does have choices as to input them. Nowadays, the whole sentence input technology has been developed so maturely that it can greatly improve the work efficiency of translation. In addition, advanced voice recognition system is available for translators who are competent in sight translation. How to evaluate different methods of input and take advantage of them in the prac-tice of translation is also a technique students majoring in translation need to acquire in class.Searching technology:All kinds of searching engines on the internet and academic databases make logic opera-tions according to Rules and Laws of Boolean Algebra. To learn the advanced searching techniques would help solve problems that searching only by keywords fail to. This part also includes the introduction of electronic dic-tionaries and encyclopedia. Corpus searching: This sub-module focuses on corpus technology, which is of prime importance to the applica-tion of CAT technology in translation. It’s been proven that with reference to the corpus acquired by searching on the internet, the quality of translation from Chinese to English can be highly improved.Wang Kefei holds that bilingual parallel corpus has wide application pro-spect and potential exploitation value in translation teach-ing, and using parallel corpus is convenient for finding translations of special expressions, which, by providing alternative translations, makes the translation of terminol-ogy more accurate and idiomatic than that given by bilin-gual dictionaries.[15] Students majoring in translation will be taught the concept, construction and searching tech-niques of bilingual corpus, and the significance and ways of fully applying corpus searching in the practice of trans-lation will also be discussed.

   2)      Terminology managementIt is acknowledged by many CAT software users that terminology management is the most important task in the practice of translation, whose value even surpasses that of TM because in the process of translation, the repetition rate of terminology is far beyond that of complete transla-tion unit. In order not to search the specific terms every time they begin a new translation, translators should use a terminology management system (TMS), which can not only help with various aspects of terminology-related tasks, including the storage, retrieval and updating of term records, but also ensure greater consistency in the use of terminology so as to make the translation easier to under-stand and prevent miscommunication.In translation software, there are some specialized ter-minology tools, such as MultiTerm, Lexicon and Termi-nology in Déjà Vu X, etc. This kind of software has some basic functions of corpus analysis, which can rank the word frequency of source text, helping translators locate terminologies from the perspective of word frequency. Concerning terminology assortment, TRADOSER can be applied to automatically recognize and arrange mixed English and Chinese words, which can convert irregular word list into one with a tab in-between, making it much easier to import terms searched from the internet into a CAT system.

    3)      Application of CAT systemThis module is the core of the whole course. As com-puter has become the primary tool for translators, CAT technology is the core of techniques they should master. In this module, some main CAT software will be intro-duced to the students, such as Déjà Vu X, SDL TRADOS, Wordfast and Google Translator Toolkit, etc., which are chosen from the perspective of the acknowledgement from users, the occupancy of market, the overall development of the software and the advancement of technology. The above-mentioned software stands for CAT systems of three interface types: word-processing plug-in interface (Wordfast), independent translation table interface and intelligent contrast inter-face (Google Translator Toolkit). In classroom teaching, a particular demonstration will be conducted on the systems of above-mentioned CAT software which combine trans-lation project management, translation memory, transla-tion interface and quality control. Concerning students’ practice, it will be conducted in the form of workshop.

   4)      Translation project managementAny translation curriculum, if market-oriented, should be designed to take translation as an integrated industry process rather than a language switch process from the source text to the target one. Therefore, terms in manage-ment science such as project analysis, project management and quality control should be brought into the teaching content of translation curriculum. Only those who realize the importance of project management and quality control and acquire corresponding abilities can be better adapted to modern translation industry process. As the last step in translation project management, quality control plays a vital role in ensuring the translation quality. CAT software can offer a multi-dimensional resolution for quality control, which shall also be conducted in the classroom.

C.CONSTRUCTION OF CAT TEACHING SYSTEM

What was discussed above answers two questions: Why we should teach CAT technology in translation class and what to teach? However, it is far more difficult to con-struct a teaching system than to design the teaching con-tent. Due to the shortage of qualified teachers and related hardware and software facilities, even some key universi-ties in China find it difficult to carry out CAT teaching in translation class.In order to guarantee the application of CAT technology in translation class and its effect, a comprehensive CAT teaching system shall be constructed, which is demonstrated as follows:

1.      Reform in teaching concept In the past several decades, great changes have taken place in every aspect of our society, which, as manifested in translation, is the conversion from traditional translation process to an informationalized and commercialized trans-lation mode. Nowadays, most of translation projects fea-ture large quantity, limited time and high demand on qual-ity, which can not be handled by the traditional translation mode and call for modern means of project management and translation technology. CAT technology is designed from the very beginning to assist translators in accelerat-ing translation speed and reducing repetitive work, which meets the demand of modern market and shows powerful vigor. At present, CAT technology has been adopted by most large-scaled translation service suppliers and multi-national corporations, who declare that it’s a pre-requisite for staff engaged in translation industry to acquire such skills. Therefore, to catch up with the development of so-ciety, translators are required to master not only the bilin-gual knowledge and cultures, but also the relevant ad-vanced technologies.As the major force in cultivating future employees en-gaged in translation industry, the administrators and teachers of corresponding majors in colleges and universi-ties must be well aware of the above-mentioned conver-sion and take actions in adjusting and renovating the cur-riculum and adding some new courses related to transla-tion technology, so as to make the teaching concept in accordance with the social development and industrial demand. In this way, compared with the students cultivat-ed under the traditional curriculum system, those who finish the new courses can show greater priority in knowledge structure and practical skills and have more choices in the future employment. However, to achieve this, it requires the great vision in teaching concept and the joint efforts of administrators and teachers.

2.      Cultivation of teachers’ practical abilityAs a newly emerging technology, CAT technology, alt-hough widely adopted in modern translation industry, is still an unfamiliar field to most translation teachers and remains unfrequented in translation teaching, which brings to us a harsh question: how could students compe-tent in using CAT technology in their translation be culti-vated by inexperienced or even incompetent teachers? Therefore, to carry out CAT teaching in translation class requires that teachers acquire the relevant practical ability in operating CAT technology. Universities should attach much importance to the pre-service and in-service training for teachers, especially training on computer-based mul-timedia and network technology, and invite some experts in the application of CAT technology to supervise the real classroom teaching of those inexperienced teachers.

3.      Utilization of internet resources

With the fast development, the internet has already be-come a database of abundant resources, from which both the teachers and students can get benefit. Such websites as Wikipedia, Baidu Encyclopedia, CNKI and some online databases and dictionaries can provide the beginners with a lot of basic knowledge about CAT technology. For ex-ample, an input of “computer-aided translation” on Wik-ipedia will be instantly responded with relevant infor-mation about CAT, MT and CAT tools. Therefore, in or-der to fully utilize the rich resources from the internet, CAT teaching should be conducted in classrooms with access to the internet, and students should be repetitively advised to utilize the internet as much as possible.

4.      Renovation in teaching methodology

Personalization and differentiation in teaching: CAT teaching, compared with other linguistic education, re-quires much more on students’ ability of using computer, which, due to the fact that students might come from dif-ferent regions, for example, the rural area or the urban area, presents a diversified picture. Therefore, it is of great importance for teachers to make a comprehensive investi-gation on students’ background and their current levels of using computer before they decide the teaching methods, the teaching courseware and the teaching content. In the teaching process, teachers should adopt varied teaching methods according to students of different characteristics. After class, they are encouraged to use BBS forum, QQ chat room and blog, etc. to answer questions from students so as to enhance the communication between teachers and students and achieve a real sense of individualized instrution.Only in this way can personalization and differentia-tion be realized to maximize the effect of CAT teaching.

·         Cooperation among students: CAT technology is a to tally new subject to all the students taking this course. Therefore, it’s really a tough task for them to understand and master the relevant knowledge and practice on their own in a limited time. Under this circumstance, the team-work and cooperation among students are advocated to help learn from each other so as to make greater progress at a faster pace.

·         Choice of corpus: To better demonstrate the ad-vantages of CAT technology in translation, it is suggested to choose the corpus comparatively normative in both content and form, for example, science literature, financial report and political literature, etc. These corpus feature limited vocabulary, high repetitiveness of words, simple sentence pattern and accurate expression, which are very convincing in elaborating the functions of database, ter-minology management, alignment and TM.

5.      Communication with other teaching institutesAs was discussed above, so far there are only ten uni-versities in China which carry out CAT teaching in trans-lation class, which means CAT teaching in universities still belong to a pilot study. Therefore, it would be wise for any university who starts to bring CAT technology into translation teaching to communicate with those ten universities, from which their good experiences can be learnt and the mistakes they made can be avoided

6.      Contacts with CAT software suppliersCAT technology has been widely applied in translation market and thus gained a promising prospect in translation industry, which drives the main CAT software suppliers to continuously update their products so as to occupy a larger market share. Therefore, contacts with CAT software sup-pliers would definitely make CAT teaching in translation class more in accordance with the development of CAT technology, by which students can get access to the latest software and be more competent in their future practice of translation.

D.ENHANCEMENT OF TRANSLATION CURRICULUM

Even with the successful construction of CAT teaching system, it is still an unprecedented practice for colleges and universities to apply CAT technology in translation curriculum, which may bring about a lot of problem dur-ing the practice. After three years’ practice of applying CAT technology in translation teaching in our university, some good experiences regarding the enhancement of translation curriculum have been accumulated, i.e. distri-bution of teaching contents and their time allotments, which will be demonstrated as follows and set as an ex-ample for those colleges and universities who’d like to follow suits.

   Ø  History of MT and CAT

Knowledge on the history of MT and CAT is of vital importance to students, which can help them eliminate their misunderstanding on CAT. For many years, most people have mistaken CAT for MT and thought CAT were fully automatic. Considering the unsatisfactory re-sults produced by current automatic translation systems, they hold great doubts on learning CAT technology or  even reject it. Therefore, teaching on the history of MT and CAT could enable students to have a rational and ob-jective expectation on CAT.In our practice, we mainly focus on the introduction of the history and status quo of CAT to students, which takes 4 teaching hours.

   Ø  Principles of CAT

Principles of CAT have mainly undergone two periods from rule-based basis, which includes the levels of word, sentence and semantics, to corpus-based basis. Acquaint-ance of such knowledge will definitely enable students to better understand the working mechanism of CAT tools.In our practice, considering our students are art students, we prefer to illustrate these principles by citing simple examples and some charts, so that students can have a general understanding on them. For this part, we take 6 teaching hours.

   Ø  Translating tools in broad and narrow sense

Translation tools in broad sense refer to all the software and hardware facilities which provide convenience during the translation, including word processing software and equipment, scanner, taping equipment, text format-converting software, electronic dictionary and online dic-tionary; while translation tools in narrow sense refer to theCAT software designed specifically for the improvement of translation efficiency and optimization of translation process. In our practice, we mainly focus on the translation tools in narrow sense, i.e. CAT and its relevant knowledge and products, whose main functions, such as terminology base, matching, TM, project management and quality guarantee, are introduced to students, which take 6 teaching hours.

  Ø  Corpus and CAT

Corpus plays a vital role in the ultimate quality of trans-lation, whose definition, classification, construction and maintenance will be discussed in the class.In our practice, students are taught to use one or several corpus analysis tools, such as AntConc, MonoConc, Par-aConc and WordSmith. For this part, we take 6 teaching hours.E.Terminology and terminology baseConsistency in terminology also helps guarantee the quality of translation. For a large translation project, the advantage of having a terminology base is self-evident.In our practice, the definition, classification and usage of terminology are taught firstly, which is followed by the introduction of the constructing, editing, enlarging and maintaining of terminology base. Some main terminology base tools, such as AnyLexic: Terminology Management 2.0, Sun Gloss and T-Manager 4.5, are also introduced to students. For this part, we take 10 teaching hours.With all the above-mentioned contents introduced into translation curriculum, students reported they felt more confident in handling the translation of various materials. And the final examination, which took place after the total 32 hours’ teaching, also revealed students’ competence and performance in translation were highly improved.

CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A.CONCLUSION

With the booming demand of society on translation, the traditional translation and teaching mode can no longer satisfy the modern translation industry. As CAT technolo-gy has made great progress in development and been widely applied in translation industry, it hasn’t received the due attention in the traditional class of translation teaching. This paper, by a clear demonstration of the ne-cessity of applying CAT teaching in translation class and a detailed manifestation of designing CAT teaching and constructing CAT teaching system, which are followed by the practice of enhancing the translation curriculum in our university, calls for the immediate action taken in the re-form of the traditional translation teaching mode. Only by applying CAT technology in translation teaching, can translation education in universities catch up with the de-velopment of this information age.

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