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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