The role of the translator (trainer) in a digitalised, cloud-based, crowd-sourced, wikified and social-mediatised world Federico Gaspari fgaspari@sslmit.unibo.it University of Bologna at Forlì, Italy January 29 th, 2015
Outline Pedagogical focus - Experience as translator trainer and researcher Retrospective - 25 years of digital translation Current situation - Trends and prospects 3 modest proposals (+1) Conclusion: what next? Questions and comments 2
Personal computers in the 1980s 3
Usenet discussion groups sci.lang.translation set up in late 1994 as an unmoderated group 4
Usenet discussion groups 5
The World Wide Web in the 1990s 6
Free online MT: Babel Fish 1997 7
Email in the 1990s 8
Mailing lists cf. Wakabayashi (2002) and Alcina-Caudet (2003) 9
The coming industry of teletranslation (O Hagan, 1996) 10
Translators online presence 11
Welcome to the 21 st century 12
Ecosystem of online translation 13
Ecosystem of online translation 14
Translation in the Web 2.0 15
Ecosystem of online translation 16
It s a dangerous world out there... 17
Cloud-based translation resources 18
Cloud-based translation resources 19
Multilingual user-generated content 20
Wiki sites 21
Social media contents 22
Social media contents (cont d) 23
User forums and knowledge bases 24
User-generated content Over the next five years, the industry is likely to be confronted with a sea change, where most of the data that LSPs receive for translation will be UGC, rather than the relatively clean data they currently need to process. 25 Way (2013: 8)
CAT tools by now a given (?) 26
Machine translation (not a given!) 27
Post-editing (not a given!) 28
Online collaborative translation, crowdsourced online translation projects 29
Social media platforms with crowdsourced multilingual interfaces 30
Social media platforms with crowdsourced multilingual interfaces 31
Social media platforms with crowdsourced multilingual interfaces 32
Online collaborative, free, volunteer translation and crowdsourcing One such trend is the expansion of online collaborative translation for all types of translation, with online crowdsourcing services such as MyGengo, or exchange marketplaces providing free volunteer translations such as Cucumis.org. Jimenez-Crespo (2013) 33
What do we teach our translation students, how, and why? 34
Our translation students... 35
Our teaching environment... 36
What do we teach our students, how and why? 37
Internships, traineeships, placements, etc. 38
Digital natives vs. digital immigrants 39
If it looks like a shark and swims like a shark... 40
I know what I would do! 41
... but it may be a dolphin! 42
3 modest proposals (+1) Incorporate courses on MT and related skills 5-credit, semester-long module for all MA students MT evaluation, pre-, post-editing, controlled language... Tandem-like language and translation courses At BA level to develop translation skills into L2 (English) Dossier-based work, peer feedback, final evaluation Collaborative wiki-like student translations Set up wiki(-like) sites for the students to translate Collaboration on digital materials, text snippets, etc. 43
3 modest proposals (+1) Strengthen the connection between Translation teaching practice Process-oriented translation research o Effective use of web-based resources and online tools (e.g. Massey & Ehrensberger-Dow, 2011; Enríquez Raído, 2014) o Improved translation technology to enhance quality and productivity (e.g. Alabau et al., 2013; CASMACAT; MATECAT) o Alessandra Rossetti s paper tomorrow at 11:30 AM 44
Conclusion: what next? Harness the full potential of machine translation Develop post-editing skills, pre-editing, controlled lang. MT evaluation and optimisation, integration with TM MT-oriented documentation process re-engineering Controlled language authoring for single sourcing Diversify the range of texts that are translated Shift towards unconventional digital content localisation Cross-lingual summarisation 45
Thank you for your attention! Questions? Comments? 46
The role of the translator (trainer) in a digitalised, cloud-based, crowd-sourced, wikified and social-mediatised world Federico Gaspari fgaspari@sslmit.unibo.it University of Bologna at Forlì, Italy January 29 th, 2015
References Alabau, V., R. Bonk, C. Buck, M. Carl, F. Casacuberta, M. García-Martínez, J. González-Rubio, P. Koehn, L.A. Leiva, B. Mesa-Lao, H. Saint-Amand, C. Tsoukala, G. Sanchis-Trilles and D. Ortiz-Martínez (2013) Advanced Computer Aided Translation with a Web-Based Workbench. S. O Brien, M. Simard and L. Specia (eds.) Proceedings of the 2 nd Workshop on Post-editing Technology and Practice at MT Summit XIV. Nice, 2 September 2013. 53-62. Alcina-Caudet, A. (2003) Encouraging the Use of E-mail and Mailing Lists among Translation Students. Meta XLVII(4): 634-41. Enríquez Raído, V. (2014) Translation and Web Searching. New York: Routledge. Jiménez-Crespo, M.A. (2013) Translation and Web Localization. London: Routledge. Massey, G. and M. Ehrensberger-Dow (2011) Investigating information literacy: A growing priority in translation studies. Across Languages and Cultures 12(2): 193-211. O Hagan, M. (1996) The Coming Industry of Teletranslation: Overcoming Communication Barriers through Telecommunication. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Wakabayashi, J. (2002) Induction into the Translation Profession through Internet Mailing Lists for Translators. E. Hung (ed.) Teaching Translation and Interpreting 4: Building Bridges. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 47-58. Way, A. (2013) Traditional and Emerging Use-Cases for Machine Translation. Proceedings of Translating and the Computer 35. London, 28-29 November 2013. 48