Application of CAT in Translation Teaching
Qingjun Li
Foreign Language College
Hebei University of Economics and Business
Shijiazhuang, China
qingjunli@126
Likun Zhang
Foreign Language Department Hebei University of Economics and Business
Shijiazhuang , China
Likun_Zhang111@126
Abstract—In order to meet the new demands for the high-quality translators of our information-based s
ociety, our translation teaching content, process and method should also be informationized, four CAT teaching models are offered in this article, namely, they are database-drivers-based translation teaching model, online software and website, self-designed translation courseware and online classroom.
Keywords-CAT technology; database-drivers-based translation teaching; online software and website; self-designed translation courseware ; online classroom.
I.I NTRODUCTION
With the increasing strengthening of globalization, translation career and its related industries, as the bridge of different nations and different cultures, have spread into various fields around the world. Pushed by the modern information technology, translation has become into a knowledge-based industry involved both language translation technology and information processing technology. In recent years, with the rapid development and fierce competition of translation market, the speedy computer-aided-translation (CAT) technology has become the forceful means for the translation companies to survive. The change of the translation market raised new demands for the training of translation talents in college. It is very urgent for us to know what and how we should do in our translation teaching in order to meet the needs of our times.
II.CAT TECHNOLOGY
In a broad sense, CAT technology includes the integrated application of various computer operating system and application software. [1]To translators and teaching staff, the following CAT skills should be grasped:
z Be familiar with the basic technology of the operating system and be able to edit, store and backup common
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formats documents efficiently.z Be familiar with common word processor, such as MS Word, King soft WPS, and Open Officer etc. Be able to
use some word processor skills to improve work flow and
efficiency.
z Be able to install some important electric books, such as King soft Power Word, Oxford Electric Dictionary, and
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Electric Encyclopedia Britannica etc.
z Be familiar with the application of the internet practical technology, such as E-Mail etc. z Have a good command of efficient online search technology.
CAT technology, in a narrow sense, mainly uses the Translation Memory (TM) technology, which is a data base of computer program software used to aid human translation. Although the number of translation materials related to the professional translation field is huge, it has a limited range, which mainly focus on a certain or several certain areas, such as politics, economy, military, computer, communication and so on. Translation materials in the certain field may include lots of repeated material to some degree. Statistics indicate that the same rate of this kind of material amounts to 20%-70%, which means the translator will waste at least 20% repeated work. Aiming at elimination of the meaningless repetition, TM was developed to improve the efficiency of translation.
Among all the representative TM tools, such as Trados, SDLX, Dejavu, Star, IBM Translation Manager etc, SDL Trados is the most popular CAT software at present, More than 90% corporations among the world top 500 are using it to do localized translation, it can shorten almost half time to complete the usual task and avoid translation mistakes to the largest degree ,especially it assured th
e consistency of the application of professional term in a team work, which is particularly important in law translation and medical translation. [2]
Translation practice proved that TM system can save the translators’ mental and manual labor, thus improving working efficiency. In modern society the early traditional translation method is far from enough to adapt the acceleration of the information communication and replacement. Making full use of the TM system can help us finish more translation tasks in the shortest time.
III.THE NECESSITY OF CAT TECHNOLOGY INTO
COLLEGE CURRICULUM
A.The Demands of Translation Market
With the development of outsourcing industry, Chinese translation and localization market become increasingly prosperous. According to incomplete statistics, the market value of the industry in 2003 is about 10 billion Yuan, it reaches to 20 billion Yuan in 2005, it is estimated that this figure will be over 30 billion Yuan in 2008, while the global total market value amounts to several billion dollars .As a new industry, localized translation attracts great attention of many applicants, venture investment companies and some government departments. The data from Translators
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Association of China shows that there are 3000 registered companies and about a hundred thousand professional translators and several hundred thousand freelancers in China now, but it can not meet the demands of the huge translation market, it is expected that the demands of it will exceed a million, which calls for more high-quality translators. [3] Chinese statistics shows that there are 10 most popular majors in Chinese university, including English, computer, law, mechanical engineer and so on. The graduates of these majors are what the translation and Localization Company wanted most. Luo Xuanmin, a Qinghua University Professor, once made an investigation on the translators in Railway Department; he found that over 50% of them are from non-English majors. So the successful transition to the translation area of these graduates will release the employment strain to some degree.
B.The Demands of Technology in Translation Company
Most of the translation programs are document translation and commercial localization about engineering technology. These kinds of programs are usually characterized by the heavy task and pressing time, it’s difficult to finish the task with the quality and quantity guaranteed, because it’s har
d to organize enough related personnel in stated time to do it. Under such circumstances, computer technology is required to manage scientifically the whole translation process of translation.
Professional translators and freelancers wanted by translation company are usually required to grasp some major TM tools, such as Trados, Foreign Desk and so on. Only with these competence could the translator enter into the work flow and share the term data base with his colleagues, thus guaranteed the quality of the program.
C.CAT Technology Course in the Curriculum of Some
Foreign Universities
Institute of Technology in Manchester University regards that language ability alone can not ensure her graduates succeed forever in nowadays market. Only with the command of the rules, methods and application skill of language learning, can the graduates meet the constant changes of the society better. [4] Taking its terminology course in Language Engineering Department as an example, the students are required to learn to analyze the terms data with computer technology, and her graduates are very popular in talents market. Courses related translation in the department are various and characteristic, namely, they are Translation Linguistics, Methodologies for Translation, In
formation Technologies for Translators, Machine Translation, Computer-aided Translation ,Computational Lexicology, Speech and Language Process, Natural Language Processing and so on. This department is the most biggest base of Computer-assisted Language Learning, Mona Baker ,the dean of department, is the British famous expert on translation theory and data base research ,she created the Translational English Corpus with her team----the world’s unique translation corpus at present.
In addition ,some other foreign university’s translation course attach importance to translation technology and translation tools, for example, London University of Britain, Ottawa University of Canada, Carnegie Mellon University of USA , University of Wales, Swansea, University College Dublin Ireland and so on. Some universities in Hong Kong and Taiwan also offer such kind of courses. These universities have developed a systematic teaching curriculum and accumulated some effective teaching methods after years of teaching experiments.
D.The present Translation Teaching in Most Mainland
University
However, there are limited experiments on CAT teaching in mainland universities. According to Engli
sh Syllabus for College English Majors, the teaching purpose is to cultivate interdisciplinary English talents in foreign affairs, education, economics and military etc. It’s obvious that the teaching purpose is not to cultivate pure literature talents, but the reality is that our translation course focused on literature translation too much in overwhelming majority of universities. Our curriculum and teaching content are out of line with the market demands; the ignorance of translation technology of our students will result in their difficulties in job application.
Hebei Normal University has ever experienced machine translation teaching, but its teaching results are not so satisfying owing to its Curriculum Design and Cultivation Model. Now with the growing realization of CAT, many related people are becoming more and more interested in CAT, Beijing University has established a new department --- Language Information Engineering Department---to cultivate talents in the field of language information processing technology, and we are looking forward to the success of this experiment. [5]
IV.CAT TEACHING MODEL
The new demands to translators challenge our teaching content and teaching method in college translation course. According to the investigation on the present teaching environment, the author m
ade the following chart and recommended it to the translation teaching, the CAT application part will be mainly discussed in the article because it is the focus that we should make great efforts on in our translation teaching.
A.Database-drivers-based Translation Teaching Model
Compared with the various traditional text books and reference books, corpus can provide more concrete and detailed examples and more powerful illustrations, which can enable the students to command the translation skills by comparing them with their initiative.
Some major commercial TM software, such as Trados and DéjàVu, has the function of alignment document, retain and retrieve bilingual corpus. Alignment document means that it can put the separate source document and its version in target language into database for later retrieval and reference. The document translated with these software by translators can be retained automatically into the bilingual corpus, and this bilingual corpus usually can be transferred into a universal data format and a special corpus transmission data.
Figure I Translation tools in teaching
According to the introduction of Zhen Jing and Mu Lei, Bowker puts forward a teaching method based on corpus----the students establish some translation corpus about certain topics (computer, economics, laws etc) in cooperative form, it can not only stimulate the enthusiasm of students’ interests, but also help to establish a translation corpus for their later use. Bowker also points out that the independent establishment of the translation corpus by students themselves can contribute to the transformation of the teachers-centered learning into students-centered learning style. Luo Xuanmin also points out that the research on the translation corpus proves that corpus, as a kind of research method, has been applied in western translation area. It is helpful to learn the text’s character, the personal style of translator, the influence of source language on the target language and so on. [6] In terms of translation teaching, corpus-drivers-based teaching model can also improve the teachers’ view on translation teaching, especially the focus training and effectiveness of translation teaching of science and technology documents.
B.Online Software and Website
The traditional limited paper dictionaries are far from enough in nowadays translation, the online software and website provide us with rich resources. The teacher can introduce some open-source translation software and website system to students, such as King soft Power Word and King soft Fa
stAIT etc.
The application of CAT technology in translation curriculum contributes to cultivate the students’ ability to resolve practical problems and technique translation problems. Search technology is the key point in it; it is by no means as simple as entering key words into search boxes directly .The data on the internet is so tremendous that it’s hard to find what you exactly wanted. According to Google search engines, the number of its indexical web page amounts to 8 billion (le/intl/zh-CN/options/,2006. 4), so it’s very necessary for the translators and translation researchers and teaching staff to learn more advanced search technology to find what they searched for.
Take the search of professional articles (scholar. Google. com/schhp? hl=zh-CN) as an example, you can login le/support? hl=zh-CN to search. A good command of advanced search technology can avoid wasting time on internet, because you needn’t waste time on scanning useless passages any more.
C.Self-designed Translation Courseware
The appearance of courseware not only enlarges the teaching message but also breaks the restricti
on of time and space. Under the guidance of the student-centered principle, the design of the teaching courseware should try to extend its teaching scope combined with the features of translation course in order to promote translation teaching.
The method of comparison is the main teaching way in translation course, which is determined by its characteristic. The differences of the two languages and various versions need comparing in translation learning. The courseware design mainly aims at improving the students’ realization of the translation criteria and the possible mistakes through the comparative analysis of the various versions----which is of great importance to the students’ translation practice; the other purpose of the design is to make the students realize the function of discourse in translation. The early translation course only offered one kind of reference version which made the students become the passive acceptor. In fact, the students can learn more if we give them many versions to choose, because the process of making choice is to practice the translation skills they have learned.
For example, we offered a text about Business English, most of the text are not too difficult for them to translate, the students can click the whole reference version to check after they finished doing it, if the students have difficulties in translating some sentences, they can click them directly, then four different versions will appeared for it, after analyzing the function of this part and its relations with oth
er sentences, the students can select the best one of them. The students can get four different grades accordingly, namely, they are A. improper, B. proper, C. good, D. poor. In addition to these, some other contents can be included in the courseware, for example, the text style, the explanation of translation skills etc. Compared with the early traditional teaching way, the students can learn more trough this kind of learning method.
D.The Online Classroom
The establishment of online classroom creates an enabling condition for translation teaching. Xiao Hong once put forward
a translation teaching way----group translation ėgroup discussion ėshow in class ĺteacher’s comment.
Xu Bin pointed out that such a teaching way can be realized effectively in a web-environment-based teaching system------online classroom.
The ideal online translation classroom should be provided with the following functions:
z The teacher can offer translation assignment in advance or at any moment.
z The students can practice translating by themselves or in groups.
和谐美z The students can search on line for help during translation.
z The students can use the TM software and its corresponding database installed on the teaching server.
z The teacher can realize real-time-monitoring and on-line help to the students’ translating process.
z The teacher can collect the students’ version and give his comment on them and show them to the students.
The on-line classroom can arouse the students’ interests and potentials; it can also improve the students’ creative ability and practice ability.
V.CONCLUSION
In the highly information-based 21st century, translation teaching and research should also be informationized. Firstly, the translation content, process and method should apply information technology and modernized sophisticated equipment; secondly, medium of electrified education should be used to produce the best teaching result in teaching. In information-based translation teaching model, with the information resource database processed by the internet and multi-media technology, the students can establish their own learning platform to fulfill their assignments and enlarge their knowledge structure under their teachers’ guide. It is hoped that CAT teaching can cultivate more informationized, more individualized and more creative translation talents for our society.
R EFERENCES
[1]XU Bin, Application of CAT in Teaching and Researching,(in Chinese)
Shanghai Journal of Translators, 2006 No.4
[2]Chan, Sin-wai. Adictionary of Translation Technology.Hong Kong: The
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Chinese University Press,2004
[3]Huang Youyi, Promote the professionalization of translation through
carrying out the translation qualification examination (in Chinese),Chinese Translators Journal,2003,(6):50-51
[4]Baker, Mona. Translation Studies [A]. InRoutledge Encyclopedia of
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区别Translation Studies[Z]. London and NewYork: Routledge, 1998.277-280[5]Lu lisong, Mu Lei. CAT Technology and Translation Teaching. (in
Chinese), Foreign Language World No.3, 2007(General Serial No.120)p37
[6]Luo Xuanmin, Translation Teaching in China: Problems and
Perspectives. (in Chinese),Chinese Translators Journal,2003,(4)56-58
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