Accessibility in the Computer-Aided Translation Tools for English-Arabic Language Pair

Abstract

Computer Aided Translation (CAT) Tools are essential in the current market. They are required by the clients to be used by the translators as they keep the format of the source text, consistency on both terminology and style levels throughout the project, and save time and money for both clients and translators. However, one of the main disadvantages of the most commonly-used CAT tools, like Trados, MemoQ, and more, is that they are not accessible to visually-impaired translators. This critical disadvantage limits their job opportunities in the market. As per the best knowledge of the current researcher, most of the previous studies that are conducted on the accessibility in CAT tools are for different language pairs except the Arabic language and the Arab visually-impaired translators’ experience with CAT tools is not evaluated. The current paper sheds the light on the accessibility in CAT tools in the Arab market to explore their efficiency for the visually-impaired Arab professional translators working on the EnglishArabic language pair. This paper aims to explore how the commonly-used CAT tools are accessible or inaccessible, to what extent they are compatible with the screen readers, and to suggest alternative CAT tools to be accessible to the visually-impaired translators and also to be compatible with the commonly-used CAT tools. This study is conducted in the light of Skopos theory by Vermeer (2006). Quantitative and qualitative questionnaire is designed in order to be answered by Arab visually-impaired professional translators and students in language and translation universities who use CAT tools to explore to what extent the CAT tools are accessible and compatible with the screen readers. Moreover, case studies are conducted in order to get more insights on the accessibility in the commonly-used CAT tools. At the end of this research, alternative CAT tools would be suggested to be accessible to the visually-impaired translators and also to be compatible with the commonly-used CAT tools in order to give them the chance to have job opportunities in the localization and translation market.