Sonia Vandepitte

Learning Localization through Trans-Atlantic Collaboration: Bridging the Gap

In light of what has taken place since their presentation at the IEEE International Professional Communication Conference in 2005, the authors describe additional requirements and merits of matching technical writing students in the US with translation students in Europe in a collaborative assignment. Where the original article dealt with how to set up and organize the collaboration, this tutorial delves into the pedagogical challenges and the process dynamics involved in such an exchange, including mediation, power, and teamwork issues.

Field Convergence between Technical Writers and Technical Translators: Consequences for Training Institutions

As translation of technical documents continues to grow rapidly and translation becomes more automated, the roles of professional communicators and translators appear to be converging. This paper updates preliminary findings first presented at the 2008 International Professional Communication Conference, Montreal, QC, Canada. It analyzes trends revealed from recent surveys and recommends follow-up research to determine if the trends may continue and become entrenched. The authors conclude with recommendations for academic programs interested in adjusting to the trends.

Learning localization through trans-Atlantic collaboration

Instructors of technical writing in the USA and of translation/localization in Europe describe what has taken place over a period of six years when they have matched technical writing students in the USA with translation students in Europe in a collaborative assignment.

Travelling Certainties: Darwin's Doubts and Their Dutch Translations

Abstract This article builds on Annie Brisset’s chapter ‘Clémence Royer, ou Darwin en colère’ (2002:173–203), in which she argues that Clémence Royer’s French translation (1861) of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) was adapted to the French positivistic style, that Royer’s own voice was injected into the translation and that the French translation conveyed a higher degree of certainty than the English original. The comparative study presented here investigates whether two Dutch translations (Winkler 1860 and Hellemans 2000) show similar shifts in certainty or epistemic stance (Kärkkäinen 2003). Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted of Darwin’s chapter four on ‘Natural Selection’ and its two translations, focusing on a set of modal words and using an adapted version of Martin and White’s epistemic scale of ranking (2005). Comparisons between Darwin’s text and its translations reveal a positivistic voice, similar to Royer’s, in Winkler’s nineteenth-century translation but not in the contemporary translation by Hellemans. The findings are discussed in terms of target audiences, language-inherent characteristics and general translation tendencies.

A pragmatic function of intonation: Tone and cognitive environment

Abstract In this paper I intend to provide a more precise pragmatic foundation (based on Sperber and Wilsons relevance theory) for a number of fairly recent linguistic accounts of how tone movement can be used by a communicator to express a certain pragmatic meaning, viz. that related to the speakers manipulation of her message with regard to the addressees background. Thus rephrasing the theory of discourse intonation in terms of a pragmatic framework will yield two important insights: not only tonicity but also tone may be said to contribute to the correct interpretation of the focus of a message, i.e. both may have a cognitive function, and secondly, tones themselves may be said to be responsible for utterances entailing contextual effects. In a second part, I attempt to give this cognitive function a place within a summarizing account of all pragmatic meanings conveyed by tone. Five broad domains of meaning are distinguished and integrated within Lindseys continuum scale, which represents some universal relations between tonal structure and meaning. The modified scheme by no means simple but it may reflect the complexity of the listeners interpreting task more accurately: he does not merely have to translate a set of symbols (tones) into meanings, but he will also have to invoke inferential procedures which obey the principle of relevance.

The Effectiveness of Consulting External Resources During Translation and Post-editing of General Text Types

Consulting external resources is an important aspect of the translation process. Whereas most previous studies were limited to screen capture software to analyze the usage of external resources, we present a more convenient way to capture this data, by combining the functionalities of CASMACAT with those of Inputlog, two state-of-the-art logging tools. We used this data to compare the types of resources used and the time spent in external resources for 40 from-scratch translation sessions (HT) and 40 post-editing (PE) sessions of 10 master’s students of translation (from English into Dutch). We took a closer look at the effect of the usage of external resources on productivity and quality of the final product. The types of resources consulted were comparable for HT and PE, but more time was spent in external resources when translating. Though search strategies seemed to be more successful when translating than when post-editing, the quality of the final product was comparable, and post-editing was faster than regular translation.

Identifying the Machine Translation Error Types with the Greatest Impact on Post-editing Effort

Translation Environment Tools make translators’ work easier by providing them with term lists, translation memories and machine translation output. Ideally, such tools automatically predict whether it is more effortful to post-edit than to translate from scratch, and determine whether or not to provide translators with machine translation output. Current machine translation quality estimation systems heavily rely on automatic metrics, even though they do not accurately capture actual post-editing effort. In addition, these systems do not take translator experience into account, even though novices’ translation processes are different from those of professional translators. In this paper, we report on the impact of machine translation errors on various types of post-editing effort indicators, for professional translators as well as student translators. We compare the impact of MT quality on a product effort indicator (HTER) with that on various process effort indicators. The translation and post-editing process of student translators and professional translators was logged with a combination of keystroke logging and eye-tracking, and the MT output was analyzed with a fine-grained translation quality assessment approach. We find that most post-editing effort indicators (product as well as process) are influenced by machine translation quality, but that different error types affect different post-editing effort indicators, confirming that a more fine-grained MT quality analysis is needed to correctly estimate actual post-editing effort. Coherence, meaning shifts, and structural issues are shown to be good indicators of post-editing effort. The additional impact of experience on these interactions between MT quality and post-editing effort is smaller than expected.

Professional communication and translation in convergence

As translation of technical documents becomes commonplace, and as translation becomes more automated, the roles of translator and technical communicator appear to be converging. This paper examines the trend revealed from recent surveys, and it suggests further research to determine if the trend is likely to continue. The paper also provides recommendations for academic programs interested in adjusting to the trend.

Interactivities between professional translators and professional communicators: what translators would like communicators to know

This tutorial is designed to acquaint professional communicators with the challenges that professional translators face when localizing the texts that communicators send them for translation. The presenters will engage participants in activities that will demonstrate terminology management, notional equivalence, culturally bound references, and revising and reviewing.

Dutch and German noun-noun compounds in translation

Although nominal compounding is a very productive word formation category in Dutch and German, it is often claimed that it is realized differently in these closely related languages: Where German prefers a compound, Dutch may opt for an alternative construction. The present article explores the differences in nominal compounding by analysing a bidirectional translation corpus. A quantitative analysis confirms that German is more compound-productive than Dutch. Furthermore, patterns are identified to illustrate that different preferences in the rendering of semantic content can lead to Dutch phrases where German uses a compound.