Admission requirements
This course is open only to students registered for the Translation specialization.
Description
Translators have a wide variety of sources and tools that they can use in their work. Their problem, in the Internet age, is not that information is lacking, but that it is difficult to find because there is so much of it. The Translator’s Tools is a heuristics course in which students will learn how to find and use reference tools, including CAT (computer-assisted translation) tools, corpora and machine translation, and how to conduct and write up translation-related research. Furthermore, the course explores how other disciplines, such as terminology management, semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric, stylistics and culture studies can help the translator. Finally, the relationship between post-editing and machine translation will be dealt with in theory and practice.
Course objectives
- Use the most relevant IT applications, including the full range of office software, and adapt rapidly to new tools and IT resources having critically assessed their relevance and the impact of change on their work practices
- Make effective use of search engines, corpus-based tools, data cleaning tools, text analysis tools, computer- assisted translation (CAT) and quality assurance (QA) tools where
- Pre-process, process and manage files and other media/sources as part of the translation workflow, e.g., web, translation memories and multimedia files
- Understand the basics of MT systems and large language models and their impact on the translation process and the profession, and integrate MT into a translation workflow where appropriate
- Post-edit MT output using style guides and terminology glossaries to maintain quality standards in AI-enhanced translation projects
- Assess the quality of MT output using automatic and human evaluation techniques
- Demonstrate ability to conduct and write up translation technology-related research
- Collaborate with peers in developing and assessing human and AI-enhanced translation workflows
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Independent work on the Translation Lab
Assessment method
Assessment
Written assignments:
Machine translation research paper (50%)
One in-class CAT-tool assignment (50%)
Weighing
Machine translation research paper (50%)
One in-class CAT-tool assignment (50%)
Resit
There will be a resit opportunity for each of the course components. All components have to be at least 6.0.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Kenny, Dorothy. 2022. Machine translation for everyone: Empowering users in the age of artificial intelligence. (Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing 18). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6653406.
Koehn, P. (2020). Neural Machine Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/neural-machine-translation/7AAA628F88ADD64124EA008C425C0197
The course books are available open access online. Print copies can be purchased at bookstores or online.
Additional reading materials will be made available on [Brightspace (https://brightspace.universiteitleiden.nl/).
Registration
General information about registering for courses and exams can be found [here] (https://www.student.universiteitleiden.nl/en/your-study-programme/courses-and-exams/enrolment/humanities/dutch-linguistics-ma?cf=humanities&cd=dutch-linguistics-ma#tab-1)
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar
For questions related to the content of the course, please contact the lecturer, you can find their contact information by clicking on their name in the sidebar.
For questions regarding enrollment please contact the Education Administration Office Reuvensplaats
For questions regarding your studyprogress contact the Coordinator of Studies