This is the first half of the Practicum, given in the Fall semester. It will focus on translation processes.

Course description

This course is designed to make students 1) self-critical of their individual translation processes, 2) aware of the contributions of new technologies to the actual act of translating, and 3) aware of the problems of project translating in coordinated groups. These aims can be met without reference to specific language pairs.

The aim of the course is not to tell students how to translate (there are many other courses for that). The aim is to provide students with tools that they can use to make their own discoveries.

Assessment will be on the basis of attendance and participation in weekly experiment sessions.

Registration on Moodle is essential for this course.

Weekly experiment sessions

Each week students will be required to complete a task in class and to analyze the results. Much of the work can be done in groups of two or three. The experiment sessions should be as engaging and as amusing as possible, in the spirit of discovery rather than correction.

Course contents for weekly sessions

The following topics and tasks may be dealt with, in accordance with students’ wishes:

Technologies

1. Experimental practice with data-based MT (GoogleTranslate)
2. Experimental practice with translation memories (web-based Wordfast, Google Translator Toolkit. MemoQ).
3. Screen recording and performance analysis
4. Speech recognition (software in Office)

Process parameters

5. Time-on-task (analysis of the time spent on the various components of the translation process)
6. Speed translating (students are forced to work 35% faster, then they do the same analysis as above, to show to themselves that they can work faster without a loss of quality).
7. Directionality: Students translate into their L2 and observe the differences. Specific strategies for translating into L2.

Text skills

8. Following style sheets / using electronic style sheets.
9. Revision and editing practices (copyediting, stylistic editing, structural editing, peer-review arrangements, use of electronic revision tools).
10. Identifying translation solution types.  

Translation projects

11. Translator-client relations (presented as a series of ethical problems to be solved).
12. Team translating: Completion of a large project by a team of translators, coordinated by a project manager, OR simulated translator-client relations, where groups of students are translation companies competing for a contract from the client (which is another group of students). 

Contact with students

All course materials will be made available on Moodle, and all students are required to sign on to the course on Moodle.