Information technology training in translator professional education

Abstract

The international business and trades bring about urgent need for translators with advanced computational and informational skills. However, there is no consensus on which information technologies should be included in the training courses for translation curriculum. We propose that the computational skills required for professional translators consist of three levels. The first level is the basic ability of operating computer, a general-purpose requirement for civilized people in current information society. The second is a mastery of translation related software, i.e., computer-assisted or machine translation systems. The third is a higher demand on the informational technology of the translator, including customizing and refining current software packages, building their own parallel or comparable corpora, setting up translation memories, dictionaries and term bases, etc. Based on the observation of different levels of computational abilities and reference to other established standards, a corresponding technology course construction for translator training can be put forward.