Translator Training Research Articles

“Won't You Help to Sing These Songs of Freedom?”: Sharing Authority, Co-curation, and Supporting Community-Driven Heritage Work

Abstract Folklorists should enable communities to research and represent their culture on their own terms through yielding authority and facilitating their investigation of the community's own heritage. Community scholar programs in the United States provide training in research, interpretation, and methods of representation. The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage has carried out community-driven heritage programs in tourism, curriculum development, and the research and presentation of personal adornment. This liberatory, community-centered heritage work contrasts with some conventional approaches of cultural workers that reinforce colonialist and racist structures and the abuse of heritage by racist extremists.

Improving feeling of control and trust in interpreter-mediated mental health consultations.

Language barriers are among the most critical factors in health care disparities. Low language proficiency is consistently associated with a high prevalence and severity of mental health disorder symptoms. Despite the advantages of working with an interpreter, most practitioners report difficulties, especially with trust and the feeling of control. The main objective of this exploratory qualitative intervention research is to examine the impact of training when working with interpreters and their inclusion in follow-ups. This impact is evaluated in the changes in feelings of control and trust for the practitioners who received the training, for the trained interpreters included in follow-ups and for the patients of these follow-ups. Semistructured interviews were conducted with individuals involved in five follow-ups at four public mental health clinics in Paris, France. The project had two phases: before (N = 18) and a few months after (N = 12) the training. Interviews were transcribed and thematically analyzed. Before the training, practitioners perceived the potential for collaboration with interpreters and the complexity of triadic consultations. Interpreters expressed irritation and disappointment at the lack of recognition, and patients seemed confident because they had already built a relationship with practitioners. After the training and inclusion of interpreters, trust is better established between interpreters and practitioners, which has substantial effects. All the protagonists state that trust positively impacts the relationship with patients and the therapeutic process. Although some practitioners still doubt the sessions' control, the intervention helps them to gain knowledge and critically examines their clinical modus operandi. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Expanding pathways to clinical and translational research training with stackable microcredentials: A pilot study.

The proportion of physician-investigators involved in biomedical research is shrinking even as the need for high-quality, interdisciplinary research is growing. Building the physician-investigator workforce is thus a pressing concern. Flexible, "light-weight" training modalities can help busy physician-investigators prepare for key stages of the research life cycle and personalize their learning to their own needs. Such training can also support researchers from diverse backgrounds and lighten the work of mentors. The University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Clinical Research Education designed the Stackables Microcredentials in Clinical and Translational Research (Stackables) program to provide flexible, online training to supplement and enhance formal training programs. This training utilizes a self-paced, just-in-time format along with an interactive, storytelling approach to sustain learner engagement. Learners earn badges for completing modules and certificates for completing "stacks" in key competency areas. In this paper, we describe the genesis and development of the Stackables program and report the results of a pilot study in which we evaluated changes in confidence in key skill areas from pretest to posttest, as well as engagement and perceived effectiveness. Our Stackables pilot study showed statistically significant gains in learner confidence in all skill areas from pretest to posttest. Pilot participants reported that the module generated high levels of engagement and enhanced their skills, knowledge, and interest in the subject. Stackables provide an important complement to formal coursework by focusing on discrete skill areas and allowing learners to access the training they need when they need it.

中译外人才培养路径探索

中译外人才培养路径探索

Translation Competence in Translator Training Programs at Saudi Universities: Empirical Study

Translation Competence in Translator Training Programs at Saudi Universities: Empirical Study

基于功能对等的ChatGPT辅助文学翻译练习与风格塑造评估

基于功能对等的ChatGPT辅助文学翻译练习与风格塑造评估

Trust the Process: Improving Translator Training Workshops

Trust the Process: Improving Translator Training Workshops

CUSTOMER WITH DISABILITIES EXPERIENCES ON ACCESSIBILITY OF SELECTED STAND-ALONE FAST-FOOD RESTAURANTS IN CAVITE: BASIS FOR SERVICE ENHANCEMENT PLAN

This study explored the accessibility experiences of PWD customers in Cavite's stand- alone fast-food restaurants. Surveying 100 PWD customers, the study revealed that they had experienced moderate accessibility in terms of physical accessibility; restroom facilities; menu options and information; and communications and assistance. This means that the standalone fast-food restaurants in Cavite are prioritizing the needs of PWD customers. While designated parking, ramps, and doorways were well-received, physical accessibility could benefit from increased wheelchair maneuvering space. Restroom facilities scored moderately, praised for grab bars and spacious stalls but lacking readily available emergency call systems. Menu options and information also received moderate ratings, commended for allergen options but needing clearer labeling for dietary restrictions and healthier alternatives. Communication and assistance were perceived as moderately accessible, with dedicated staff and PWD lanes appreciated but highlighting the need for sign language interpreter training and other communication aids. To address these gaps, a service enhancement plan proposes expanding wheelchair space, installing emergency call systems, clearly labeling menus, and investing in staff training on disability sensitivity and communication aids. This study's findings not only inform service enhancements in Cavite's fast-food restaurants but also contribute to academic knowledge and practical application, fostering a more empathetic and inclusive dining environment for PWD customers everywhere.

The linguistic landscape of the Neryungrinsky district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia): an analysis of bilingual signs of educational institutions

According to Article 35 of the Law on Languages of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), state and municipal institutions are required to have official signs for both official languages of the Republic, Yakut and Russian, and for districts densely populated by indigenous northern minorities, for their languages, which are defined by the law as official languages. The aim of this research is to analyse the errors made in translating the official signs of educational institutions in the Neryungrinsky district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). To accomplish this objective, the following tasks were carried out: 1. Collecting and sorting photographs of signs of educational institutions; 2. Analysing the source text in Russian, i.e. highlighting the order of presentation of information about the institution; 3. Analysing the translated text, i.e. evaluating the accuracy of the translation and identifying translation errors; 4. Categorising translation errors into five groups: graphic errors, spelling errors, errors in translating abbreviations, word order errors and grammatical errors; 5. Linguistic analysis of the identified errors; 6. Development of the correct version of the translation of the signs. The research uses statistical counting and comparison methods to identify the schemes of presentation of information about institutions on signboards, methods of observation and comparison of signboard texts to develop the most optimal translation option in the presence of several translation options for the same information, and methods of analysis and synthesis to describe translation errors and justify the correct translation option. Practical recommendations in the form of schemes and vocabulary developed in the course of this study are universal and can be applied to other organisations of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia); this is the reason for the relevance of the study. The analysis outputs are applicable for training translators at M.K. Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University, citing the scientific, practical, and linguodidactic potential of this work.

Towards a Historical Approach to Translation in Translator Education

Academic programs across disciplines often require a foundational knowledge of history as an essential component for earning degrees in various areas of expertise. In the context of translation programs, the history of translation may either be offered as a distinct and separate course or integrated into practical translation courses. Since the 1980s, scholars in the field of translation have recognized the significance of historical research and have actively developed methods and theoretical approaches to establish this as a discipline in its own right. Presently, there is an abundance of material on the history of translation, accompanied by a concerted effort to construct a historiography specific to the field. Despite the vast array of bibliographic resources available, one notable lacuna in Translation Studies pertains to effectively introducing the historical dimension of translation to students who may grapple with comprehending this extensive body of theoretical knowledge and understanding the contribution of a historical approach to the act of translating. This article seeks to illuminate strategies for familiarizing students with the historical dimension of translation within the framework of a translation history course. The overarching aim is to underscore how translation history can contribute to students' development of a robust theoretical background on the translation phenomenon while enhancing their practical skills. Additionally, the paper explores the potential resistance students may harbour toward the perceived utility of a historical approach in addressing practical translation issues. Furthermore, the discussion delves into the role of Bibliographies of Translation Studies, which collate scholarly publications on translation, as comprehensive academic tools essential for systematizing existing yet often fragmented knowledge in this specific scientific domain. The research methodology employed is theoretical exploration, focusing on concepts such as history and historical research in translation, the objectives of a translation history course, and the design of course content along with methods for assessing student performance. The fundamental conclusion drawn is that the historical approach to translation is intricately connected to the act of translating, emphasizing the need to integrate translation history into translator training at higher education institutions. The recommendation is to offer translation history as a standalone course within translator training programs, featuring clearly defined goals and a strong orientation toward the practical aspects of translation. The envisioned objective of a "History of Translation" course is not only to address students' knowledge gaps but also to instill curiosity and research skills, fostering a lifelong learning mindset crucial for translation practice. Such an approach is anticipated to cultivate a "translation culture" among learners, contributing to the development of their self-awareness and enhancing their standing as professionals in the translation industry.

Legal Translation in Algeria: The Justice Scales to The Test of Equivalence

Legal translation is a specialized area of translation that requires a deep understanding of legal ‎systems, legal terminology, and the cultural context in which the legal document was created. ‎In Algeria, legal translation plays a critical role in facilitating communication and ensuring the ‎accuracy and clarity of legal documents. This paper will explore the challenges and ‎considerations that legal translators in Algeria face, including linguistic, cultural, and legal ‎factors. Through a thorough analysis of legal translation in Algeria, this paper seeks to shed ‎light on the essential role that legal translation plays in promoting access to justice and ‎maintaining the integrity of legal systems in Algeria, where legal translation is particularly ‎important due to the country's unique, complex, and diverse legal system, which combines ‎elements of French civil law and Islamic law, in addition to the multiple official languages, ‎including Arabic, French, and Berber. Moreover, the legal documents that require translation ‎in Algeria range from contracts and agreements to court documents and legal judgments. ‎These documents often have significant legal consequences, making accuracy and precision in ‎legal translation critical. In this context, it is essential for legal translators in Algeria to have ‎specialized training and expertise in legal translation to ensure that legal documents are ‎accurately and effectively translated across different languages and legal systems using all ‎types of equivalence for terms and concepts dealt with and comparative law study for the text ‎to be translated. ‎

Developing Generic Competence in Legal Translation Trainees

This paper addresses the notion of legal genres and text types from a classroom perspective. It presents several classifications of legal texts developed for legal translation (training) purposes and a critical reflextion thereof. Drawing on the classifications, the paper discusses what the rationale behind text selection in legal translation training should be, and why certain texts are more suitable than others in this respect, depending on the length and level of training. This is followed by a series of exercises designed to raise register and genre awareness in legal translation trainees. The exercises focus on the (a)symmetry of legal genres across languages and legal systems as well as the macrostructure of certain genres.

A Self-Study of Translators of Medical Texts Using the Kenhub Platform

A huge role in the translation of medical texts, as in the case of other specialist texts, is played by the knowledge of specialised terminology. Unfortunately, the range of training and courses for medical translators is smaller than, for example, in the case of legal texts and documents. Therefore, adepts of the profession of medical translator and translators themselves are forced to search for learning material largely on their own in order to acquire or supplement their own medical knowledge. One possible workshop tool for medical translators are anatomy-learning platforms, which have been created specifically for medical students. One example of such is the Kenhub website, which allows translators to study the human anatomy in German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian. This article presents the functions of the Kenhub platform in the context of its use for the self-education of translators working in the Polish-German language pair. In addition, proposals are made to supplement the various features of the platform with elements tailored to the needs of medical translators of German, such as, for example, the addition of articles, references to the language register, and the possibility of generating bilingual glossaries.

CATing the Way: Polish Translators and Computer-Assisted Translation Tools

This paper aims to establish a profile of Polish translators who apply CAT tools in their professional practice. The investigation identifies six primary categories, shedding light on the translators themselves, their experience, and interactions with specialised software. The first category delves into demographic data, analysing age groups and gender distribution among the users. The second category focuses on basic data encompassing the translators' experience with programs and their preferred foreign languages. The paper also explores the link between higher education and CAT tool proficiency, examining fields of study, educational institutions, specialised training, and opinions on the integration of this technology into academic curricula. In order to assess the non-academic aspects of learning and applying such software, it investigates the translators' engagement in training courses, certifications, and sources of qualifications improvement. Various methods for acquiring skills in CAT tools are also explored, such as online webinars and practical translation practice.The results reveal that the translators are rather experienced users of the software, they rely heavily on such programs, employing them in various types of translations, mostly non-literary texts. Translators perceive them positively, acknowledging their contribution to accelerating work processes and improving competitiveness in the translation market. The use of CAT tools is expected to increase, emphasising the need to incorporate these tools into translator training programs and adapt study plans to accommodate their further popularisation. The data was collected through an anonymous survey and provides insights into the preferences, habits, and perspectives of Polish translators using CAT tools. This paper serves as a foundation for further research and comparison with other translator groups, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the translator's profession in the context of translation technology utilisation.

Emotional Language Processing in Bilingualism: Subjective Affect and Prosodic Markers in Simultaneous Interpreting

Emotion, as part of the overall sensorimotor, introspective, and affective system, is an essential part of language comprehension within the framework of embodied semantics. As emotional state influences semantic and syntactic processing, emotional language processing has been shown to modulate mood as well. The reciprocal relationship between language and emotion has also been informative in bilingualism. Here we take a relatively underresearched type of bilingual processing, simultaneous interpreting, as a case of extreme bilingualism and investigate the effect of emotional language rendering in the L1 on subjective affect and prosodic markers of L2 output. 18 trainee interpreters were asked to simultaneously interpret three speeches in Turkish that varied in emotionality, valence (negative, neutral, and positive), and difficulty in English. Responses to emotional language processing were analysed based on participants’ self-reported positive and negative affect using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and three prosodic parameters (intensity, pitch, and fluency). Results showed that interpreting emotionally negative speech increased negative affect, whereas interpreting emotionally positive speech did not modify positive affect. Intensity generally reflected cognitive load. Pitch and fluency, in particular, were more sensitive to changes in the valence of the source speech.

Institutional Translator Training

Reseña de Institutional Translator TrainingTomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel & Vilelmini Sosoni (Eds.) New York, Routledge, 2023, 264 pp.

University of Lille and CNRS Research unit ‘Savoirs, Textes, Langage’

In this article, we analyze a learner corpus of English-to-French translation tasks produced by advanced students enrolled in their final year of a professional translation master’s program. Specifically, we investigate their use of so-called non-standard, non-SVO word order structures: clefting, pseudo-clefting, dislocation, extraposition, and inversion. We aim to confirm students’ tendency to overuse SVO word order in their translations in comparison with original French and to provide a finer-grained analysis of their (non-)use of non-standard structures. Complementary analyses on a corpus of machine-translated texts and a corpus of professional translations provide further comparisons. Thanks to an approach where corpus material is used to assist students in the development of their translation skills, all these results are meant to have pedagogical value, by highlighting the specificities of student translations to help them write more authentic texts that take into account language use related to word order. The comparison with machine-translated texts is intended to help students develop post-editing skills. Keywords: translation training, translation quality, word order variation, specialized translation, post-editing

MACHINE TRANSLATION: PERCEPTION OF TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING STUDENTS IN TURKEY

This paper focuses on how machine translation is perceived by students in the Department of Translation and Interpreting at Marmara University in Turkey. For this purpose, a total of 140 (95 females and 45 males) third- and fourth-year students were recruited through a random sampling. They responded to a paper-and-pen questionnaire with 16 statements about their perception of machine translation. Descriptive statistics was performed to analyse the data. The findings show that most students are knowledgeable about machine translation. In addition, students perceive that using machine translation has benefits, such as saving time, making the translator's job easier, and improving translation competence. However, more than one-third of the student's knowledge level on this subject is partially sufficient. This study can contribute to creating course content for the more effective presentation of machine translation (MT) courses taught in translation and interpreting departments. Keywords: machine translation, translation, translator, translation technologies, translation training

REVOLUTIONIZING TRANSLATOR TRAINING THROUGH HUMAN-AI COLLABORATION: INSIGHTS AND IMPLICATIONS FROM INTEGRATING GPT-4

As artificial intelligence transforms the landscape of language technologies, advanced natural language processing models like GPT-4 are poised to revolutionize translator training paradigms. This mixed-methods study examined the integration of GPT-4 into translator education to harness its potential while retaining human expertise as the core. Structured translation prompts demonstrated GPT-4’s prowess in technical translations, but the model faces challenges in capturing complex literary and cultural subtleties, necessitating measured integration approaches. Interviews with experts in AI-enabled pedagogy advocated blended learning models judiciously combining GPT-4’s capabilities with immersive human training focused on creativity and cultural awareness. Direct observations of translator trainees showed benefits from GPT-4 usage, like personalized feedback and the need for human collaboration in complex cases. Cross-case analysis revealed variances in aptitude across diverse text genres and subjects, demanding tailored deployment strategies. While recognizing the risks associated with overdependence and taking into account ethical considerations, findings indicate an immense potential for GPT-4 to enrich pedagogy if integrated prudently in a human-centric manner. This underscores a balanced approach harnessing AI to amplify competencies without compromising the irreplaceable human essence underpinning high-quality, ethical translation. Keywords: ChatGPT, Translation, GPT-4, Translator training, Human-AI collaboration

TRANSLATION TRAINING: THE USE OF AUTHENTIC PROJECTS

This paper aspires to shed light on the pedagogical aspects of translation and, more specifically, the training of novice translators. The aim of the paper consists of testing how translation is best taught via empirical channels and in conjunction with retrospective comments. The project under investigation was conducted in the Department of English Language and Literature of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (November 2021) and involved postgraduate students pursuing their master’s degrees. The project, in which the students were involved, was authentic in that it was situated in realistic circumstances since they were requested to perform a real translation task for a volume to be published, reaching out to readers other than the course instructor. Students were initially asked to translate a text collaboratively. After the completion of the translation task, they were asked to critically reflect upon their translation practice by writing an essay and explicitly exploring the benefits of such a procedure. According to their comments, the use of an authentic project, in an otherwise theoretical class, paid off since they found that their perspective was broadened, and their practice became conscious throughout the different stages. More specifically, among others, they highlighted that their critical thinking was sharpened, their collaboration skills improved, and their self-reflection proved to be a powerful tool guiding their decision-making. The case study could be further enhanced if another type of text was chosen [literary extracts], another setting was selected [undergraduate courses] or more stakeholders would be involved. Keywords: translation teaching, translation methodology, authentic project, new paradigm