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<Paper uid="W04-1405">
  <Title>Technology-enhanced Translator Training</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="2" end_page="11" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 The Learning Environment
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"/>
    <Section position="1" start_page="2" end_page="2" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.1 Background on Open Source Software
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> The following information is from the Corporate University Enterprise (CUE) White Paper: &amp;quot;The history of open source software is very closely related to the history of the Internet itself. It can be traced to post-Sputnik initiatives during the Eisenhower administration. Because the Eisenhower administration did not want to concentrate technology research in the Pentagon, money was provided to universities and new non-military government entities such as NASA and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> These agencies and universities became heavily involved in developing computing and communications technologies.&amp;quot; Like so much of the open source applications that are available, the tools have been conceptualised and created to fill a need in the university setting. Learning management systems in the university setting are focused on online collaboration, often as a supplement to classroom education. This was a major criterion for our choosing Moodle (i.e. Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment). Moodle is in many ways a one-man campaign by the Australian Martin Dougiamas. As he himself says: 'Moodle is my perpetual work in progress.'</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="2" end_page="4" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.1.1 Availability
Moodle
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> is a course management system (CMS) a software package designed to help educators create quality online courses. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). One of the main advantages of Moodle over other systems is a strong grounding in social constructionist pedagogy. This means that the role of the teacher changes - he or she is no longer the only source of knowledge but more of a mediator of information and moderator of discussions.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> Moodle is Open Source  software, which means that you are free to download it, use it, modify it and even distribute it under the terms of the General Public License (GNU)  supports PHP, including most web host providers. Data is stored in a single database: MySQL and PostgreSQL are best supported, but it can also be used with Oracle, Access, Interbase, ODBC and others.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="4" end_page="6" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.2 How does it work?
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Once Moodle has been installed on the server, the teacher has a chance to develop an electronic course totally independently of the technician. It is true that problems resulting from the very nature of computer technology do occur, but apart from these, teachers can work on their own and use all the creativity and resources they desire. The teaching takes place in a classroom equipped with a data projector and a screen and has access to the Internet. Students are asked to print out their version after submitting them and bring the hard copy to class. It is necessary to have something to fall back upon when there is a technical problem and the data projector in the classroom does not work or if there is another technical problem and no assignments can be displayed on the screen.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> First of all there is the option to choose between a weekly format, a topics format or even the social format. The weekly and topics formats are very similar in structure. The main difference is that each box in the weekly format covers exactly one week and has the date, whereas in the topics format each box can cover whatever you like. The social format doesn't use much content at all and is based around just one forum - this is displayed on the main page (hence it is not suitable for our purposes).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> In a practical translation class each topic can be devoted to a different type of text (letters business and personal, articles, contracts etc.). The teacher can include resources for the study of the topic by uploading files. See the description under Resources.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> Creating a course involves adding course activity modules to the main page in the order that students will be using them. They can be shuffled any time. To turn on editing, the toggle switch &amp;quot;Turn on editing&amp;quot; under Administration must be on. It shows or hides the extra controls necessary to manipulate the main course page. To add a new activity, the type of activity is selected from a pop-up menu. After adding activities the teacher can move them up and down in the course layout by clicking on arrow icons next to each one. They can also be deleted by using the cross icon, and reedited by using the edit icon.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> Within each topic or week the teacher can use an array of course activities: forums - to present students' contributions and stimulate discussion, journals to make the students describe the procedure when fulfilling a more complex or difficult task, or quizzes to test the students' progress in mastering the basics of translation theory (a multiple-choice or true-false test) or the pitfalls of interference (translating sentences from the mother tongue - short-answers test). The questions are kept in a categorised database, and can be re-used within courses and even between courses. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked, and the teacher can choose whether to give feedback or to show correct answers or both. All answers can be evaluated later and more options can be added to the &amp;quot;correct answers&amp;quot;.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> Resources are the content of the course.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> Teachers may have existing content that they want to add to the course, such as web pages, audio files, video files (e.g. tutorials), Word documents, flash animations or even TM-tool files (.pxf and .txf). Any type of file that exists can be uploaded into the course and stored on the server. While the files are on the server they can be moved, renamed, edited or deleted. Updating materials is therefore very easy and can be done fairly quickly.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="7"> An assignment is usually set with a due date and a maximum grade. Students are able to upload one file. The date they upload their file is recorded.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="8"> Afterwards, there is a single page on which each file (and how late or early it is) can be viewed, including the date and feedback. Half an hour after the teacher grades any particular student, Moodle will automatically email that student a notification. If the teacher corrects the student's assignment using &amp;quot;track changes&amp;quot; in Word, the student can then access the corrections in a feedback file that is uploaded in Moodle. This feature was added by our administrator at the teachers' request and was named echo-assignment.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="9"> Before the actual class takes place class members can view all the echo-assignments. After the deadline for submitting the assignment has expired, students can read their peers' translations and prepare for the discussion based on their translations.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="10"> It is also possible for the student, if the teacher allows it, to re-submit assignments after the class, making the necessary changes or improvements.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="11"> The teacher can use the Logs link (under Administration) to get access to complete, raw logs. The teacher will see a link to a pop-up window that updates every sixty seconds and shows the last hour of activity. Activity Reports (next to each name in the list of all people, or from any user profile page) provide the teacher with a comprehensive overview of what any particular person has been up to in the course.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="12"> According to the CUE report, features are the main strength of Moodle. The features listed above are only a sample. Language support is another strength. Currently, Moodle is available in 34 languages  , with more under development. The Czech version is currently being prepared at our department. Moodle is the only open source LMS to truly address the issue of human resource information systems (HRIS) integration. The latest release has a graphical user interface (GUI) tool to hook into various external database formats.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="4" start_page="6" end_page="11" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.3 Courses
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Now I would like to show you what translation courses have been taught at our department  Jarmila Fictumova: Practical translation exercises, using the computer. Students will employ the Internet, language corpora and CAT tools in translating non-literary texts. They will deal with translations from and into English, create their own glossaries of terms and try to revise translations.  Jiri Rambousek : The course examines texts and language phenomena that represent borderline cases in translation and cannot therefore be dealt with by means of translation proper. These instances should lead us to some general observations about systemic differences between languages and cultures, as well as about translation. We shall concentrate on short isolated texts (e.g. public signboards and announcements, advertisement texts), short literary texts strongly dependant on language (anecdote, limerick...) or some specific forms that hardly meet the standards of textuality (crossword puzzles, secret codes). The students will be asked to (a) translate/transfer these texts into Czech, (b) collect and compare original texts in both languages, (c) define systemic differences between the two languages and cultures and rules for handling these instances, both from literature and from their own experience.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1">  Simona Mazacova, Jiri Rambousek: The students will be acquainted with the basic terms in the field of translation and translation studies and with a brief outline of the development of approaches to translation. At the beginning of the course,</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="11" end_page="15" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4 Other Tools and Resources
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> As mentioned earlier, translators are frequently asked to translate into L2, rather than into their mother tongue. This can bring about problems even for very competent non-native users of the target language (TL). Educated native speakers not being available all the time, the translator is left with a choice: either to refuse the job or to learn about ways of coping with this challenge.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The use of electronic corpora, monolingual and both parallel and comparable, together with the relevant corpus managers or Internet search engines can provide considerable help. In their book Working with Specialized Language, A practical guide to using corpora, Lynne Bowker and Jennifer Pearson explain in detail how LSP corpora can be used as a translation resource.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Students can follow their explanations and create small ad hoc corpora to investigate usage, style the importance of competence in the target language will be stressed and a short test in Czech will inform the students of the level of their Czech. The core of the course consists of the translation of various types of texts and the discussion of different translation procedures and techniques. The theoretical basis will be supplied. Literature: J. Levy, Ume ni prekladu; S. Bassnett, Translation Studies; P. Newmark, Textbook of Translation  Simona Mazacova : Translating humour can be an extremely rewarding, yet at the same time an extremely difficult task, as humour is more easily recognised than analysed or reproduced. This seminar is going to examine humour as a specific category which is closely tied not only to language, but also to culture, mentality and historical context; look at different types of humour and perhaps attempt a small &amp;quot;cross-cultural study&amp;quot; on the differences between Czech and Anglo-Saxon humour. Above all, however, we will try to TRANSLATE humour and for this purpose the seminar will employ not only literary texts but also jokes, cartoons, adverts, drama, films or TV programmes. There will also be some space for the students to contribute their own favourite humorous texts.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> and search for explanatory contexts in dealing with terminology. Here are some key points they give: * &amp;quot;A corpus can provide you with both linguistic and conceptual information.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> * You can consult a parallel corpus in much the same way as you consult a bilingual dictionary, but a corpus will provide more collocational and stylistic information than a dictionary.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> * A monolingual corpus can also be used as a translation resource, but you have to be more creative in devising strategies to find equivalents.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> * You can also use monolingual corpora to help you choose between synonyms, identify usage information and determine what style is appropriate for your translation.&amp;quot; Although more time is devoted to translations into Czech, students also translate into English and get acquainted with the above-mentioned techniques.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> They are assigned tasks in terminology extraction and management. To work on these projects they  .</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> Bonito is a corpus manager developed by Pavel Rychly of the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University in Brno. The students have been using Bonito to search corpora, including a Czech-English parallel Corpus that was developed at the Faculty of Arts  .</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> Another part of the training in &amp;quot;Becoming a Translator&amp;quot; was to simulate a translation agency. The students were asked to work with the free Personal Edition (PE) version of Transit  to translate a text into English. I used Transit Professional and Term Star to prepare translation projects for them. These projects (.pxf format) were based on revised translations and included reference material for concordance searches and also the required terminology. The students uploaded their translations in .txf format in Moodle.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> Apart from language skills and mastering new technologies, working as a translator also involves dealing with clients, agencies, employers; networking, research, use of technology; and generally an awareness of the roles translation plays in society and society plays in translation (Robinson, 1997). Students were therefore exposed to real-life situations and met experienced translators who told them about their work. They  also followed discussions on the Internet on various lists for translators and attended lectures, directly or on-line. Recently Power-Point presentations of such lectures have been uploaded in Moodle.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> It follows from what has been said that translation teachers should be educated as translators and teachers as well. This background should make it possible for them to pass on the knowledge and skills they have acquired. It helps if the translation teacher is an IT expert as well. To mention some personal qualities - I believe that teachers in general, but translation teachers in particular, should be open to discussion, definitely not dogmatic, and willing to learn all their lives. On the other hand, patience and pedantry, up to a certain degree, is a must to be able to instil basic rules and responsibilities of the profession in the students.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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