P A R T 1
Technologies in a modern translation agency
Aurimas Novikovas, Partner Solutions Manager, EUROTRADUS, UAB, Lithuania
Localization industry has witnessed rapid development; and, thus the concept of translation work has been alternated to a great extent. Our presentation will introduce various latest technologies used in daily life of a modern translation agency that will include translation and project management systems, CAT tools, machine translation software, etc. and show how they affect and change the internal processes of an agency and work of translators. It will also in greater detail review the main workflow steps from the point of view of clients, linguists and project managers themselves which will allow the participants to grasp the concept of contemporary localization challenges. Finally, it will briefly focus on the global overview of the localization market.
About: EUROTRADUS delivers professional service and high-quality translations. Many large corporations (Google, Microsoft, Sony, Philips, etc.) already rely on technical translations made by Eurotradus. For many years, the company has been supporting players in the global IT industry with the implementation of multilingual online services for electronic end products providing user interface (UI) and user assistance (UA) localisation.
Expectations and data bias in machine translation and AI in general
Mārcis Pinnis, Tilde, Chief AI Officer, Head of Research, Latvia
Machine translation has been adopted as a standard tool by many translation and localisation service providers. Although the technology can be and in many scenarios is beneficial, it sometimes does not meet user expectations. In this talk, I will discuss examples of mismatches between expectations and system performance. I will also touch data bias, which is a hot potatoe in media and discussions around AI-based technologies. The presentation will raise awareness of the strong aspects of the current technologies as well as their limitations.
About: TILDE is a company that develops language technologies. It operates from the Baltic states. Tilde develops language technologies for both local markets (proofing tools, spellcheckers, dictionaries, speech recognition, speech synthesis applications) and the wider global market (e.g., machine translation, terminology management, computer-assisted translation, and virtual assistant technologies). Mārcis has a PhD in Computer Science and has worked in Tilde since 2011. He holds two positions – he is both the Chief AI Officer and the Head of research at Tilde. His research interests involve neural machine translation, terminology, and other topics related to natural language processing. He is actively involved in the development of Tilde’s neural machine translation systems and technologies and is the author of the very first neural machine translation systems for Baltic languages.
Bilingual annotation of cybersecurity terminology: aims, methods, challenges and results
Sigita Rackevičienė, Professor, Institute of Humanities, Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania
The aim of the talk is to present the work on terminological annotation of cybersecurity corpora which will be used as gold standard for training deep learning systems to be developed for automatic terminology extraction from comparable and parallel English-Lithuanian corpora. The following aspects of the annotation will be discussed: the annotation methodology which has been used for the annotation of terminology of the cybersecurity domain, the problems which have occurred during the annotation and the results of the annotation of the Lithuanian dataset. The research is carried out under the project “Bilingual Automatic Terminology Extraction” funded by the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT, agreement No. P-MIP-20-282). The project is also included as a use case in COST action “European Network for Web-Centred Linguistic Data Science” (CA18209).
About: Sigita Rackevičienė is a professor at the Institute of Humanities, Mykolas Romeris University (Lithuania). She teaches Contrastive Lexicology and Lexicography, Computational Terminology Research and Management, as well as Norwegian (as the second foreign language, levels A1-B2). In addition, she supervises degree theses on contrastive terminology issues. Her scientific interests include multilingual terminology (conceptual, linguistic and pragmatic dimensions) and computational terminography. At the moment, she works as a senior researcher in the national scientific project Bilingual Automatic Terminology Extraction. She is also a representative of Lithuania in COST Action CA18209 – European Network for Web-Centred Linguistic Data Science. ORCID: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0001-5794-0296
Linguistic resources for the translation of creative language
Anabela Barreiro, Prof.dr., INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal
About: Anabela Barreiro holds a PhD degree in Linguistics. Her doctoral and post-doctoral research was also carried out at New York University, at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science. Currently, she is a researcher in Human Language Technologies Lab at the Institute of Computer Systems Engineering, INESC-ID, in Lisbon. She is also Action Chair of COST Action Multi-task, Multilingual, Multi-modal Language Generation. Her research interests encompass machine translation, paraphrases, machine intelligence, language understanding, language generation, and linguistic humour.
P A R T 2
A holistic and socially engaged approach to translator education on the example of a collaborative student translation project
Olga Mastela, PhD, Chair for Translation StudiesJagiellonian University, Poland
The present paper presents the advantages of socially engaged didactics at the university level, on the example of a case study of an authentic collaborative translation project effectuated at the Chair for Translation Studies, Faculty of Philology, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, in 2020/2021. As the results of a questionnaire show, students’ participation in the project not only helped to develop knowledge, skills and social competences related to their field of study but also contributed to the young people’s awareness of local and global social issues. Cooperating with specialists from other domains allowed for the inclusion of an interdisciplinary element in the project, which stressed the interdisciplinary character of any human activity. The concept of socially engaged didactics is based inter alia on Chałas (2020). Other education quality issues mentioned in the paper include the use of modern technologies (e.g. cloud-based CAT tools), distant learning, team-based work and creative problem solving, all of which issues, together with interdisciplinarity, entrepreneurship and engaging the student’s self, are also characteristic for the Danish approach to university teaching and learning called ‘education for change’ (Robinson, 2020).
About: A graduate of the Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw, Olga Mastela holds a PhD in Linguistics and since 2017 has been Assistant Professor in the Chair for Translation Studies, Faculty of Philology, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. As freelance translator and reviser she has cooperated with the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences and with a leading translation service provider in Poland. In 2022, she completed the “Master of Didactics in Excellent Teaching” at Aarhus University, Denmark, and promotes the ideas of tutoring, student-centred approach and individualized instruction. She is a member of CTER – Consortium for Translation Education Research (cter.edu.pl) and conducts research into student collaboration in authentic translation projects (see e.g. Retelling Legends and Folk Tales: A Transcreative Approach in the Collaborative Translation Classroom | Research in Language (lodz.pl) ). Participants of her translation courses regularly become engaged in pro bono service for charities and cultural institutions (see e.g. Razem ku przemianie świata – Niezbędnik projektów w duchu Transition [Polish] – Transition Network and To Touch Culture Guidebook (dotknijkultury.pl)).
In addition to her interest in translation pedagogy, she has published on transcreation, melic translation, pseudotranslations, and the reception of Shakespeare, including a monograph on Polish translations of The Winter’s Tale.
Literature and translatability
Edlira Macaj, Prof.as.dr., University of Tirana, Albania
The discussion introduces literary translatability as an artistic practice that implies the quality and ability to transfer art into another culture, as a poetics with many facets. In that case, translatability becomes an important and influential factor in the dynamics of every nation’s literature. There is no chance for literature to be as it is if literary translatability is not considered in its historicity. The discussion here focuses on translatability as a process, as an experience, and as an influence that orients the creativity or stimulates a new inspiration in a certain literary creative process, in this case of Albanian literature. The research extends even further: how much and how does translatability come into literature as a skill and quality, as a conjunction between different contexts implying process, translator, and product.
This discussion needs a historical and comparative perspective that are crosslinked with facts and interpretations according to specific examples. If we don’t consider translatability as a key factor that plays a role in the dynamics of certain literatures, then, literature cuts its most special line of communication. The literary translation is crucial for the literature of small countries and of specific languages as the Albanian language is. We conclude with the idea that the poetics of translation, which manifests many aspects indeed, becomes an inspiration and resource. They nourish the literature of one country that might be similar, or even dissimilar to it. Translation mediates a cultural meeting and translatability faces various cultures with each other. These processes of creation and adaptabilities require overcoming several phases conditioned by literary and extra-literary factors.
About: Edlira Macaj (25.08.1980) is a researcher and an associate professor at the Department of Literature at University of Tirana, Albania, Faculty of History and Philology. She is a guest lecturer at the Department of Journalism and Communication too. For many years she taught at the University Aleksandër Moisiu Durrës, Faculty of Education, Department of Literature. Her interests include theory of literature, criticism, anthropology, folklore, translation. She is the author of several scientific monographies: Mjedja’s poetics (2021), Literature- Ab Initio (2019); Narcissus Mirrors, Mythical Symbolism and Semotics of the Text, (2012); co-translator for theoretical university textbooks (2019); co-author of literature textbooks for higher education (2016) etc. Since 2015 she contributes with research papers in national and international scientific conferences and has published articles in international scientific journals broadly indexed (EU countries, USA). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7745-2895
The culture of language and language of culture
Somali Gupta, Professor Dr. & Head, Department of English, C.L.C. Govt. Arts & Commerce College, Dhamdha, Dist.Durg. (Chhattisgarh), India
An overview of literature translations in India, their multicultural and multilingual identity which largely rests on translations.
About: Prof. Dr. Somali Gupta, Professor & Head, Department of English, C.L.C. Govt. Arts & Commerce College, Dhamdha, Dist.Durg. (Chhattisgarh) India. Prof. Dr. Somali Gupta has thirty six years of teaching experience as a Professor of English in the Higher Education Industry, Govt of India. Associated with Training and Coaching since 1998. Professional member of ISABS (Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Sciences). Prof. Dr. Somali Gupta is external faculty at IIM Ahmedabad (for ERI course) and International Burch University, Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina. Research activities: Research Award by UGC Topic: Youth Anxiety and Stress within the Higher Education System. A Group Analysis of the Students from the Backward Classes of Chhattisgarh. 1 Minor Research project sponsored by the UGC. Topic- Development of Oral Communication skills”. Completed 2 Awareness Campaigns in “Solid Waste Management” sponsored by the Ministry of Environment and Forest. Current research activity: Learner Beliefs (and teacher beliefs) in Learning English as a Second Language (ESL)– A Socio-cultural Approach to Comparison of Learner Beliefs in India and Serbia. Keynote address: International conference on ESP “Role of a Teacher in a Classroom”, Hope University, Liverpool; International conference on LHSP, Imperial College London; Emotional intelligence in Teachers, University of Nis, Serbia; o Disruptive Education: The Changing Patterns of the World Education; Reading a Text in the Age of Post Truth: Madurai Kamraj University, TN.