Автор: Пользователь скрыл имя, 31 Мая 2013 в 07:22, реферат
I wish to thank the MIFL Chancellor - Academician Emma F. Volodarskaya, President of the Russian Academy of Linguistic Sciences, for the encouragement I received in the course of my research into the subject of the present term paper. My enormous gratitude also goes to the Dean of the Translation and Interpreting Faculty B.S. Ivanov for his advice and understanding as well as to the entire staff of the MIFL Department of Foreign Languages Theory and Practice for their disinterested assistance and pertinent advice at every stage of my work.
In the field of language study, the phenomenon of globalization points to the link existing between the dynamics of society and the need for communication in the framework of economic, political, cultural international contacts.
The use of English has lately spread so much around the world that it undeniably has become the tool for global communication. English is a global, international language because the language of global politics, economy, academic life is English. Arriving to a different we are surprised to find out that taxi drivers don't speak English. The phrase 'global English' is being used increasingly nowadays. Achievements in science - computer science in particular, technique, economy knew in the last decades occurred in English speaking countries so it appears natural that they represented the reasons that imposed the use of English in every part of the world. Linguistic globalization, part and consequence of globalization, regards the changes that national languages underwent in the course of time, particularly the latest decades, due to the deliberate acceptance of a common means of communication - English (Călăraşu, 2003, 323). At the level of national languages linguistic globalization refers to the excessive use of English and American loans which was conditioned by the contemporary social, economic, political reality. As it was pointed out (Graddol 2000, 8) English has become the lingua franca in twelve major domains: international organizations and conferences; scientific publications; international banking, economic affairs and trade; advertising for global brands; audio-visual cultural products (film, TV, popular music); tourism; tertiary education; international safety; international law; technology transfer; internet communication; relay language in interpretation and translation.
The linguistic imperialism of English was accepted worldwide even by the economic authorities of the world - except for some countries among which China, France and the Canadian province of Quebec that adopted laws to restrict the use of English - who overcame the national and cultural pride and obsolete competitive mentalities about linguistic supremacy (Călăraşu, 2003, 324).
1.2.2 Accelerating scientific and technical progress
Advances in information technology (IT) have combined with modern communication requirements to foster translation automation. The history of the relationship between technology and translation goes back to the beginnings of the Cold War, as in the 1950s competition between the United States and the Soviet Union was so intensive at every level that thousands of documents were translated from Russian to English and vice versa. It was more a war of intelligence than weapons. However, high demands revealed the inefficiency of the translation process above all and especially in specialized areas of knowledge, increasing interest in the idea of a translation machine. Although the Cold War has now ended, and despite the importance of globalization, which tends to break cultural, economic, political and linguistic barriers, translation has not become obsolete. We now face the desire of some nations to retain their independence and cultural identity, especially expressing their intentions through their own language and choose of the means to identify its originality and importance. This phenomenon can clearly be seen within the European Union, where translation remains a crucial activity.
IT has produced a screen culture that tends to replace the print culture, with printed documents being dispensed with and information being accessed and relayed directly through computers (e-mail, databases and other stored information). Instant availability of these computer documents and that they can be opened and processed with far greater flexibility than printed matter is useful and tempting for translators. With the result that the status of information itself has changed, it becomes either temporary or permanent according to need and conditions.
The development of the global market, industry and commerce function more than ever on an international scale, with increasing freedom and flexibility in terms of exchange of products and services. Meanwhile such freedom is becoming more dangerous concerning the author rights. Over the last two decades we have witnessed the enormous growth of information technology with the accompanying advantages of speed, visual impact, convenience, cost-effectiveness, ease of use, creative possibilities. The nature and function of translation is inevitably affected by these changes. There is the need for countries to cooperate in many spheres, such as ecological (Greenpeace), economic (trade agreements, especially free like between Russian Federation and Ukraine), humanitarian (Red Cross, Doctors without Borders) and educational (exchange programs, grants) and many others. Despite the importance of English, there is the commonly-held belief that people have the right to use their own language, yet the diversity of languages should not be an obstacle to mutual understanding.
Thus different aspects of modern life have led to the need for more efficient methods of translation. At the present time the demand for translations is not satisfied because there are not enough human translators, or because individuals and organizations do not recognize translation as a complex activity requiring a high level of skill, versatile competencies, creativeness, and are therefore not prepared to pay what it is worth. In other words, translation is sometimes avoided because it is considered to be too expensive and at times thought to be quite useless as there are still people who ignore the problem of specifying details. In part, human translation is expensive because the productivity of a human being is essentially limited and not always objective. Statistics vary, but in general to produce a good translation of a difficult text a translator cannot process more than 4-6 pages or 2,000 words per day. The economic necessity of finding a cheaper solution to international exchange has resulted in continuing technological progress in terms of translation tools designed to respond to the translator's need for immediately-available information and not following access to extensive databases.
Solutions to linguistic problems must be found in order to allow information to circulate freely and to facilitate bilateral and multilateral relationships.
We will try to answer the following questions:
1.2.3 Technical tools of translator's competence
Translation software has been the subject of many authors in recent years. In 2003 Somers presented an overview to the different software packages that a translator have to deal with in his everyday work, although he does not describe any specific tool in particular, unlike Dohler (1997) and Nogueira (2002). Austermühl (2001) gives more details about certain CAT tools such as SDL Trados, as well as he provides a useful list of Internet resources in each chapter of his book. However, these studies lack a realistic professional approach because they are mainly focused on CAT tools, without mentioning other tools commonly used such as PDF tools, FreeMind.
First of all, it is necessary to consider the software licenses restricting the use of a program and its cost. There are principally two categories of licensing schemes: open-source/free software and closed-source/proprietary software. The programs named in this paper apart from Internet resources are of one of the following types:
Shareware: As opposed to freeware, the user has to pay after some trial period which is usually no longer than 30 days after which a translator is ought to either buy a full version or delete the trial one and search for some free software but perhaps lacking certain useful features of the previous.
To have better orientation in the sea of electronic information, a translator ought to have skills which are gained either while studying in the linguistic institution of higher education or during practical work improving translational qualification. A translator spends less time with skillful, correctly organized information search. Finally everything depends on the translation quality demands a client makes. It is important whether a translation is checked by a stylist, a copy editor who know well the subject matter of the text and a foreign language.
Comparative data of many polls carried out in the West claims a significant increase in popularity of electronic resources and special programs among translators. Thus, the research conducted in 2003 revealed that among the interrogated professional translators 18 people always use compact disks in their work, 47 check on-line dictionaries and encyclopedias and 47 printing editions of the dictionaries [Menagarishvili & Coggin]. According to the 2001 interview in Finland 82% of professional Finnish translators often or from time to time use the Internet resources and 74% of translators [Jaaskelainen, 2004] use electronic dictionaries. It is obvious that advantages of the Internet outweigh its shortcomings and restrictions, and it is absolutely fairly considered irreplaceable means in an arsenal of the translator.
Every translator uses these or those opportunities of a computer on its minimum or maximum. The minimum includes a text editor, electronic dictionaries, e-mail. The maximum involves above listed tools and also electronic systems for a translator that can be with certain reservations divided into the following groups:
- informational. They are the systems providing automatic search of linguistic and extralinguistic information in the Internet, and also management of information streams (encyclopedias, electronic library catalogs, banks of terms, search servers, etc.);
- translational like PROMT, Translation Memory, StyleWriter, TransCheck machine translation systems, etc.;
- communicative. These are communication means of a translator like e-mails, websites, chats.
Chapter 2
2.1 Use of computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools in translation
Computer-assisted translation is a complex process involving specific tools adaptable to the needs of the translator. The computer becomes a workstation providing access to a variety texts, tools and programs, e.g. monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, parallel and translated texts, as well as terminology databases. The translator can create their own personal work environment and transform it according to the task put in front of them, taking advantage of on-the-spot-flexibility, freedom of movement and immediate access to an enormous range of up-to-date information. Thus, one could rightly say that computer-assisted translation is undoubtedly a great time saver.
The following are the most important computer tools in the translator's workplace, from the most basic to the most complex: electronic dictionaries, glossaries and terminology databases.
At first glance using electronic dictionaries doesn’t seem to be hugely different to working with their paper counterparts. However, the advantages soon become evident -- looking for words by typing them out on the computer is much easier than going through a weighty tome. Moreover, there is immediate access to related data through links and it is possible to use several dictionaries simultaneously by working with multiple documents.
Electronic dictionaries are available in several forms: as software that can be installed in the computer; as CD-ROMs and, most importantly, through the Internet. Google, for instance, gives us access to a great variety of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries in many languages, although it is sometimes necessary to become on-line subscribers, as with the Oxford English Dictionary. On-line dictionaries organize their material using their corpus. Thus one can ask for all words related to one key word, or for all words that come from a particular language, i.e. they allow immediate cross-access to information.
There is a great deal of Internet dictionaries, glossaries and databases
that can help one with specific terminology. Internet Le Nouveau Grand
Dictionnaire Terminologique developed in Quebec, Canada contains 3 million
terms in French and English belonging to 200 fields. Another important
resource is EURODICAUTOM, a multilingual terminology database created
by the European Union in 1973 that covers a variety of specialized areas,
both scientific and non-scientific. In addition, there are many helpful
web sites that offer information on. One such site is that of the TERMISTI
research center attached to the Higher Institute for Translators and
Interpreters (ISTI) in Brussels (http://www.termisti.refer.org
2.2.1 Using Corpora to improve translation quality
In the context of computer-assisted tools a corpus can be described as a large collection of texts in electronic format. Electronic corpora can be enriched by annotating them with part-of-speech tagging, and this is especially useful in order to enable researchers to carry out sophisticated linguistic investigations. But even an untagged corpus of texts, so-called raw text, can be a useful performance-enhancing tool in translating -- for instance, it can be of great help in confirming intuitive decisions, in verifying or rejecting decisions based on other tools such as dictionaries, in obtaining information about collocates (words that typically co-occur), in reinforcing knowledge of normal target language patterns, as well as in learning how to use new expressions.
Corpus analysis tools enable users to investigate and manipulate the information contained within a corpus in a variety of ways. For example, most corpus analysis packages comprise a concordancer, which will find all the occurrences of a search word, or search pattern, and display them in the centre of your screen, together with a span of co-text to the left and right.
The concordance lines can be manipulated, e.g. if the search word is a noun, one can ask the concordancer to sort the words immediately preceding the search word in alphabetical order, which may help find suitable adjectives that collocate with the search word. By double-clicking on a line, one can view it in its full context.
Consulting digitalized corpora by means of corpus analysis tools enables translators to exploit large quantities of text far more rapidly and systematically.
2.2.2 Style and Grammar Checkers. Tag Editor
Grammar and style checkers take a prescriptive approach to style. They’re intended to help writers during the proofreading stage of the writing process. By comparing the writers' work to some norm, they are able to detect and report some types of spelling, grammatical, and stylistic errors.
They usually have two primary components: a dictionary and a set of rules. The rules can range in form from a simple table of phrases to match, along with the corresponding diagnosis, to a formal grammar of the English language. The diction and explain programs from AT&T's Documenter's Workbench use this simple approach. The diction program attempts to match phrases from its list of examples of poor diction against the text. Each matching phrase is displayed at the writer's terminal and the explain program is used to print the diagnosis. For example, if the writer were to use the word implement, diction would print out the word implement, and explain would suggest that the writer use the phrase carry out in place of implement. Most grammar and style checkers make some attempt to parse the sentences of the writer's text to produce a more accurate and precise analysis of the text.
The grammatical component of the checkers are, in part, extended spelling checkers. By using a grammar and part of speech information, a grammar checker can detect misspellings that a traditional spelling checker will miss. For example, the read wagon would be reported as an error since an article the may not be followed by a verb read. The actual categories of grammatical error that are reported differ from program to program. Some commonly reported errors include:
Subject-verb agreement;
Julie, as well as her assistants, are entitled to the commission. (should be is, singular)
Pronoun case;
If you have any further questions, please call either Chrysanne or myself. (should be me)
Noun-modifier agreement;
Several of the missing photograph were found. (should be photographs, plural)
Verb forms;
The class was gave by Julie. (should be given, present participle)
The categories of stylistic errors that are reported also vary from program to program. Some common reported errors include:
Diction; prioritize, dollarization
Redundant phrases; each individual, merge together
Double (or more) negatives; I don't know nothing.
Excessive sentence length and complexity.
TagEditor
The principal feature of Tag Editor is that it is the editing tool (in modern versions of the program it is already installed, not an add-on), where the translation is done.
In options sector a translator can edit languages, view of the tag tool itself:
In the Edit tab the most important feature is Keyboard as if you know more than two languages it has an option to automatically change the keyboard language to the language found in the target field but that language should be pre-installed from the Regional and Language options in your Windows Control Panel.
Verification tab is related to the Verify (F8) function in Tag Editor dictating the strictness of tag check-up when running the verify features.
And one of the most useful and important Options tab is Spelling tab:
Tag Editor is similar in spellchecking to MS Word. It even has an option to use the spellchecking dictionaries from Microsoft Office Package.
2.2.3. Machine translation. Translation memory
Machine translation is an autonomous operating system with strategies and approaches that can be classified as follows:
-- the direct strategy
-- the transfer strategy
-- the pivot language strategy
The direct strategy, the first to be used in machine translation systems, involves a minimum of linguistic theory. This approach is based on a predefined source language-target language binomial in which each word of the source language syntagm is directly linked to a corresponding unit in the target language with a unidirectional correlation, for example from English to Spanish but not the other way round. The best-known representative of this approach is the system created by the University of Georgetown, tested for the first time in 1964 on translations from Russian to English. The Georgetown system, like all existing systems, is based on a direct approach with a strong lexical component. The mechanisms for morphological analysis are highly developed and the dictionaries extremely complex, but the processes of syntactical analysis and disambiguation are limited, so that texts need a second stage of translation by human translators. There are a number of systems that function on the same principle: for example SPANAM, used for Spanish-English translation since 1980, and SYSTRAN, developed in the United States for military purposes to translate Russian into English. After modification designed to improve its functioning, SYSTRAN was adopted by the European Community in 1976. At present it can be used to translate the following European languages:
In addition, programs are being created for other European languages, such as Hungarian, Polish and Serbo-Croatian.
Apart from being used by the European Commission, SYSTRAN is also used by NATO and by Aérospatiale, the French aeronautic company, which has played an active part in the development of the system by contributing its own terminology bank for French-English and English-French translation and by financing the specialized area related to aviation. Outside Europe, SYSTRAN is used by The United States Air Force because of its interest in Russian-English translation, by the XEROX Corporation, which adopted machine translation at the end of the 1970s and which is the private company that has contributed the most to the expansion of machine translation, and General Motors, which through a license from Peter Toma is allowed to develop and sell the applications of the system on its own account. It should be noted that in general the companies that develop direct machine translation systems do not claim that they are designed to produce good final translations, but rather to facilitate the translator's work in terms of efficiency and performance.
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