Introduction to Translation Technology

(Translation) technology plays an important role in the translation industry. This course outlines the different steps in the translation process and discusses the different tools that are available on the market.

The goal of this introductory course is twofold. On the one hand it provides insights into the basic underlying principles that are used in translation technology (sentence and word alignment, matching, standard formats, etc.). On the other hand, it provides hands-on experience with selected tools.

During the lectures we focus a.o. on

• the main concepts of computer-aided translation
• the functioning of translation memories and alignment
• the functioning and usefulness of term banks, terminology management and terminology extraction tools
• standard formats for the exchange of term banks and translation memories
• the functioning of machine translation systems 

Students will gain hands-on experience with Translation Environment Tools (TenT) such as Wordfast Anywhere and MateCat, sentence alignment software, terminology extraction tools and multilingual concordance programs.