LINGUIST List 13.1870

Mon Jul 8 2002

FYI: Update: Translation, Endangered Langs

Editor for this issue: Marie Klopfenstein <marielinguistlist.org>

Directory

  • andrius, Expert Training Course: Fasttrack to Translation
  • infoeldp.soas.ac.uk>, The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme

    Message 1: Expert Training Course: Fasttrack to Translation

     Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 09:38:58 +0100
    From: andrius <andriusccl.bham.ac.uk>
    Subject: Expert Training Course: Fasttrack to Translation


    Expert Training Package

    FASTTRACK TO TRANSLATION

    http://www.telri.de/fasttrack

    *** NEW DATES: September 17-20 ***

    Extracting Translation Equivalents from Parallel Corpora

    The Birmingham Centre for Corpus Linguistics (CCL) is pleased to announce its 4-day Expert Training Package .FastTrack to Translation . Extracting Translation Equivalents from Parallel Corpora., September 17-20, 2002. This package, aimed at professionals in translation and other multilingual areas, builds on the success and experience of the first one which took place in September last year.

    Our expert training package uses parallel texts (original texts with their translations) to help translators find suitable translation equivalents. We present cutting edge research in the use of parallel corpora for detecting translation equivalents. Methods are introduced, using both monolingual and multilingual corpora, for exploring units of meaning in texts. These units of meaning are often larger and more complex than the simple word. Most units of translations are compounds, collocations or even phrases. As for single words, most of them are ambiguous. The participants will be shown methods on how the context can be used to disambiguate words by investigating their contextual profiles. The expert training package will also focus on retrieving the translation equivalents and learning how the corpus data can help us produce translated texts that display the .naturalness. of the target language.

    One application of the translation units is to create new translation databases which, for the first time, enable their users to translate correctly into a foreign language of which they have only limited command. Implemented into translation platforms, the databases will facilitate translations more than customary translation memories. The results and problems from current research will be presented and discussed. The corpus approach is also relevant for terminology. A large proportion of terminological material in new texts is neither standardised nor even recorded in a termbank. Parallel texts taken from the Internet are often the only source for finding translation equivalents.

    The expert training package will demonstrate how existing software can be adapted and combined for the extraction of translation units and their equivalents. Parallel corpora are available for a number of European languages paired with English and other European languages. There is also a Chinese-English parallel corpus. The participants will also be invited to use monolingual corpora, such as the Bank of English, during the hands-on sessions. The issues presented include segmentation, lemmatisation, POS-tagging, sentence alignment, lexical alignment, and the detection of units of meaning. We will demonstrate how context profiles can be used to select the proper translation equivalents. We will propose various suggestions to integrate corpus findings in bilingual dictionaries, in multilingual termbanks and in databases of translation equivalents.

    Our expert training package includes lectures which focus on theoretical approaches, instructions in the methodology and practice of multilingual corpus linguistics, and software presentations. Experience gained from our last course has encouraged us to shift the emphasis to supervised hands-on sessions which take place in a modern computer lab. Participants are invited to address specific topics and time will be set aside in the timetable for those who want to take the opportunity to present their own work.

    We also put an emphasis on the social side of our packages. Every evening, the participants are invited to explore the culinary diversity our city has to offer. We will be feasting at restaurants in the vicinity, visiting venues varying from a traditional carvery to Birmingham.s home-grown Indian Balti cuisine (vegetarian options available);

    Staff teaching this expert training package include: Professor John Sinclair (The Tuscan Word Centre, Italy), Professor Michael Barlow (Rice University, US), Professor Wolfgang Teubert (CCL, Birmingham), Dr Pernilla Danielsson (CCL, Birmingham), Dr Maeve Olahan (UMIST), J�rg Tiedeman (Uppsala); members of CCL and of Collins Dictionary Division, Glasgow. More staff to be announced. The expert training package is organised in conjunction with the Concerted Action TELRI (Trans-European Language Resources Infrastructure) and with the Tuscan Word Centre.

    Audience: The expert training package is targeted at professionals in language industry, for example dictionary publishing, multilingual language technology, and translation services. Minimum number of participants: 8, maximum number: 15

    Date and duration: The expert training package begins at 9.30 on Tuesday September 17 and finishes at 22.00 on Friday September 20, 2002.

    Fee: Participation per person: GBP 950 including coffee breaks, lunches and dinners. Reduction in fee to GBP 850 for early registration before May 13.

    Accommodation: Participants are requested to make their own reservations. We recommend Lucas House (University Guest House situated 5 minutes walk from the course venue) for accommodation (cost per person, per night, single occupancy: GBP 51.97). Tel no: +44 (0)121 625 33 83 Fax no: +44 (0)121 414 6339 Preliminary Schedule:

    Tuesday Place: CETADL, University of Birmingham

    .09.30 - 10.00: Programme presentation .10.00 - 11.00: lecture (1): Corpus linguistics and lexicography .11.00 - 11.20: coffee break .11.20 - 12.20: resources and tools (1): Methods in monolingual concordancing .12.20 - 13.00: hands-on session (1) Using WordSmith with exercises .13.00 - 14.30: lunch .14.30 - 15.30: lecture (2): Corpus linguistics and semantics .15.30 - 16.00: coffee break .16.00 - 16.45: resources and tools (2) Monolingual concordances 2 .16.45 - 17.45: hands-on session (2) Using MonoConc with exercises .20.00 - : drinks/dinner

    Wednesday

    .09.30 - 10.00: announcements/discussion .10.00 . 11.00: lecture (3): Translation and the corpus .11.00 . 11.30: coffee break .11.30 . 12.00: resources and tools (3): Working with parallel concordancer (ParaConc) .12.00 . 13.00: hands-on session (3): Using ParaConc with exercises .13.00 . 14.30: lunch .14.30 . 15.30: lecture (4): How to extract units of meaning from corpora .15.30 . 16.30: resources and tools (4): Working with translation memories .16.30 - 17.00: coffee break .17.00 . 17.30: hands-on session (4): Using Translation Software .17.30 . 18.30: participants. presentations .19.45 . 21.00: drinks/dinner

    Thursday

    .09.30 - 10.00: announcements/discussion .10.00 - 11.00: lecture (5): Three approaches to translation .11.00 - 11.30: coffee break .11.30 - 12.00: resources and tools (5): Working with databases .12.00 - 13.00: hands-on session (5) Using translation databases .13.00 - 14.30: lunch .14.30 - 15.30: lecture (6): Corpus linguistics and terminology .15.30 - 16.30: resources and tools (6) Term extraction and terminological databases .16.30 - 17.00: coffee break .17.00 - 17.30: Hands-on session (6) .17.30 - 18.30: participants. presentations .19.45 - 21.00: drinks/dinner

    Friday

    .09.30 - 10.00: announcements/discussion .10.00 - 11.00: lecture (8): The unit of meaning in translation .11.00 - 11.30: coffee break .11.30 - 12.00: resources and tools (7) Linguistically annotated corpora: tagging and lemmatising .12.00 - 13.00: hands-on session (6): Working with taggers and lemmatiser .13.00 - 14.30: lunch .14.30 - 15.30: lecture (9): Parallel corpora and bilingual lexicography .15.30 - 16.30: Individual tutoring .16.30 - 17.00: coffee break .17.00 - 18.30: final discussion / conclusion .20.00 - 22.00: farewell dinner

    Message 2: The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme

     Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 15:03:51 +0100
    From: infoeldp.soas.ac.uk> <infoeldp.soas.ac.uk>
    Subject: The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme


    Please find below outline details of a new research programme for the documentation of Endangered Languages.

    Initial announcement

    The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme

    A. A new research programme for the documentation of endangered languages.

    There is a very strong prospect that a private foundation will initiate a programme of grants to support the documentation of endangered languages, and appoint the School of Oriental & African Studies, London University [SOAS] to administer the scheme. The prospective Invitation to Apply, which is likely to be disseminated in late August, will contain full guidelines and contact details for any further inquiries. In the interim, no further details will be made available and prospective applicants are requested to avoid contacting SOAS with inquiries.

    The purpose of this announcement is to indicate the rationale of the putative programme and enable potential applicants to begin considering the details of their possible proposals.

    B. Rationale.

    The rationale of such a programme will be familiar to potential applicants: the pace at which languages are becoming extinct is increasing throughout the world. Furthermore, since only about one-third of the world's languages have literate traditions, the vast majority of languages which die will leave no substantial record of themselves, or the cultural traditions that they have sustained. Quite apart from the loss of individual cultural expressions, this process reflects a grave diminution in human and cultural diversity and a loss of the knowledge on which they are based and which they embody.

    The objective of the proposed programme would be twofold: to encourage the development of linguistic fieldwork in endangered languages, especially by younger scholars with a grounding in linguistic theory, who will thereby also be provided with support between basic graduate work and the assumption of university positions; and to support the documentation of as many threatened languages as possible, focused on where the danger of extinction is greatest, facilitating the preservation of culture and knowledge, and creating repositories of data for the linguistic and social sciences, and of course for indigenous communities. Such documentation should, therefore, have regard not only to the formal content and structure of languages, but also to the varied social and cultural contexts within which languages are used. In addition to the intellectual quality of applications, principal grounds for support will be the degree of endangerment and the urgency of the issues.

    C. Applications.

    Applications will be invited from researchers - who might include suitably qualified research students or postdoctoral candidate, as well as senior and established academics - with qualifications in and, ideally, experience of field linguistics. It is anticipated that all applicants will have, or will have developed in advance of funding, a formal link with (preferably an established position in) a university or comparable research institution.

    The core of the programme will probably be grants to support more or less elaborate projects for the documentation of individual or closely related endangered languages, involving one or more researchers and receiving support for up to three or, in exceptional circumstances four, years. However, individuals (including suitably qualified research students and postdoctoral fellows) may apply for grants.

    In the first instance applicants will be expected to submit a relatively brief Summary Proposal Form. These will be assessed and those, which appear to conform to the programme's expectations as to importance and quality, will be invited to submit a more detailed application.

    It is anticipated that in this first 'round' the date for submission of Summary Proposals will be mid-October 2002; invitations to submit detailed applications will be despatched in late November 2002; and the closing date for detailed applications will be early January 2003.

    Detailed applications will have to conform to a variety of standards (including ethical and technical standards), which will be specified in the formal Invitation to Apply some time in late August. Meanwhile, potential applicants are requested not to contact SOAS.