Courses in General Language Translation

Teachers as well as students should be familiar with TM tools and should know how to use them. They should also make sure that they know the contents of all eCoLoTrain TM courses.

The main learning objective of these courses should be to enhance competence in general translation in a real-life working environment. It is important to stress that the focus of the course is on general translation not on translation memory tools.

• General translation courses must be planned for at least two or four semesters. Courses should be held regularly – e.g. two hours per week. This would depend on the time dedicated to them in the relevant study courses – Bachelors (BA), Masters (MA), etc.
• Texts to be translated during the course should be selected with a certain continuity and progression in translation difficulty in mind. Throughout the entire course requirements of translation practice should also be considered, e.g. also by selecting texts in different formats on related subjects (Word documents, websites, PowerPoint presentations, etc.)
• Teachers should bear in mind that aside from preparing course content (texts, background materials, etc.), they must also consider technical issues, such as defining user rights and user IDs for the use of databases by students – this is, however, usually done by system administrators or CAT tool specialists.
• Since in general translation courses the variety of text types and subject fields that can be addressed is so wide, using an existing TM database will depend on the teachers' objectives. If it is possible to use an existing database – e.g. from previous courses –, teachers do not have to create a new one. If there is no database available, teachers should create one before the beginning of the course.
• If a translation memory database is not available, teachers can alternatively create one and populate it by using an alignment tool and parallel texts in the corresponding languages of the course.
• Before populating the database, teachers must predefine the database structure. The teacher can predefine different attribute/text fields such as subject field, file name, course name and semester according to the course objectives.
• Depending on course objectives, teachers may want to prepare the use of a given error typology to classify students' incorrect translations found in the TM database, or search for information to develop their own typology based on students' errors.

To learn more about variations of general language translation courses integrating the use of translation memories according to available technology

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