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THE MODERN translator and interpreter
th e
M dern
Translator
and
Interpreter
Ildikó Horváth (ed.)
ISBN 978-963-284-750-4

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horvath_themoderntranslator_borito.indd 1 2016.03.16. 11:47:38

THE MODERN TRANSLATOR AND INTERPRETER

THE MODERN
TRANSLATOR
AND INTERPRETER
Budapest, 2016
Supported by the Higher Education Restructuring Fund
allocated to ELTE by the Hungarian Government.
Reviewed by
Ágota Fóris
Ildikó Horváth
Miklós Urbán
Proofread by
Paul Morgan
© Editor, Authors, 2016
ISBN 978 963 284 750 4
www.eotvoskiado.hu
Executive Publisher: t he Dean of the Faculty of Humanities of

Eötvös Loránd University
Project Manager: Júlia Sándor
Editor-in-Chief: Dániel-Levente Pál
Publishing Editor: Ádám Gaborják
Typography, layout: ElektroPress Stúdió
Cover: Ildikó Csele Kmotrik
CONTENTS
FOREWORD.................................................................................................................... 13
PART 1: THE MODERN TRANSLATOR’S PROFILE.............................................. 15

What Makes a Professional Translator? The Profile of the Modern
Translator................................................................................................................. 17
Réka Eszenyi
1. Introduction............................................................................................... 17
2. The EMT translator profile..................................................................... 18
2.1. Translation service provision........................................................ 19
2.2. Language competence....................................................................22
2.3. Intercultural competence..............................................................23
2.4. Information mining competence.................................................23
2.5. Technological competence/handiness with tools..................... 24
2.6. Thematic competence.....................................................................25
3. Conclusion................................................................................................ 26
References...........................................................................................................27
Freelance Translators as Service Providers.........................................................29
Melinda Szondy
1. Roles of a translator..................................................................................29
2. Quality and service...................................................................................30
3. Project management................................................................................. 31
4. Pricing......................................................................................................... 33
5. The translation project.............................................................................34
5.1. Initiating.......................................................................................... 35
5.2. Planning........................................................................................... 35
5.3. Preparation......................................................................................36
5.4. Translation.......................................................................................36
5.5. Closing..............................................................................................36
5
The Modern Translator and Interpreter
6. Quality........................................................................................................ 37
6.1. Objective and subjective criteria of quality.................................38
6.2. LQA (Language Quality Assurance) as quality control
method.............................................................................................39
7. Communication........................................................................................39
8. The client: translation agency or direct client..................................... 40
9. Planning and time management.............................................................41
10. Conclusion................................................................................................ 42
References...........................................................................................................43
The Translator as Reviser.......................................................................................45
Edina Robin
1. Introduction...............................................................................................45
2. What makes a reviser?............................................................................. 46
3. Revision competence............................................................................... 48
4. The fundamental principles of revision................................................ 49
5. Revision parameters................................................................................. 51
6. Revision procedures..................................................................................52
7. The flaws of the reviser............................................................................54
8. Conclusion................................................................................................. 55
References...........................................................................................................56
The Translator as Terminologist........................................................................... 57
Dóra Mária Tamás – Eszter Papp – András Petz
1. Introduction............................................................................................... 57
2. Definition of modern terminology, its beginnings and main
organisations............................................................................................. 57
3. The terminologist..................................................................................... 60
4. The benefit of the terminological point of view................................... 61
5. The terminological approach................................................................. 62
6. Government and cabinet: are they equivalents?.................................. 64
7. The term.....................................................................................................65
8. Terminology databases............................................................................ 69
9. Terminology work done by the translator.............................................73
10. Conclusion.................................................................................................74
References...........................................................................................................75
Project Management...............................................................................................79
Annamária Földes
1. Introduction...............................................................................................79
6
Contents
2. Roles of the project manager on the translation market.................... 80

2.1. Salesperson..................................................................................... 80
2.2. Finance professional....................................................................... 81
2.3. Linguist............................................................................................ 81
2.4. Language engineer..........................................................................82
2.5. Publication editor...........................................................................82
2.6. Vendor manager..............................................................................83
2.7. IT specialist......................................................................................83
2.8. Teacher............................................................................................ 84
2.9. Quality checker.............................................................................. 84
2.10. Client contact manager..................................................................85
2.11. Administration...............................................................................85
2.12. Psychologist.................................................................................... 86
3. Conclusion................................................................................................ 86
References.......................................................................................................... 86
Vendor Management..............................................................................................87
Veronika Wagner
1. Introduction...............................................................................................87
2. Tasks related to vendor management.....................................................87
2.1. Selecting translators, hiring talent.............................................. 88
3. Following up on the performance of active translators, organising
quality control...........................................................................................93
4. Conclusion................................................................................................ 94
References...........................................................................................................95
Technical Preparation of Documents before and after Translation................97
Katalin Varga
1. Introduction...............................................................................................97
2. Basic principles......................................................................................... 99
3. Preparatory tasks ...................................................................................100
3.1. Non-editable source files.............................................................100
3.2. Desktop publishing software formats........................................102
3.3. What should be translated?......................................................... 103
3.4. Fonts...............................................................................................104
3.5. Text direction, bi-directional texts.............................................104
3.6. Limitation to text length.............................................................. 105
3.7. Preparation of terminology and references.............................. 105
3.8. Preparing markup languages for translation............................106
7
4. Post-translation tasks.............................................................................108
4.1. Quality Assurance........................................................................108
4.2. Checking the format.....................................................................108
4.3. The typesetting of publications...................................................109
4.4. Checking the functionality......................................................... 110
4.5. The management of text length.................................................. 110
4.6. File format for delivery................................................................. 110
4.7. Implementing feedback in the document.................................. 111
5. Useful software......................................................................................... 111
6. Conclusion................................................................................................ 111
References..........................................................................................................112
Localisation.............................................................................................................113
Márta Snopek
1. Introduction..............................................................................................113
2. Localisation: a definition........................................................................113
3. Internationalisation................................................................................ 114
4. Technical aspects of localisation........................................................... 114
4.1. Linguistic aspects...........................................................................115
5. Localisation vs. translation.....................................................................119
6. The profile of a good localisation translator........................................119
7. Localisation and community translation............................................120
8. Localisation project management.........................................................120
9. Conclusion................................................................................................121
References......................................................................................................... 122
Translation Quality Assessment at the Industrial Level: Methods for
Professional Translation Quality Assessment.................................................. 123
István Lengyel
1. Introduction............................................................................................. 123
2. Translation quality assessment: an overview...................................... 123
3. Translation error..................................................................................... 125
4. Translation quality assessment in practice, QA models....................126
4.1. The SAE J2450 model...................................................................128
4.2. The LISA QA model..................................................................... 129
4.3. The MQM model........................................................................... 132
4.4. The TAUS DQF model................................................................. 134
5. Conclusion................................................................................................135
References......................................................................................................... 136
8
Contents
Volunteer Translation and Interpreting............................................................. 139

Ildikó Horváth
1. Introduction............................................................................................. 139
2. Volunteer translation and interpreting................................................140
2.1. Fansubbing.................................................................................... 141
2.2. Crowdsourcing..............................................................................142
2.3. Church interpreting..................................................................... 143
2.4. Medical interpreting....................................................................144
2.5. Volunteer translation and interpreting in disaster
situations........................................................................................144
3. Motivations.............................................................................................. 145
4. Conclusion...............................................................................................146
References.........................................................................................................149
PART 2: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

IN TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING...........................................................151
Machine Translation.............................................................................................153
Ágnes Varga
1. What is machine translation?.................................................................153
2. Types of machine translation................................................................ 156
2.1. Direct machine translation systems........................................... 156
2.2. Indirect machine translation systems.........................................157
2.3. Knowledge-based machine translation systems...................... 158
2.4. The MetaMorpho translation system........................................ 159
3. How can machine translation be useful?.............................................160
4. Conclusion............................................................................................... 163
References......................................................................................................... 163
Translation Environment Tools.......................................................................... 167
Henrietta Ábrányi
1. Introduction............................................................................................. 167
2. What is a translation environment tool?.............................................168
3. Main components of translation environment tools.........................169
4. When should we use translation environment tools?........................ 170
4.1. Terminology.................................................................................. 172
4.2. Alignment...................................................................................... 172
4.3. Sub-segment matching.................................................................173
5. Disadvantages of translation environment tools................................ 174
9
6. Examples of translation environment tools........................................ 176

6.1. SDL Trados Studio 2014/2015...................................................... 176
6.2. memoQ 2015.................................................................................. 177
6.3. OmegaT.......................................................................................... 177
6.4. Wordfast......................................................................................... 177
6.5. Déjà Vu........................................................................................... 178
6.6. across.............................................................................................. 178
7. Cloud-based translation tools............................................................... 178
8. Conclusion...............................................................................................180
References..........................................................................................................181
Information and Communication Technologies in Interpreting and
Machine Interpretation........................................................................................ 183
Ildikó Horváth
1. Introduction............................................................................................. 183
2. The use of new information and communication technologies in
interpretation...........................................................................................184
3. Computer-assisted interpreting............................................................ 185
4. Machine interpretation..........................................................................186
4.1. Machine interpretation devices..................................................186
5. Conclusion............................................................................................... 188
References......................................................................................................... 189
PART 3: MODERN TRANSLATOR AND INTERPRETER TRAINING........... 193

The Modern Translator Trainer’s Profile – Lifelong Learning
Guaranteed............................................................................................................ 195
Réka Eszenyi
1. Introduction............................................................................................. 195
2. The modern translator trainer’s profile............................................... 195
2.1. Field competence.......................................................................... 197
2.2. Interpersonal competence...........................................................199
2.3. Organisational competence ....................................................... 200
2.4. Instructional competence ...........................................................201
2.5. Assessment competence...............................................................203
3. Conclusion.............................................................................................. 205
References........................................................................................................ 205
10
Contents
New Courses in the Curriculum: Language Technology, Supervised

Translation Project Work.....................................................................................207
Máté Kovács
1. Introduction.............................................................................................207
2. Elements of a translator’s competence................................................ 208
2.1. Proposals of the European Master’s in Translation (EMT)..... 208
2.2. Requirements of the Standard EN 15038:2006......................... 209
3. Growing requirements – changing needs – new courses.................. 210
3.1. Introduction to language technology.........................................211
3.2. Supervised translation project work.......................................... 212
4. Challenges and perspectives.................................................................. 215
5. Conclusion............................................................................................... 216
References......................................................................................................... 217
New Paths in Interpreter Training: Virtual Classes........................................ 219
Márta Seresi
1. Introduction............................................................................................. 219
2. The evolution of the language service provider................................. 220
2.1. The role of information and communication technologies
in language services..................................................................... 220
2.2. Videoconference and remote interpreting................................ 221
3. Changes in education............................................................................ 224
3.1. Changes in interpreter training................................................. 226
3.2. Incorporating virtual classes into interpreter training.......... 228
4. Conclusion...............................................................................................230
References......................................................................................................... 231
The Role of Cooperative Learning in Translator and Interpreter
Training.................................................................................................................. 233
Ildikó Horváth
1. Introduction............................................................................................. 233
2. Cooperative learning.............................................................................. 233
2.1. Negotiation....................................................................................234
2.2. Positive interdependence.............................................................236
3. Cooperative learning in translator and interpreter training............238
4. Conclusion...............................................................................................239
References........................................................................................................ 240
11
FOREWORD
Choosing the title The Modern Translator and Interpreter is a risky business in
our fast-moving world, given how a few years from now we may chuckle at the
sight of the word ‘modern’ being used to describe the topics discussed in this book.
Still, it is worth mentioning some of the new aspects, expectations and changes
taking shape in the field of language services which modern-day translators
and interpreters must come to terms with. The spread of information and
communications technology and the rise of social media have had a significant
impact on the way translators and interpreters do their jobs. They are no longer
just expected to mediate between languages in written or spoken form. Today,
translators and interpreters must offer a complex set of services.
This book explores developments in the field of language services across three
chapters. The first, Hungarian version of this book was originally published in
March 2015. In its initial form it was specifically aimed at the Hungarian reader,
the professional language service provider, the trainer and the trainee. The book
attempted to place developments in Hungary in an international setting. This new
English version retains all the contributions found in the first edition but, at the same
time, it was edited with the international readership in mind. To this end, Hungary-
specific examples have been omitted, but we have kept those cases related to Hungary
which we consider to be of general interest or use to an international audience.
Part 1 presents a detailed account of what is expected of modern day translators
and interpreters. It discusses new roles which translators today are expected to
play, such as the role of reviser or terminologist. It also discusses new professions
pertaining to language services which we encounter on a daily basis but may not be
entirely sure what they involve, such as project management, vendor management
or localisation. Following this, we cover two very interesting topics. One is the role
of the various standards applied to translation quality assurance and assessment,
while the other is the increasingly popular concepts of volunteer translation and
interpreting.
Part 2 is centred on the role of information technology in translation and
interpreting. One of the key topics of this area is machine translation. We examine
13
the existing types of machine translation and present a critical analysis of its
advantages and limitations. Another change regarding the role of IT in language
services is the emergence and expansion of translation environment tools.
Part 2 also gives a detailed presentation on the main components of translation
environment tools, as well as a balanced and objective analysis of the advantages
and disadvantages of using such tools, together with the characteristics of texts
that they can be used to translate. The last part of this chapter discusses the role
of IT in interpreting. Although these new technologies may not be used as often
in the field of interpreting as they are in translation, they have influenced the way
interpreters do their jobs, and the topic of machine interpreting is also one that
comes up increasingly often.
Part 3 focuses on the various challenges faced by translator and interpreter
training. The training of translators and interpreters has seen numerous changes
over the past few years. Another reason why we must mention training is that the
shift in professional expectations for translators and interpreters has also brought
about changes in what is demanded of training courses. This part touches on the
profile of the modern-day translation instructor as well as new subjects in the
field, such as language technology or translation projects. We will discuss the
role of virtual classes in interpreter training and that of cooperative learning in
translator and interpreter training.
This book is the product of a unique collaborative effort, as the authors who
contributed to it are all in some way or another connected to the Department of
Translation and Interpreting at ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary. Some of them
teach at the department while others acquired their qualifications as translators
or interpreters here. They come from different areas of the field of translation and
interpreting: they are instructors at our department and are language service providers
themselves, working either at translation agencies or translation environment
companies. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the authors and
reviewers who contributed to this book for their help, their precise efforts and high
level of professionalism. I thoroughly enjoyed editing this book and I hope that readers
will enjoy and benefit from the results of our professional and academic collaboration.
Last but not least, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Paul
Morgan, for his precise proofreading and reviewing of the book. Throughout our
cooperation on the English version, he never once lost his sense of humour or
optimism, which made this otherwise laborious task a constant source of fun.
Ildikó Horváth
PART 1:
The Modern Translator’s Profile
What Makes a Professional Translator?
The Profile of the Modern Translator
Réka Eszenyi
E-mail: e_reka@rocketmail.com
1. Introduction
If you talk to experienced translators, in Hungary for example, who have been
in the profession for decades you often hear them saying they only got their first
assignments because they were the lucky ones who could speak foreign languages
at the time. Before the political changes in Hungary in 1989–1990, and even in the
decade following the changes there were very few of them. The majority of people
entered the profession without any formal training, and they learnt it on the job
from more experienced colleagues. They could learn about the cultures behind
the foreign languages from books, the luckier ones from their occasional journeys
to other countries. The background and terminology of the topics involved in
the source language text could come from the translator’s previous studies, from
libraries, or from experts in the subject. Furthermore, the most advanced technical
tool used was the typewriter.
In the 2010s, the translation market has seen a complete transformation.
Foreign language teaching has improved considerably and the knowledge of
foreign languages is a basic requirement nowadays. The expectations towards the
translator have become more complex and new competences need to be acquired
in order to have a stable position in the translation market, especially in the areas
of information mining and handiness with computer-assisted translation tools.
The changes have brought about the expansion and development of translator
training, so it is worthwhile making an inventory of the competences of the
modern translator. The EMT (European Masters in Translation) Expert Group
of the Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission worked
out a model (Gambier 2009) which includes the six main areas a professional
translator should master. The model is meant first and foremost for institutions
that train translators in tertiary education. The definition of the translator’s
17
competences is comparable to the Common European Framework of Reference

for Languages in its function of ensuring the standardisation of training and
assessment.
2. The EMT translator profile
The Expert Group lists a number of factors motivating the necessity for defining
a new translator’s profile. The first one is the development of markets, which
has been accompanied by the globalisation of world trade. As a result of this
development the need for translation services increased. The second factor is
the EU enlargement in 2004, the largest in history, which made EU officials
realise how hard it is to find professional translators and interpreters in the nine
new languages. It was high time to define the requirements and competences
for translators and training institutions. The third factor was the obvious lack
of professional requirements as the translation profession was hardly regulated
either by the EU or the member states. This leads us to the fourth factor: the
authors of the study think it is time “to upgrade the working conditions and
remuneration of translators, who are essential players in facilitating all forms
of exchange and integration and promoting linguistic diversity” (Gambier et
al. 2009: 1). The fifth and final factor focuses on translator training institutions.
After the introduction of the two-tier Bologna system numerous universities
added translation and interpreting courses to their language programmes, so
the number of such courses quickly increased, yet we could not say the same
about the number of qualified translation trainers.
The model described lists the expectations towards a translator. As most
translators enhance their professional skills within the framework of various
translator training courses, a similar model has been worked out for the
competences of translation trainers (EMT Expert Group, 2013). The descriptive
model (Figure 1) also serves as a recommendation for translator training
institutions: their objective should be to train translators who acquire all six
competences.
18
Figure 1
The translator’s competences (Competences for professional
translators, EMT Expert Group, 2009)
The expert group defined the following six competences:

1. translator service provision competence,
2. language competence,
3. intercultural competence,
4. information mining competence,
5. technological competence/mastery of tools,
6. thematic competence.
The six main competences make up a full circle, as we can see in Figure 1. The core
of a translator’s activity is translation service provision. The quality of the service is
guaranteed by the presence of the other five competences. In the following section,
the contents of the six main competences are described, with comments related
to translator training and the translation market, with particular reference to the
situation in Hungary.
2.1. Translation service provision
As the very name of the competence suggests, the translator is a service provider and
an entrepreneur all in one. They should be able to handle a wide array of tasks far
19
removed from translating a text, ranging from advertising their services to invoicing.
The translator as an entrepreneur should be familiar with the requirements of and
trends in the market; know how to secure assignments; know how to negotiate with
the clients, be it directly or through translation agencies. The translator should know
what the client expects of them: deadlines, invoicing, prices, textual requirements
(concerning form, content and terminology), the contents of the contract and other
rights and responsibilities a translator has. For practical tips on the above issues, see
Samuelsson-Brown’s A Practical Guide for Translators (2010).
Many translators work freelance (Pym et al. 2012), this means they receive
assignments from several clients. The factors listed above differ from one client to
the other and require great flexibility on the part of the translator. If the assignment
comes from a translation agency, the remuneration is usually lower than in the
case of direct clients (mostly companies). Translation agencies often approach
the translators with a price offer along with the assignment. The price can be in
characters, keystrokes or words - which is more likely in the EU market. When
translating for a company the translator is more often than not in the fortunate
position of being able to set their own prices.
Beginners often ponder at length before giving a price offer to their clients and
ask more experienced colleagues what the minimum price should be. The price
depends on several factors: the languages involved, the direction (into the mother
tongue or a foreign language), the deadline, the type of text, the unit of settlement
(word, keystrokes or characters), and whether it is based on the source or target text.
Some other criteria might also come with the assignment: formatting, terminology
or the use of software and/or translation memories. The basic price proposed could
be between USD 0.08 per word (these figures were taken from proz.com). The
everyday reality of the market, however, can be different, as those willing to take
on the assignment for the lowest price get the job. So when giving a price offer,
the translator should consider what is more important: to secure assignments and
become part of the market, or fair remuneration as a professional translator.
A translation assignment can only be considered an official order after the
translator has seen the text, and agreed on the deadline, price and other details with
the client, in writing. This written agreement should be concluded with translation
agencies and direct clients as well, thereby preventing unfortunate situations, such as
the client not paying, or paying less, disagreements about the number of words, etc.
or the deadline.
The clients might have certain requirements concerning the translations, e.g.
the target text should have exactly the same format as the source text, or only some
20
parts of the original text should be translated. The client might give terminology
lists, glossaries or translation memories for the translator to use. In this case it
might be easier to work with a translation agency because they usually have an
established professional background and take the burden of formatting off the
translator’s shoulders, providing them with glossaries and translation memories.
Although translators usually take on their assignments based on a written
agreement, translation agencies also conclude framework agreements with them.
This takes place before the first assignment. In this document, the translator
pledges to keep to the deadlines, perform the translation work carefully, to the best
of their ability, and treat the information as confidential. Some agencies include
the condition that the translator should use CAT tools, i.e. software for computer-
assisted translation (e.g. memoQ, SDL Trados) and hand over the translation
memory to the agency. In the case of direct assignments, such agreements are rare,
however confidentiality is still an expectation.
Having taken all these factors into consideration, if the translator managed
to secure the assignment, finally the real translation part can begin. Time
management is a crucial part of a translator’s job: delivering work of high quality
for a deadline entails a lot of effort and stress. The stereotypical image of the
translator is somebody working from dawn till dusk (and sometimes even at
night) in a windowless room, or at least with the curtains drawn. However, in the
modern world, the translator no longer needs to cut a lonely figure. Translators
often work in teams on longer texts. CAT tools like SDL Studio GroupShare make
team translation easier and more efficient. In the course of individual translation
work the translator might need help or advice from a more experienced colleague.
When a freelance translator has managed to find their clientele, there may be
assignments they do not have time to do. In this case, recommending a reliable
colleague for the job might be beneficial in two ways. A colleague having a similar
profile (languages, specialities) does not necessarily constitute a competitor for the
translator. The one the translator recommends might return the favour sometime.
So being part of a community is essential for translators.
As a last aspect in the description of translation services provision the issue of
the translator’s self-assessment and self-criticism should be touched upon. After
completing each assignment, the translator should evaluate their performance on
the job, make an inventory of what they have learnt about their own translation
competences and which areas need development in the future. Are you handy with
CAT tools or is it time to undergo training? Could you understand all the details
and find the target language equivalents or should you find an expert who can
21
help? Could you do the translation at an acceptable pace? If it takes too long it may
not be worthwhile doing it at all. These are points to consider after each assignment.
If you work for an agency and know that your text will be proofread, insist on
receiving the proofread version. Reviewing the corrected text can contribute to
your reflective, self-assessing working methods.
The paragraphs above have described what makes up translation service
provision. The following sections will address the remaining five translation
competences (skills, knowledge, behaviour patterns and know-how) that guarantee
the quality of the service.
2.2. Language competence
The description of the model contains a detailed description of language

competence: a sound and excellent command of the mother tongue (A language)
and command of the foreign language at least at level C1 in the Common European
Framework of Reference. This means the translator understands the “grammatical,
lexical and idiomatic structures as well as the graphic and typographic conventions”
of the source and target language (Gambier et al. 2009: 5). The translator has to be
able to produce all this in the target language. This requires accuracy, the skill to
create readable texts and creativity from the translator. In the European Union,
official translators work into their A language. However, in national markets such
as in Hungary because Hungarian is not widely spoken beyond the country’s
borders and rather difficult to learn, there is considerable demand for translation
into B languages. Beside an excellent command of languages, the translators have
to keep their working languages up-to-date and devote time to observing their
development and changes.
Within language competence, excellent knowledge of the mother tongue
is of particular importance, surpassing the everyday language user’s language
competence, and in no way can be considered self-evident. When translating
into the mother tongue this competence has to go beyond good writing skills,
though translation is also a creative process (Kussmaul 1995; Pagnoulle 1993).
The communicative aim of the source text determines the target text, and it is
indeed a fine line between ingenious solutions and mistranslations. In translator
training, beside the development of B language competence the conscious,
accurate and refined use of the mother tongue should also be given special
attention.
22
2.3. Intercultural competence
The intercultural element of the model consists of a sociolinguistic and textual

dimension. The former entails the recognition of the function and meaning of
language variations, the knowledge of the interaction rules in different communities
including non-verbal elements, and choosing the appropriate register when
producing the target language text. The textual competences include the following:
recognising structure and coherence, implicit meaning, references, stereotypes
and intertextuality in various document types, awareness of the translator’s limits
and shortcomings in text comprehension, implementing strategies to tackle these
(e.g. asking for help from more experienced colleagues, finding the appropriate
sources on the internet, in books and parallel texts), the ability to summarise the
text and quick and accurate editing, re-editing and correction skills.
In order to acquire the skills outlined above translators should be able to
observe and become aware of the differences between their working cultures and
learn how to transform linguistic and cultural elements. An interesting source
of such information, entitled How to Write Clearly, has been published by the
European Commission in 23 of the official languages. The target audience, the
end users of the translation, should always be at the forefront of the translator’s
thoughts. The target language text should be written in a way that can fulfil its
aim with the target audience. Some terms and expressions in the source text may
need explanation or extra information or, in some cases, some parts of the text are
omitted.
2.4. Information mining competence
It may sound surprising, but in spite of the wealth of information available on

the internet, finding the right information has not become much easier. First the
translator identifies the genre of the document, this guides them in finding the
appropriate terms. The elements that need to be looked up should be identified
in the source text and a glossary can be compiled. If the translator has done
translations in the topic area before, relevant texts and glossaries can be used. One
of the prerequisites of using former translations is that the translator stores them
in a systematic way and the archives are easily searchable. For more information
on the benefits of mastering the use of computers in translation see Austermühl’s
book entitled Electronic Tools for Translators (2014).
23
The glossary is likely to become longer in the course of the translation process.
The translator can look for information and expressions on the internet, or with
the help of terminology software, electronic corpora and dictionaries, libraries or
ask an expert on the topic. It is crucial to find the right balance when searching
for information. If the translator relies overwhelmingly on their own knowledge
of the subject matter, the quality of the text might suffer. If they spend long hours
looking for terminology, the translation will take very long and the remuneration
per hour decreases sharply.
A crucial part of the information mining process is assessing the search results.
By way of example, if the translator has a hypothesis about the expression in the
target language, and they search on the internet to test it, it is essential to check
how many hits there are and what kind of websites use it, as you can find almost
anything on the internet. What matters is where and how often it is used. So always
take your search results with a pinch of salt, and only use them if your hypothesis
is sufficiently justified. Another hurdle to overcome in the course of info mining is
when an expression seems correct, the translator can even find it on a prestigious
website or in a database (for instance in the terminology base of the European Union,
iate.europa.eu), but the expression does not fit the context of the translation. The
bottom line is that several factors should be taken into consideration when searching
information, and the first step in the process is understanding the source text.
2.5. Technological competence/handiness with tools
We have witnessed the greatest changes (and challenges) in a translator’s work in the
area of technology over the past few decades. The first development was the widespread
use of personal computers and word processors, however, nowadays translating done
with a word processor is often seen as past its sell by date, indeed obsolete.
With the extensive application of CAT tools translation has become faster and
easier to review, but of course only for those who are ready to learn how to use the
software. Aided by such software translators can see the source and target text on
the screen at the same time, can build their own term base and translation memory
and can easily find and use their previous translations. Once the translator has
translated a sentence, or even a term, the translation memory will automatically offer
the solution (with the appropriate setting of course), thus they can save a lot of time
and energy just by inserting these in the translation. In the case of longer texts this
can mean a considerable amount of time.
24
Using these tools demands an investment of time and money by the translator.
Ideally, students in translator training courses learn how to use these tools, so
only money need be invested later on, but through the increased efficiency of
translation, the investment soon pays dividends. The above considerations refer to
written translations in the first place, but the development of software goes beyond
this, and the need for translation in other media, like audio and audio-visual
materials, is also growing. Learning how to use this kind of software is of course
a way of specialising.
The topic of machine translation (MT) also belongs to technological
competence. One of the most widespread machine translation tools is the freely
accessible Google Translator that facilitates translation of texts between numerous
language pairs. The texts translated with this tool are usually on the border of
comprehensibility and have a low level of accuracy, yet they can provide substantial
help in defining the topic of a text in a language we do not know at all. There are,
of course, more refined MT tools tailored to make translation in certain genres,
between certain language pairs. An example of such a genre is the description of
software updates, as these do not differ much from previous translations.
There are agencies in Europe that employ machine translation and have
human proof-readers correct their texts. This is called human assisted translation
(Skadina 2013). However it should be noted here that machine translation is just
a fraction of the translation market. A market where human translators have
hardly any work because of MT is an unlikely scenario, at least according to the
author of this article. Different types of software will not be able to translate texts
in an informed, creative manner, select in a critical way from different solutions, or
analyse the context in a way a professional translator would.
2.6. Thematic competence
Students participating in translator training courses are often advised to specialise:

choose a field in legal, technical or medical translation for instance and learn it
thoroughly. Most of the students have a bachelor of arts when starting the course
and experience with texts in linguistics, literature or newspapers, while in the
translation market there is mostly demand for translations of legal, economic,
financial, medical and other texts. For those wishing to translate it may be a better
idea to see what texts they have access to on the market, specialise in them, then
choose a topic and try to gain access to that segment of the translation market.
25
Many freelance translators are active in several subject areas but do not have
a degree in medicine, law or economics. The point of thematic competence is that
the translator learns the basics (and later on possibly the subtleties) of several
fields, gets to know the typical text types, concepts and terminology. A translator
can obviously not be a master of all trades. Many of them rather exclude areas (like
legal, technical texts) instead of giving a conclusive list of what they can translate.
Thematic competence can be developed endlessly, and it requires an open, curious
attitude on the part of the translator and willingness for continuous learning.
3. Conclusion
The description of the six competences emphasizes the fact that a good command
of languages is just one of the competences a translator needs in order to be able to
operate successfully. The translator is an entrepreneur who knows their place in the
market, the opportunities and how to run their business. Smooth communication,
networking, negotiating and bargaining skills are crucial. Business contacts
should be cultivated, and the translator should maintain a good reputation and
continuously promote their services. The translator should be aware of the rights
and obligations connected to the profession.
The translator is a linguist who is not content to have just a C1 level in their
foreign language(s) but rather goes on reading, collecting information and learning
new things with passion in order to gain more knowledge and understand the
differences between the cultures of their mother tongue and foreign language(s). If
questions arise, the translator undertakes research, and uses their acquaintances’
knowledge, too, in order to find the answer.
The translator is an expert whose linguistic and thematic knowledge in several
languages and subjects goes beyond the average. They make informed decisions
when creating the target language text, collect knowledge and information and
are able to store and retrieve it in a systematic way. The translator belongs to
a professional community whose members help one another’s work and learn
from one another. Their competences are dynamic, they follow the changes
in the translation profession, languages and the world and are open to trying
something new. The translator is willing to invest time and money in trainings
and conferences.
26
The translator is a technician although many translators consider this role

to be the one they can identify with least. They should devote time and energy
to acquiring the use of CAT tools and be able to manage different editing and
search programmes, online databases and dictionaries. The translator’s various
roles might suggest that the modern translator should have extraordinary abilities,
but this is certainly not the case. One of the peculiarities of the profession is that
the translator should show confidence in a number of different areas, but all of
the skills listed above can be learnt. So the translator is a versatile rather than
extraordinary being. In this versatility, some facets may be stronger than others,
but still the translator can keep their balance in a fast moving, unpredictable world.
References
Austermühl, F. 2014. Electronic Tools for Translators. Translation Practices

Explained. London and New York: Routledge.
Average rates charged for translations. http://search.proz.com/?sp=pfe/rates, last
accessed on 12 November 2015.
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching,
Assessment. 2011. Council of Europe. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/
Source/Framework_EN.pdf, last accessed on 14 July 2015.
Gambier, Y. (EMT Expert Group). 2009. Competences for professional translators,
experts in multilingual and multimedia communication. http://ec.europa.
eu/dgs/translation/programmes/emt/key_documents/emt_competences_
translators_en.pdf, last accessed on 21 May 2015.
How to Write Clearly. 2012. European Commission, http://ec.europa.eu/translation/
writing/clear_writing/how_to_write_clearly_en.pdf+&cd=1&hl=hu&ct=clnk
&gl=hu, last accessed on 20 May 2015.
(EMT Expert Group), 2013. The EMT Translator Trainer Profile. Competences of the
trainer in translation. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/programmes/emt/
key_documents/translator_trainer_profile_en.pdf, last accessed on 20 May 2015.
Kussmaul, P. 2015. Training the Translator. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.
Pagnoulle, C. 1993. Creativity in Non-Literary Translation. Perspectives: Studies in
Translatology 1: 79–90.
27
Pym, A., Grin, F., Sfreddo, C. & Chan, A. L. J. 2012. The Status of the Translation
Profession in the European Union. Studies on translation and multilingualism.
2012/7. Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission. http://
ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/publications/studies/translation_profession_
en.pdf, last accessed on 14 July 2015.
Samuelsson-Brown, G. 2010. A Practical Guide for Translators. Fifth Edition.
Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Skadiņa, I. 2013. Human Assisted Translation and its impacts on translator learning
processes. Tilde Research Team, Latvia. Paper presented at the 7. European
Masters in Translation Conference, Brussels, Belgium, 13 September 2013.
28
Freelance Translators as Service Providers
Melinda Szondy
E-mail: melinda.szondy@language-bistro.com
1. Roles of a translator
Translators usually aim at working as in-house translators at a large company,

organisation or very often at a translation agency. They envisage a stable and safe
workplace where they can make good use of their knowledge and specialisation
acquired during their years of learning and where they can count on valuable
support and guaranteed salaries. However, it is often the case that after a short
period of great hopes they turn towards the idea of freelancing as a translator.
Nowadays corporate organisation strategies and expectations regarding high
efficiency force companies to solve translation tasks through outsourcing. The
number of companies and organisations where it is economically feasible to have
their own translation department is quite limited.
Even translation agencies tend to work less and less with in-house translators
and only for their major language combinations. It is critical to be able to
guarantee a high level of efficiency during working hours. A job as a translator in
one of the various EU institutions can result in a very challenging and interesting
professional career, too.
However, in this article, I focus on freelance translators, their career
opportunities being equally interesting and challenging. All the experience and
knowledge gained as a freelance translator most certainly add to an in-house
career, as well. For the sake of simplicity I use the term translators hereinafter.
Let me stress that I am not going to write about any aspects of literal translation
as that requires a different attitude, key aspects being very different from those of
technical translations.
Before going into detail first of all I need to point out that nowadays translators
need to have good general knowledge and sometimes even expertise in various
areas, not just the strictly speaking linguistic process of conveying a message from
one language to another. Besides being masters of the translation craft freelance
29
translators juggle the roles of accountants, IT professionals, debt collectors and

project managers and very often even lawyers, doctors or electrical engineers in
one person. As their years of experience increase, their resistance to performing
these roles decreases, as it becomes clear that these help freelancers cope with
the challenges. These additional activities help them develop a good service
oriented attitude that enables them to gain new clients and maintain a lasting and
prosperous business relationship with them.
2. Quality and service
Language professionals choose this profession because they are keen on languages.
In order to become successful as freelance translators, in addition to being fond
of languages, they also need to develop a service oriented attitude, quality being
the most important indicator and expectation of this activity. When speaking
about translation, quality is rather complex and difficult to define (House
1998, 2001) as it is hard to get a clear definition of what we call a good or bad
translation. Criteria may depend largely on different clients’ expectations, even
for the very same product. It can be very helpful for the translators to assess
different expectations and work on finding the best solution to provide the
expected quality of service.
During the past few decades, freelance translation was regarded as an activity
that can be performed from the comfort of the translator’s home, translators being
able to decide about their own working hours and schedule, about accepting or
rejecting certain assignments, being free from strict conditions and not needing to
tolerate annoying co-workers or supervisors. Their sole activity was conveying the
meaning of a certain text from one language to another.
However, recent global changes have resulted in freelancers not being
completely ‘free’ anymore. As a general tendency turnaround times are becoming
shorter. In the not so distant past a longer translation task was managed by a single
translator as turnaround time allowed for a relaxed workload. Nowadays clients’
expectations can only be met by translator teams cooperating in a specialised IT
environment, ensuring quality and deadlines are met according to clients’ needs,
the teams being coordinated by project managers. Thus, besides translation
competences translators need to master technical and other skills as well.
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Within a few years their attitude towards information technology has

changed significantly, from typing skills to computer literacy and daily use of
various computer assisted translation tools. We can hardly imagine someone
being successful in this profession without having affinity towards information
technology. There is no longer any doubt that translation memories and CAT tools
support translators’ work, constituting a real gain. Translators have mastered the
use of such tools and are aware of the ever evolving file formats.
Nowadays it is extremely rare that translators can work in isolation without
co-workers and ‘supervisors’. Translation tasks no longer involve the process of
linguistic translational operation alone. Virtual communication solutions fully
allow for teamwork and continuous interaction even between professionals
working on different continents. Complex translation tasks are managed by project
managers of a language service provider. Project managers are professionals who
ensure the links between team members and clients, organising and managing
various tasks in different phases of the process.
Depending on whether the client is a direct client or a translation agency,
translators’ work consists of different steps. Each translation task is unique with
standalone outputs and goals. They have however a special feature, that is, they
need to be performed within a certain time frame. In this regard they can be
considered projects (based on http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projektmenedzsment).
Freelance translators are their own project managers. A successful translator needs
to be able to properly coordinate their own time and resources, as well as design
and carry out the work process (Kenneth et al. 2008).
3. Project management
The Project Management Institute defines a standard framework for handling

every project type. According to PMI “a project can be defined as a temporary
endeavour undertaken to create a unique product or service” (see http://www.pmi.
org/). Based on experience, it is a cliché and a fact, too, that customers will always
want the highest quality translation within the shortest possible turnaround time
and at the lowest possible price. It would be almost impossible to target achieving
all three at the same time (see Figure 1). It is important to be conscious of the fact
that no matter how fast and cheaply a translator could provide a translation, it is
31
quality that is crucial in the end, determining how satisfied a customer is and
leading to long term cooperation.
Figure 1
Expectations
So, cheap, fast, perfect. But what is the scope of the project? The key to each project
is to identify exactly the client’s objectives and requirements. Translators must
understand the scope of the translation project. It is obvious that quality level,
time required and translation fees depend on the actual scope. Before focusing on
the last item, it is important to clarify a couple of issues. How and where would the
translation be used? Who is the target audience? We need to be able to ask the right
questions that aim at identifying the client’s needs and objectives from a project.
However simple a certain translation may look, once it turns out that it is going to
be published on a website or in print it is worth holding discussions about the style
to be used, going through examples to clarify some issues, involving an expert
in the subject matter or informing the client about the recommendation for the
translation to be reviewed and edited.
Identifying and formalising the scope of the project with the client plays an
important role in being able to provide the correct outcome, including quality of the
product. The scope defined in the planning phase might be modified later during
the project due to changes in resources, changes in the initial needs, amendments
introduced by the client or due to other unforeseen events. This will often have
time and cost implications. Certainly there might also be changes where some
tasks will be included and others excluded from the scope of the project but this
32
would not result in any change regarding the overall turnaround time and cost to
the customer.
Cost, turnaround time and scope will, to a large extent, determine quality. In
addition to these, professional knowledge, experience and translation competences
of the translator are also key factors in terms of quality. In the case of turnaround
time of the translation project being very limited for some reason, it might result
in risking quality since hastiness can often lead to errors and faulty solutions.
The reverse statement will however remain true. Extending the deadline will not
automatically eliminate quality concerns.
Low translation fees represent a risk because it definitely leads to decreasing
the translator’s motivation and might result in superficial work. When paid well,
translators are naturally ready to put more effort in and thus perform thorough
and careful work. It is not true, however, that in the case of lower fees we cannot
expect good quality translations. A good professional will always strive to provide
each assignment at a reliable level in line with the quality expectations.
Ideally the fee is agreed with the client calculated on the basis of translation
unit rates, that is the unit price (e.g. word rate) will be multiplied by the number of
units (word count). As opposed to this freelancers in general, like many others, are
used to calculating their wages per hour.
We need to make a distinction between the time duration or turnaround time
of a task and the amount of time consumed for the task to be accomplished, which
can impact pricing. Let’s think it over: the translator knows they can translate
2,000 words per day, that is, 250 words per hour on average. It can be misleading,
however, calculating only with this time as there are many other additional tasks,
besides actual translation that can add hours more to the task to be accomplished.
Time spent on a terminology search or file preparation for translation can be one
such additional activity that needs to be taken into consideration.
4. Pricing
We need to consider the question of pricing. Debates about the ideal units on which
to base invoicing and how much to charge per unit (word, character, line, page etc.)
have been around for a long time. If we want to find out how to set the price first,
let’s figure out how much we need to earn within a certain period of time (e.g. per
33
month), and what the business expenses and tax implications are. Then determine
how many hours we want to work. We can convert it into an hourly rate, work out
how fast we usually translate, and that will yield our targeted per-word rate. This is
a major oversimplification, but will serve us well in getting the idea.
While we need to be aware that there are numerous pricing units in use around
the world, the tried and tested per-word or per-character fees are the most usual
ones. When working for an international client it is best to use one of these. Even
when working for a domestic language service provider agency the end client is
often either a major international MLV or company.
Hourly-based rates are also quite common in the case of assignments where
word counts are not applicable. Such tasks include, for example, terminology
development or PDF proofreading before printing if the client so requires. In this
case again, we can use the above method to help set our hourly rate. Here pricing
is usually based on the estimated duration of the activity, and is more or less
a matter of trust and experience. It is important to assess the time needs correctly
in advance and inform the client accordingly so that they would be aware of the
actual costs. It may certainly happen that in the end the final number of hours
need to be modified to some extent.
Due to the need to cope with the challenges of globalization one of the key
criteria is to adapt to global expectations in terms of pricing unit. The other
main criterion is that expectations in terms of client orientation - and service
orientation - are met if the client knows in advance how much the translation will
cost, down to the last penny. This is the factor that, in my opinion, puts an end to
the debate about the advantages of charging based on source or target words.
5. The translation project
We can see that owing to numerous factors translation can be viewed as a complex
process. The Project Management Institute (PMI) offers PM frameworks that
can be used in any industry, the language industry included. According to the
aforementioned PMI, the processes of a project can be grouped into 5 project
groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing
(Figure 2). The processes of a translation project partly resemble this categorisation,
but in the majority of cases these are simple processes of a linear nature.
34
Figure 2
The translation project
Each translation project consists of unique activities. Let’s see what activities each
step can involve.
5.1. Initiating
Includes activities like responding to the request; understanding the RFQ;

collecting information about the client; client briefing; assessing the expectations
set forth by the client and the information received; compiling reference material;
translation memory; terminology development; agreeing about the deliverables;
determining the volume with or without a CAT tool; defining additional tasks that
may apply (e.g. OCR, that is, optical character recognition, formatting, reviewing
the final formats, terminology development); cost planning (translation cost, cost
for outsourcing certain tasks, reserves for unforeseen risks); assessing potential
discounts to be offered and preparing a quote.
5.2. Planning
This step includes analysing CAT tool requirements; verifying the version of the
required software; analysing clients’ files; setting up the required folder structure
35
for the project; assessing resource needs, such as dictionaries to be purchased. In

addition, source material, translation memory, references received and a terminology
list will be placed in the correct folders and their traceability should be ensured in
line with the project needs. All the project information should be carefully recorded,
a schedule should be set up and the process should be planned, paying special
attention to quality control steps (in order to meet criteria set forth in the previous
step). The project needs to be set up in the CAT tool.
5.3. Preparation
Project preparation is a crucial step as it has a major impact on how smoothly

translation will go in the next step. This is the time for file preparation, obtaining
editable file formats in the event this was not provided by the client. Translation
memory and a terminology list will also have to be prepared and settings of the
CAT tool checked, too.
5.4. Translation
Translation is the backbone of the project and even this phase can consist of several
activities. Besides translation itself, the terminology database and translation
memory need to be edited. Where required a sample or partial delivery needs to be
provided for the client for quality control purposes. We must also pay attention to
back up files regularly. Beyond that it is also advisable to keep the client informed
about the project’s progress or discuss questions that may come up in the course
of the translation.
Self-assessment or self-editing should also be part of this phase. This can mean
a scan through or read through or it can involve use of a QA software or even
proper revision.
5.5. Closing
The closing phase includes final formatting. Deliverables, comments, notes should
also be compiled and sent to the client in accordance with their requirements and
we need to get confirmation on receipt of the deliverables, too.
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Additionally, it is time for a follow-up with the client. It is necessary to get

feedback from the client and other stakeholders in the translation project. We
might also need to properly respond to complaints and process the feedback
received. It is advisable to keep in touch with the client to receive information
in time about the next possible project and to be prepared for a potential
continuation.
Freelance translators usually follow the project phases set out in a well-defined
linear sequence. It is quite rare that translators need to work on several steps
parallel. It may occur however that in some cases it is advisable to go back to
a previous step in order to solve an issue. It may be the case that we only notice
during the translation phase that a non-editable image failed to convert and was
not noticed in time or we need to consult the client regarding a list of hyperlinks.
The assessment might also draw attention to a couple of segments that stayed
untranslated. In such cases translators should identify which step they should go
back to, correct and then continue the process. An instance like this might lead to
a reassessment of the project and stepping back to the planning phase. This is what
the semi-circle arrows indicate in Figure 2.
Consecutive steps in a translation project are accompanied by two activity
groups that span the entire project: quality control and communication. These
activities have a key role in each step, quality control and communication being
the most important tools that allow us to keep track of the whole project.
6. Quality
According to Norman Shapiro translation is “an attempt to produce a text so

transparent that it does not seem translated. A good translation is like a pane of
glass. You notice that it’s there only when there are little imperfections—scratches,
bubbles. Ideally, there shouldn’t be any. It should never call attention to itself ”
(Venuti 1995: 1). These thoughts provide a good guide to help define quality related
to translations. In the case of technical translations we need to consider the steps
that lead to the client’s sensing the translation is of good quality.
Defining and assessing quality has always been a hot topic in the translation
industry. Different descriptions, compilations provide a good guide. Technical
translators might find it very useful to become aware of these.
37
6.1. Objective and subjective criteria of quality
When talking about the quality of a translation, the first and most important
thing that we should bear in mind is that a source text can have various
translations. This is why using only one possible translation solution as
a benchmark will not give a good result in assessing quality. Quality is rather
subjective and depends on preferences, that is, what the client considers to be
a good translation depending on whether the translation meets expectations
and gives the impression of a good translation. Besides these it is also important
to consider that quality has several dimensions. For example, a translation
that sounds good might not be of good quality if there are linguistic errors in
it. Subjective translation errors are rather difficult to define as these relate to
adequacy and whether the translation reads well. In addition, it is also difficult
to assess what factors and filters influence the reader’s opinion. First impressions
can be of great importance and it is usually impossible to define what these
impressions depend on.
Naturally there are objective, well defined errors, too. These fall into the
following categories: spelling, accuracy, terminology and linguistic preferences,
such as names and months, and consistency. There are other objective, well-
defined categories that relate to the service level, such as observing deadlines, IT
skills and communication which influence the impression of quality.
We need to be able to define criteria as much as possible in order to be able to
meet the client’s expectations to the greatest possible extent. A good solution may
be to utilise glossaries and reference material approved by the client in order to
ensure use of the expected terminology.
A service, a translation may vary to a large extent depending on the translator
and the task, thus it is very heterogeneous. Because of the subjectivity and
heterogeneity described above, the efforts made to improve quality start with
the need to define the problem and as a result the solution is not straightforward,
either. Even areas that need improvement are difficult to identify. This uncertainty
and changeability prompts translators to take intuitive decisions. These intuitive
decisions might often lead them in the wrong direction. In particular, a faulty
problem definition will result in solutions that would not work. A company’s
internal communication paper can stir negative emotions and can be considered
bad quality depending on how freely the translator can translate. Using different
names instead of the ones used in the source text sometimes can solve the problem
if these names sound better in the target language. For example, it is better to
38
use Bálint instead of Liam in Hungary as Liam is unknown in domestic use. This
solution can be considered a minor localisation step.
Finally, it is important to note that the issue of quality is further complicated
by the fact that modern translators often work in teams of translators. This might
result in a translator’s work being assessed several times during the various phases
of the translation project by peer translators, the reviser, the project manager or
the layout editor. They all carry out the assessment from their own points of view,
and often these are very different.
6.2. LQA (Language Quality Assurance) as quality control method
It is common practice to ask the translator to send a sample from the translated text
in the course of the work. This sample is then assessed by the client and feedback
is provided in relation to the client’s expectations. This is a good solution that
helps clarify client’s stylistic expectations, for example. It is worth being careful to
provide a sample that is representative in terms of volume and terminology. This is
called LQA, a term widely used in the translation industry.
7. Communication
It is obvious from the above described that we continuously need to communicate

with the client in order to define and ensure the expected quality during each step
of the process. Adequate communication is as important as quality in terms of the
translation project.
Each phase of the translation project involves communication needs:
clarification of the task, providing the quote, discussing the deadlines, discussing
terminology and formatting related questions and settings. During translation
there might be the need to discuss lessons from the LQA or how to handle certain
issues or inform project participants about possible deadline modification requests.
In the closing phase we should compile our comments, informing the client about
important points, for example, terminology choices in some cases. These would
represent a help for the client, improving trust and resulting in building a good
working relationship.
39
It is important to stress that good and effective communication between all

participants of a translation project will add to the quality of the product. Where
there is a team of linguistic professionals, translators and reviewers working
on a source text, questions and issues that come up should be discussed during
translation. This is valid for non-linguistic project participants, too. This can be
solved on-line, in real time with the help of different CAT tools.
8. The client: translation agency or direct client
Agencies are responsible for several activities in addition to translation. They

cover different roles, such as selling, marketing, account management, project
management, accountancy, desktop publishing and file engineering. Translation
is but one of these activities. In the case the translator works for a direct client, they
need to handle all roles, acting as a small agency, there are no separate co-workers
for each role. A translator should have a different attitude towards the project and
plan accordingly, depending on whether the client is a translation agency or direct
client.
In a direct client’s case (Figure 3), the translator should be responsible for file
preparation; should carry out a search for references and develop a terminology
database and prepare and maintain a translation memory; should also take
care of the independent editing and final formatting of the translated text; and
should adapt to the client’s expectations in terms of financial matters. It is worth
considering outsourcing tasks that do not belong to our competences to the
appropriate professional.
Figure 3
The relationship between the translator and the direct client
40
Where a freelance translator works for a translation agency (Figure 4), unit fees
might be lower but the above mentioned tasks and risks are expected to be handled
partly by the project manager of the agency. Similarly, payment to the translator
should not depend on the time when the final client settles the invoice.
Figure 4
Roles in a translation agency
9. Planning and time management
For business reasons very often translators work under serious time pressure. They
rarely have time to include a few days’ break following the closing of a project. Even
with the most careful planning, it can be the case that change requests or final
formatting can be delayed so much they jeopardize the launch of the next project.
In such cases, the translator is rarely in a position to reject a change request related
to the previous project. At the same time, the new project should be launched, too.
The dilemma is that one of them needs to be modified. Here communication and
41
negotiation come in as a means of solving the issue. The worst solution is when the
translator does not communicate and the client realises that the translator fails to
manage one of the projects properly. It can be of great benefit to follow precisely
the duration needs of certain activities with the help of a simple baseline schedule
(see Table 1).
Table 1
Baseline schedule
Activity Number of days Duration (hours)

Initiating 0 0
Terminology development 1 10
Translation 11 88
Self-editing 1 6
Delivery 0 0
Total 13 104
The table illustrates different phases and their duration in the case of a 30,000 word
translation. The translator receives and accepts the assignment on day 0 at 8:00 am
and accepts a delivery deadline of 8:00 AM 2 weeks later. Based on this they can
track whether an extension of the deadline should be requested if terminology
development takes longer or if it can be compensated for in the translation phase
by working longer than 8 hours per day. Based on this, the launch of the next
project can be planned better and the translator will be aware of what to expect
and what can be modified (Kenneth et al. 2008).
10. Conclusion
At the beginning the development of a project oriented approach will require

significant efforts and time from a translator. Once the translator is aware of
the steps and the whole process it all becomes natural and automatic after some
practice and the translator will become familiarized with several additional
activities and roles performed in the course of the project.
42
As a result the translator will become a versatile and flexible professional

with up-to date knowledge, being skilled in various fields in addition to the
art of translation (e.g. file preparation, editing, terminology development, final
formatting, IT and CAT tools, business communication), will cope with different
roles in various positions and their CV will show significant experience in
leadership, marketing, sales and IT, as well.
References
House, J. 1998. Quality of Translation. In: Baker, M. (ed.) Routledge Enyclopedia of

Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge.
House, J. 2001. Translation Quality Assessment: Linguistic Description versus
Social Evaluation. Meta 46(2): 243–257.
Kenneth, A., McKethan, K. A., Jr. & White, G. 2008. Project management for the
freelance translator. Multilingual 19(5): 31–36.
PMI. 2013. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®
Guide) – 5th edition. http://www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and%20Standards/~/
media/PDF/Standards/PMBOK_Guide_5th_Errata_2ndPrinting.ashx, last
accessed on 8 January 2016.
Venuti, L. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London:
Routledge.
43
The Translator as Reviser
Edina Robin
E-mail: robin.edina@gmail.com
1. Introduction
In translation studies, proponents of Venuti’s (1995) ideas often discuss the

invisibility of the translator. Yet, if there is a truly invisible participant in the
process of translation, it is surely the reviser. Fortunately, however, revision
attracts ever more attention, and it has started to become an essential tool for
quality assurance, not only in Hungary but also internationally. Both professionals
and translator training institutions stress the importance of revision, and the
training of revisers has gained in importance. This is because revision serves the
interest of all stakeholders in the process: the client receives an accurate, carefully
revised text, the translation agency can be certain that the translation it delivers
is thorough and of high quality, and the agency receives feedback about the work
of the translator. Translators can also be more at ease if they know that their
translations will be checked, while the feedback from the reviser contributes to
their professional development.
Despite this, in practice, the role of the reviser is very often far from clear,
even for the participants in the process. What is the role of the reviser? How can
someone become a reviser? Does a reviser know more than a ’simple’ translator?
What transforms a translator ‘dabbling’ in revision into a professional reviser?
Can revision competence be developed? For translation professionals, answering
such questions as soon as possible is of vital importance, since the clarification
of roles makes work easier and also encourages cooperation. Translators may
also find it useful to learn about revision, since sooner or later they will need
to cooperate with revisers in their work, they may be requested to do revision,
and they need to perform self-revision on a regular basis. Thus, the following
subchapters seek to offer help in resolving the practical questions, and summarise
the basics of revision.
45
2. What makes a reviser?
One of the first questions that arises in connection with revision is how one
may become a reviser. Professional practice shows that translation agencies and
publishers recruit experienced translators for revision work, i.e. those who have
proved their translation skills and reliability over time. Assuming that in addition
to translation competence they possess all the knowledge and skills necessary for
correcting and evaluating the work of others, the chosen translators start revising
translations. However, they often lack the knowledge that may serve as a basis for
revision work. This results in a series of attempts at retranslation and uncomfortable
conflicts between the translator and the reviser. Inexperienced revisers often need
to ‘pick up’ the basic skills of their work as they perform revisions.
The practice described above actually assumes some kind of ‘evolutionary’
process, whereby the language learner first becomes a professional translator, then an
experienced translator and eventually a reviser. This development process, however,
does not tell us anything about the skills a reviser should have, but which a translator
might not. Unfortunately the legal framework does not provide the profession with
applicable definitions, either. While the EN-15038 European quality standard1 clearly
states that any translation service must include as a minimum translation and review,
it simply states that translations should be reviewed by a person other than the
translator. Reviewers should either have a recognised qualification or documented
professional experience in translation, as well as translation experience of the subject
in question – in line with the above mentioned evolutionary process.
According to legal provisions, professional revisers have first and foremost
translation skills. But what sets them apart then from translators who do not do
revision? The law does not provide an answer for this, since it does not mention
any specific acquired skills. It is true that revisers and translators try to perform
their job while juggling the same interests: their decisions are influenced by the
expectations of the client, the profession (the translation and editing norms), the
author and primarily the reader (Mossop 2001). Both the translator and the reviser
strive to bring about successful communication between the author and the reader.
They ensure that the translated text they produce is free from misinterpretations,
unambiguous, conforms to the norms of the target language, can be easily
processed and contains relevant information for the reader.
1 http://qualitystandard.bs.en-15038.com/
46
But revision is much more than ‘another set of eyes’, i.e. another translator
skimming through the text after the translation is done. The task of revisers is to
check the text transferred by the translator to the target language, and to correct
it by comparing the source and target texts with respect to grammatical and
stylistic aspects, in accordance with the requirements of modern, natural language.
Revisers aim to produce a text that, as a result of the corrections, is accurate in
content, grammatically correct, equivalent to the original, fit for processing by the
recipient and ready for printing. Thus, revisers do not engage in creating a new
text, they simply modify the completed work and may make suggestions. They do
not provide new solutions in the translation, but check the text and correct the
errors. They base their work on the target text, which they approach not on the
micro-level but more globally, focusing on the whole text. Since revisers check
someone else’s work, they might find it difficult to identify with the language use
of the translator, and they might force their own style on the translation. The
differences between the activities of revisers and translators were summarised by
Horváth (2011) in the following table:
Table 1
Comparing the roles of the translator and the reviser (Horváth 2011: 35, own translation)
Translator Reviser
Starting point Source text Target text
Creating a text Evaluating a text
Main activity
Creating equivalence Checking equivalence
Local (sentence by sentence) Global (whole text)
Strategy Bottom-up Top-down
Micro-level Macro-level
Revision of someone else’s work
Self-revision Accommodating another
Method of
Condoning, forgiving, way of thinking and style
revision
blindness for errors Forcing one’s own attitude or
language use on the text
The table clearly demonstrates that the work of translators and revisers differs in
several aspects. And the fact that they differ makes it evident that revision requires
knowledge, expertise and skills that professionals performing revision need to
possess.
47
3. Revision competence
There are no born revisers, their hands are not guided by some kind of mystical
knowledge that they feel in their bones while checking translations. The skills
necessary for revision can be acquired by practising translators while they work,
but these skills can also be learned in organised training. Revisers possess
translation competence: they have linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge
necessary for translation, they are perfectly aware of the translation industry’s
expectations and the technological tools aiding translation, they possess the
necessary psychophysiological and cognitive abilities essential in the profession
as well as the transfer and strategic subcompetences (PACTE 2003). In addition
to these, revisers are able to identify the differences between the original and the
translated text and ascertain whether they are errors that require revision. They
remedy omissions, delete unnecessary additions and correct errors that violate
translation and target language norms. As well as correcting errors, they also
endeavour to improve the translated text (Mossop 2001). They frequently need
to give their opinion on the translation and assess the work of the translator.
These competences were listed by Horváth (2011) in the table below, which was
supplemented by Robin (2013):
Table 2
The components of revision competence – based on
Horváth 2011: 45, supplemented by Robin (2014)
Subcompetence Definition
Ameliorative improving the translation
Evaluative evaluating the translation
Translation remedying translation omissions
Comparative-contrastive comparing the translation and the original
Corrective correcting translation errors
Linguistic applying linguistic rules, norms and strategies
Decision-making determining whether a correction is necessary
In addition to the skills described above, revisers need a thorough knowledge

of the target language to be able to detect and correct errors, as well as
48
provide acceptable explanation for their interventions. They are familiar with
the literature presenting the linguistic norms, i.e. they do not rely on vague
knowledge acquired in school, and know exactly where to turn when in doubt.
They are aware of the views of language cultivators and the attitude towards
linguistic phenomena. They can also justify their decisions and are conscious
of the aims of current linguistic strategies. This subcompetence is worth
highlighting because revisers correct, improve and evaluate translations based
on, among other things, this knowledge. Moreover, Horváth (2011: 38) also
stresses the lack of these factors among the circumstances rendering the work of
the reviser difficult.
A well-founded linguistic competence therefore helps revisers in decision-
making, and the most frequent accusation revisers have to face is making
unnecessary changes in the text. Professional revisers are experienced in
distinguishing between good and bad solutions, make conscious decisions and
they can support their decisions with sound arguments. They are also ready to
accept counter-arguments supported by the literature and admit when they happen
to be wrong since they do not rely on their subjective instincts while working.
These skills of the reviser may also be useful for translators when, after finishing
their work, they perform self-revision before submitting the target text. Horváth
(2011: 44) asserts that there is no such thing as purely revision competence, and
that revision and translation competences are overlapping categories. During the
translation process, the utilisation of the individual competences depends on the
task of linguistic mediators, i.e. whether they perform translation, self-revision or
revision at the given moment. However, it is worth making the switch between the
competences a conscious action, because that is the only way to shift from micro-
level thinking to a global approach.
4. The fundamental principles of revision
If revisers possess the competence necessary for revision, they will also be able
to follow the principles that define the efficiency and success of this task. Mossop
(2001: 149) specifies 20 recommendations for prospective revisers that they are
advised to adhere to during their work. By adapting Levý’s (1967) well-known
49
theory about translations2, these fundamental principles can be summarised

as the ‘minimax strategy’ of revision. Revisers perform their work efficiently,
productively and certainly profitably if they strive to achieve maximum effect with
minimum effort, i.e. minimum modifications.
Since the primary task of revisers is to correct translators’ misinterpretations,
linguistic or grammatical errors, it is considered a serious mistake if any errors remain
in the target text. Therefore, revisers need to make every necessary correction, as
that is the only way to achieve maximum effect. Revisers not only need to indicate
errors, they always need to provide the correct solution as well, because usually
nobody checks the text after they finish working on it. It is, however, advisable that
revisers only make revisions when they are confident that their decision is right.
When in doubt, they should consult the current literature on correct language use,
turn to professional language service agencies, or they can discuss the issue with
the translator in order to find the optimal solution. During revision, revisers should
strive for consistency: if they decide to correct (delete, substitute, add) something in
the text, they should do so throughout the whole text.
Revisers also need to be aware of the fact that most of the new errors in the
text are caused by unnecessary and unjustified changes by the reviser. All revisers
are prone to do this. Horváth (2011: 146) actually considers this phenomenon
a universal feature of revision. Changes are regarded as unnecessary when they
do not make the translated text more correct or precise – as compared to the
original – or they do not improve the style of the target text (Arthern 1987: 19).
Such actions are simply a waste of time and frustrate translators, which does not
exactly foster professional cooperation. If revisers seek to make the least possible
changes, they should only make modifications that are necessary and justifiable.
It is always worth keeping in mind the purpose of the translation or the required
revision, since based on that, revisers can decide what counts as an error and which
parameters to focus on during their work.
2 “Translation theory tends to be normative, to instruct translators on the optimal solution;

actual translation work, however, is pragmatic; the translator resolves for that one of the possible
solutions which promises a maximum of effect with a minimum of effort. That is to say, he
intuitively resolves for the so-called minimax strategy.” (Levý 1967: 1179)
50
5. Revision parameters
There are different types and levels of revision. Revisers may be required to
do bilingual or monolingual revision. In the latter case, they do not have to
compare the target text to the source language original, they merely need to focus
on the translated version, i.e. they cannot employ their contrastive-comparative
competence. Sometimes revisers are not required to correct the grammatical
and stylistic errors in the target text, they only need to concentrate on the
accuracy of the translation, its equivalence to the source text or the correct
use of terminology. And where the client requests a simple spellcheck, revisers
have only to proofread the translated text in line with the current spelling rules,
relying on their target language knowledge. In contrast, full revision consists of
comparing the target text to the original and correcting the errors, taking into
account the accuracy and completeness of the translation, as well as its linguistic
and formatting features, i.e. all the parameters listed by Mossop (2001: 99) and
seen below:
1. Transfer
(a) Accuracy: Does the translation reflect the message of the source text?
(b) Completeness: Have any elements of the message been left out or unnecessary
information been added?
2. Content
(a) L ogic: Does the sequence of ideas make sense: is there any nonsense or
contradiction?
(b) Facts: Are there any factual, conceptual or mathematical errors?
3. Language
(a) Readability: Are there any awkward, hard-to-read sentences?
(b) Tailoring: Is the language suited to the users and the function of the
translation?
Register: Is the style suited to the genre? Has the correct terminology been
(c)
used?
(d) Idiom: Are all the word combinations idiomatic?
Mechanics: Have the rules of grammar, spelling, punctuation, house style
(e)
been observed?
51
4. Presentation
(a) L ayout: Are there any problems in the way the text is arranged: spacing,
margins, etc.?
(b) Typography: Are there any problems of text formatting: bolding, underlining,
font size, etc.?
Organisation: Are there any problems in the way the document as a whole is
(c)
organised: page numbering, headers, footnotes, table of contents, etc.?
If revisers are able to take into account all the above-mentioned parameters while
doing their job, that certainly proves that they possess the skills forming revision
competence. Translators should also be familiar with the considerations revisers
take into account while correcting a text, so that they can check their own work
– in accordance with these parameters – through self-revision before submitting
it, and even during translation.
Revision parameters – the features of target texts that revisers consider while
checking and correcting a translation – are determined by the instructions received
from the client, i.e. by the type of revision on the one hand, and the genre and
communicative purpose of the text on the other hand. When revising an expressive,
literary work, completely different parameters are emphasised than when checking
a legal contract. In the former case, linguistic and stylistic characteristics, readability
and the right register are especially important as well as whether the text follows
the norms of works originally written in the target language, while in the latter case,
using the terminology correctly and conveying the meaning accurately is far more
significant. As already mentioned, revisers need to be aware of these aspects before
starting the revision so that they can base the process on the right assumptions.
6. Revision procedures
In addition to knowing exactly what the communicative purpose of the revised

text is, what the expectations of the client and the recipients are, and accordingly,
what to take into consideration during revision, revisers find it beneficial if they
can follow steps that are based on a carefully considered and conscious method.
Mossop (2001: 124) suggests an ideal order of steps in the revision process, that,
when followed, ensure that revisers can focus on each parameter properly and at
52
the right time, that they do not miss any aspect of the text that needs to be checked,
and that they utilise all the elements of their competence in the appropriate phases.
Of course, the suggested method is based on an ideal situation, since in real life,
pressured by urgent assignments and tight deadlines, revisers do not always have
time to include all the steps in the process. Professional revisers, however, make
a conscious decision in such scenarios as well: they consider which steps can be
left out by taking into account the details of the assignment, the available time, the
characteristics of the text and the quality of the translation.
In the ideal revision process, the initial step of gathering information – about
the communicative purpose, terminology and topic of the target text to be revised
as well as the relevant parallel texts – is followed by reading. First, the source text
should be read in order to understand its global message and style, then, putting
the original aside, revisers can proceed to the translated text. At this stage, revisers
do not yet make any modifications, they simply mark the problematic parts if they
wish. Only then do they start the correction, by comparing the source and the
target text step by step: they remedy omissions, possible additions, and correct
mistranslations. However, they do not try to find new solutions for the translations
in the text. The comparison is followed by the monolingual correction of spelling
and grammatical mistakes with a multi-stage re-reading of the text. In this phase,
the foreign language original should be set aside again to avoid interference. As the
last step in the correction phase of revision, facts and figures should be compared
conscientiously. Depending on the nature of the text, revisers may need to check
and, if necessary, modify technical features as well. This step should be performed
towards the end of the process because during revision editing can easily go awry,
and checking the whole text from beginning to end also saves time. The last step of
the revision process is the computer-assisted language check for detecting the last
errors, typos and missing spaces resulting from changes. The revision procedures
suggested by Mossop (2001: 124) can be summarised as follows:
1. Orientation
(a) Background: topic, terminology, parallel texts.
(b) Text: communicative purpose, future users, required parameters of revision.
2. Reading
(a) Source-language text: global message of the original text.
(b) Target-language text: checking the completeness and readability of the whole
translation.
53
3. Correction
(a) Comparison: comparing the source and target texts with regards to accuracy
and completeness.
(b) Monolingual correction: having put aside the original, correcting language
errors.
(c) Re-reading: re-reading of smaller sections for logic, readability and idiomacy.
(d) Full re-reading: re-reading the full translation for readability and coherence.
(e) Data check: checking for dates, data and numbers.
4. Presentational adjustments
(a) Technical revision: adjusting the layout, typography and organisation of the
translation.
5. Language check
(a) Computerised language check: correcting final mistakes and typos.
(b) Saving: saving all executed changes in the text.
If translators perform self-revision – which is their professional duty – they should

follow the same steps during revision to ensure that as few errors remain in the target
text as possible. An experienced, well-trained reviser always notices if the translator
fails to perform the basic steps of self-revision.
7. The flaws of the reviser
Finally, after describing revisers’ virtues, skills and tasks, their failings and
possible mistakes need to be mentioned too. Evidently, revision does not serve
its intended purpose if, as a result of the corrections, the target text is inaccurate
as regards its content, or if it is stylistically and grammatically incorrect, not
equivalent to the original or difficult to process for the recipient. This can
happen if revisers do not correct the grammatical and translation-related
errors in the translated text, fail to perform a stylistic check or if they add
further errors as regards the text’s content and formatting. Revision also
fails to serve its purpose if revisers retranslate the text instead of checking and
correcting it, i.e. they perform unnecessary work and waste time and energy.
54
This usually happens to revisers who do not know what their task is. Revisers
may also be blamed if they do not follow the guidelines stipulated for their
assignment, miss the deadline or hinder cooperation between the participants
of the translation process.
Revisers are, of course, far from infallible: they are not involved in the process
because of their superior knowledge among translation professionals. They simply
use other competences, make conscious decisions and employ pre-defined methods
while checking and correcting a text. They need assessment for their professional
development, however, in most cases they only get feedback from the readers
– if there are problems with the text – because in the translation process nobody
checks the text after they finish working on it. Although in most cases revision
takes place without consultation with the translator (Arthern 1987), cooperating
with the translator might contribute to the professional development of the reviser.
Providing and accepting sophisticated feedback based on conscious arguments as
well as linguistic and professional norms instead of instinctive feelings serves the
professional advancement of both parties. Consultation helps in detecting errors
and prevents unnecessary, futile modifications by the reviser. It is important to
keep in mind that translators and revisers are not enemies bent on dragging each
other’s work through the mud. On the contrary, they have a common goal: to
deliver a perfect, high-quality target text, and they do not strive to promote their
own interests.
8. Conclusion
In view of the above, it can be established that translators do not necessarily

possess the competence required for revision, in fact, future research may
demonstrate that revisers are not necessarily excellent translators. Their work is
governed by different competences, which might overlap in some cases, depending
on the given task of the linguistic mediator. Revision competence is not an innate
ability but a set of skills that can be acquired, learned and require development.
One of the elements of revision competence is that revisers check and correct texts
by following specific principles, and all aspects of their work are permeated by
consciousness. They know which parameters to take into account, and they also
know what method to employ for that purpose. They can justify their decisions, and
55
since they do not rely on their instincts, they can give objective and constructive
feedback about the text they edit. That said, they are capable of admitting their
own mistakes in order to ensure the outcome of the translation process is a text of
excellent quality.
References
Arthern, P. 1987. Four Eyes are Better than Two. In: Picken, C. (ed.) Translating and
the Computer 8: A Profession on the Move. London: Aslib, The Association for
Information Management. 14–26.
European Quality Standard. http://qualitystandard.bs.en-15038.com/
Horváth P. I. 2011. A szakfordítások lektorálása. Elmélet és gyakorlat [Revising
Specialised Translations. Theory and Practice]. Budapest: Tinta Könyvkiadó.
Levý, J. (1967) Translation as a Decision Making Process. In: To Honor Roman
Jakobson on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Vol. 2 The Hague: Mouton.
1171–82.
Mossop, B. 2001. Revising and Editing for Translators. Amsterdam: St. Jerome.
PACTE 2003. Investigating Translation Competence: Conceptual and
methodological issues. Meta 50(2): 611–618.
Robin E. 2014. Fordítási univerzálék a lektorált szövegekben [Translation Universals
in Revised Texts]. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Budapest: ELTE.
Venuti, L. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. London/New York: Routledge.
56
The Translator as Terminologist
Dóra Mária Tamás1 – Eszter Papp2 – András Petz3
E-mail: 1tamas.dora.dr@mail.com;
2
eszter.papp@gmail.com; 3studio@anglofon.hu
1. Introduction
The topic of this paper is two professions that are closely linked together. Of course,
it might occur that a translator becomes a terminologist or the other way round,
or that somebody does the two at the same time. What is more, other subject field
professionals might also become terminologists or do some terminology work, but
generally being a terminologist is a profession in its own right.
Taking a practical viewpoint and acknowledging that the job of the translator
is more widely known, we will approach the question from the terminologist’s
perspective. Let us start with a definition of terminology, the job of a terminologist,
the principles and methods of terminology work, the tools used, and finally,
through the eyes of the terminologist we will examine the differences and
neighbouring areas.
2. Definition of modern terminology, its beginnings and

main organisations
It is not widely known what terminology is or what a terminologist’s job involves.

Some might understand terminology only as the terms of a specific domain, as
a glossary of terms, or in a simplified way as a research area of language for specific
purposes (LSP) that focuses on specialised lexicon or is linked to lexicography.
However, none of these are entirely true. In the English language literature
terminology covers three concepts, namely terminology is (1) the study of terms,
concepts and their relations; (2) the sum of methods applied in the collection,
57
description, presentation, classification and creation of terms; (3) the totality of

organised terms that belong to the logical system of a given domain (the authors’
translation of Fóris 2005a: 37). To resolve the three possible interpretations of
terminology (theory, methodology and collection of terms) Eugen Wüster, the
founding father of terminology – as a modern discipline – used the expression
Terminologielehre ‘terminology theory’, which is still in use in the German
language. Wüster’s two main works signal the beginnings of modern terminology:
the Internationale Sprachnormung in der Technik, besonders in der Elektrotechnik,
originally written as his dissertation, and published in 1931, and the Einführung in
die Allgemeine Terminologielehre und Terminologische Lexikographie1, published
posthumously. Wüster (1985) used the expression Allgemeine Terminologielehre,
‘general theory of terminology’ in the title of the latter. It is important to note here
that modern terminology is not part of the study of specialised languages, but
an independent discipline of applied linguistics. The starting points of the study
of specialised languages and terminology are different. The study of specialised
languages approaches LSP (specialised vocabulary, grammatical structures, style
etc.) from a linguistic systemizing viewpoint, while terminology analyses terms
linked to a conceptual system and their conceptual and terminological system
based on Wüster’s principles, and cannot overlook the joint nature of language
and expert knowledge (Oeser and Picht 1998: 343–346; Soglia 2002: 10).
There are certain areas that terminology shares with lexicography (e.g.
compiling dictionaries, studying specialised vocabulary), but terminology
uses a fundamentally different approach and methods. Lexicography takes the
linguistic sign as the starting point, while the central category of terminology is
the concept (see Table 1).
1 English translation available with the title: Introduction to the General Theory of Terminology
and Terminological Lexicography (Springer, Wien 1979).
58
Table 1
The differences between terminology and lexicography
(based on Fóris 2005a: 68 and Brekke 2001: 79)
Lexicography Terminology
the given concept within
Starting point linguistic sign the specific domain, as
an abstract entity
Which term represents the
Main question What does this word mean?
concept in the best way?
semasiological, i.e. from onomasiological, i.e. from the
Approach
the linguistic sign concept (1. concept  2. signifier)
The beginnings of modern terminology can be linked to so-called terminology

schools, which were founded in the 1930s. The most well-known ones were the
Vienna, Prague and Soviet terminology schools. Modern terminology has several
trends: there are the linguistic-standardising, translation oriented and language
politics directions (Soglia 2002: 11–14).
The principles and methods used in terminology are also included in standards.
The beginnings of standardisation also go back to Eugen Wüster. His activities in the
field were recognised by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) by
founding ISO/TC 37 (Technical Committee for Terminology Standardization) in 1947
(see http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_technical_committee.html%3Fcommid%3D48104),
and appointing Wüster as the general secretary. Another merit to his name is the
acceptance of the UNESCO programme for the settlement of terminology issues, and
within those efforts the establishment of Infoterm (International Information Centre for
Terminology; www.infoterm.info) in Vienna in 1971, which is still a key international
centre. In German speaking countries terminology has a long tradition and this is
shown by the existence of terminology databases, or the activities of the more than
a quarter of a century old German Terminology Association (Deutscher Terminologie-
Tag e.V., DTT e.V.; http://www.dttev.org/), and the RaDT (Rat für Deutschsprachige
Terminologie; www.radt.org), the German Terminology Council. Another significant
international organisation is the European Association for Terminology (EAFT;
http://www.eaft-aet.net); while in Hungary the Council of Hungarian Terminology
(MATT; http://www.matt.hu), also supported by the UNESCO, the Terminology
Research Group (TERMIK) at the Károli Gáspár University and the Terminology
Documentation Centre at the University of Pécs are worth mentioning.
59
3. The terminologist
After clarifying what terminology is, now let us turn our attention to what
a terminologist does. The terminologist is by no means an ‘old sage’ – and the
translator’s job is not to come up with arbitrary terms when trying to fit terms into
the target language text. The terminologist is a professional who applies specific
principles and methods, and is familiar with electronic tools. The terminologist
can be a professional working in the field of either theory or practice, and the
term terminology manager is used for professionals who only deal with practical
terminology work.
Let us now see in detail what a terminologist who focuses on practical work
does. If the terminologist is not at the same time a subject matter expert, the tasks
are done in cooperation with a field expert of the domain (e.g. lawyer, economist,
engineer, doctor etc.), or as part of a terminology working group along with several
experts, and the contribution of a linguistic service provider (i.e. a translator and/
or a proofreader) and an IT expert for the whole project. It is therefore possible that
terminologists work as coordinators, because it is rarely a ‘one-man-show’, more
like teamwork (Picht 2010). This does not mean however, that the terminologist
lacks the linguistic or subject matter knowledge that makes the job easier. Beyond
the coordination and management tasks the terminologist (or the terminology
manager) acts as either an internal or an external consultant of the company,
responsible among many other things for the company strategy, and their job
involves needs analysis, and handling, recording and disseminating linguistic data
on specialised vocabulary. The job also includes negotiating what software to select
and use, determining the structure and editing of the termbase, and supervising
the application of principles and methods used in terminology to ensure reliability
of data. Finally, the job entails information maintenance and planned updates
(Tamás 2012: 17–18). Therefore, a modern terminologist has a very complex job to
do, and does not simply analyse specialised vocabulary.
60
4. The benefit of the terminological point of view
A translator should be familiar with the principles and methods of terminology, on the
one hand in order to be able to cooperate with the terminologist, and on the other to
be able to increase the quality of translations by applying the principles and methods
of terminology. But why is it so important to know these principles and methods?
Today, in the accelerated information society, terms and concepts change
rapidly. We have to be particularly careful when using some terms because of
political correctness, such as (EN) disabled, differently abled or handicapped or (DE)
Negerküsse which was changed to Schokokuss or Schaumkuss, or cases of gender
neutrality, for example, the use of chairperson instead of chairman. At the same
time concepts also change: in Hungary before the change of the political system in
1989/1990, the concepts of public service (HU közigazgatás) and public administration
(HU államigazgatás) were the same because of the centralised institutions of the
councils, but since the appearance of the local governments today public administration
forms a part of public service. In other words, public administration changed from
being a synonym to being a subordinate term, and at the same time public service
became a superordinate term. It is also possible that some features of the concept
and the term also change. An example would be marriage, whose concept changed
after a modification of legal regulations now allowing same sex marriages, and this
change required the introduction of a new term: union of registered partners.
Therefore, while earlier it was true that the terminological skills meticulously
accumulated by translators over decades were worth a fortune, and guarded
accordingly, the world has changed. Among the above examples we saw some
diachronic i.e. historical terminology analyses (for example the modification of
the concept of public service over time), but modern terminology – if a diachronic
approach is not necessary – primarily deals with synchronic phenomena.
Before we move on to the terminological approach, we should not forget that
there are many kinds of terminology work. For the translation process bi- or
multilingual terminology work enjoys priority, but there is also monolingual
terminology work, which is equally substantial. The latter is crucial because it is
best to first clarify the concept within the given language, country, culture, and
then compare it with other concepts afterwards.
61
5. The terminological approach
The terminological point of view has its roots in a concept based approach, which
means that the properties of concepts need to be studied first, and only then can
we render the terms to the concepts. Concepts appear in definitions, so the first
task is to find the definition of or define the concept. This is why subject field
knowledge is a central aspect of terminology. This approach is the starting point
of the terminologist’s way of thinking.
The classical terminological (in other words, logical, analytic) definition
contains the general, superordinate concept, i.e. genus concept (genus proximum),
and the individual properties of the concept (the differentia specifica), e.g.
defendant /civil proceedings/. A party charged with committing a civil wrong,
and thus obligated to answer the complaint filed by the plaintiff (Petz 2014: 41).
In this definition the genus concept is ‘party’, and the rest of the information is
about the unique, determining features of the concept. However, in practical work
it sometimes happens that due to a lack of a definition, the terminologist needs
to construct one using the known features, or that an illustration also forms an
integral part of the definition (e.g. engineering or medical terms, in a botanical
guide). Figure 1 shows the process of comparing concepts.
Figure 1
Comparing conceptual properties (Tamás 2010: 16; Tamás 2014a)
62
When comparing individual conceptual properties, it becomes clear that

damages and compensation do not refer to the same concept, therefore are not
synonyms. “Damages: The classic term for the amount paid by the wrongdoer for
righting a wrong, as a monetary compensation for the loss, injury or damages”.
Compensation: “In the tort setting, it encompasses generically all legal redress in
monetary form which serves the function of making amends for any damage” (Petz
2014: 149). As a result of the analyses it shows that compensation is a wider concept
than damages. This means that they are superordinate and subordinate terms.
When doing the comparative analysis, it is advised to identify the distinctive
conceptual characteristic(s) that will allow us to differentiate between the two
concepts. An example for this would be labour law and employment law. While
labour law deals with collective rights, employment law refers to individual rights.
For example, the relationship between employer and employee is governed by
employment law, their relationship is described as an employment relationship. In
contrast to employment, labour law regulates the relationship between employer
and various organisations representing the employees’ interest, such as the trade
union or the workers’ council (or works council).
It can be seen from the above examples that comparing concepts is often
a complex task. When translating it might be the case that prior to the comparison,
the translator already has a candidate for the equivalent term, therefore instead of
looking for the hypernym or the co-hyponym, they directly search for the definition
of the equivalent term candidate. When doing bi- or multilingual terminological
comparison, it is fundamental to look for equivalent terms and not to translate. In
the case 1 to 1 term relation is found, one does a simple substitution. If there is partial
equivalence between the two terms, but the difference is not substantial, one might
use a term that refers to an analogous concept. If the differences are substantial or
comparison is impossible, one has a case of lack of equivalence. In this case we might
have to face the challenges of word formation, which is also an important part of
terminology work, and translators also encounter the situation. A wide definition
of terminological harmonisation also includes the harmonisation process done by
the translator. This refers to individual solutions that translators come up with as
long as they use a terminological approach, with the aim of matching concepts and
designators that show little similarity (Tamás 2014a).
After completing the comparison at the concept level, there are several methods
for the translator to choose from at the term level. A common method is using loan
words, especially borrowed from the English language (e.g. EN sales manager and HU
sales menedzser). Another option is the creation of new words, i.e. neologisms (e.g. the
63
plant created by grafting the tomato and the potato is called a TomTato or a pomato;
sales manager can also be called DE Vetriebsleiter). A new acronym might also appear,
e.g. B2B (Business to Business), or in Hungarian VAT used to be áfa, but after Hungary
joined the EU the term used in EU terminology – indicating several different forms
of VATs of the EU Member States – was changed to a more literal translation of the
English, and accordingly, the acronym for the concept used in EU terminology became
HÉA. The equivalent can also be created using a compound as a term candidate (e.g.
cégnyilvántartó hivatal (company registration court) created as an equivalent of the
British Companies House which in Hungary is not an independent office and not part
of the Chamber of Commerce like in other countries, but an office existing within the
courts), loan translation (e.g. best practice in Hungarian, Italian and Spanish is a calque:
HU legjobb gyakorlat2, IT migliori prassi and ES mejores prácticas) or terminologisation
(a general language word becomes a term: mouse, firewall) (for details see Tamás 2014a).
In the process of translation, new concepts are rendered term candidates, but it depends
on the professional community whether these term candidates will finally gain the
status of a ’term’. The ‘term status’ is gained if the newly developed term candidate
is accepted, used, recorded, acknowledged and disseminated by the members of the
community of professionals (Cabré 2003: 30; Fóris 2005b: 51).
6. Government and cabinet: are they equivalents?
Sometimes terms enter the general language and take on a different meaning from
the original concept used in LSP. An example for this would be the Hungarian
terms kormány (government) and kabinet (cabinet), which are used as synonyms in
the general language. In Hungary the kabinet is an auxiliary body of the kormány,
therefore the concept of the former is not identical with the concept designated by
the term kormány. To be precise, the kabinet is composed of the relevant ministers
and people appointed by the prime minister via a normative government decision.
The task of the kabinet is to deliver an opinion on agenda items up for decision
prior to the government session (such as in top priority issues on social policy,
economic policy or national security), in order to assist the work of the kormány
[Fazekas 2014: 160; see also: Act XLIII of 2010, paragraph 28, sections 1-2 on the
2 IATE: this is the admitted, but still largely used version. The preferred term is: bevált gyakorlat.
64
organisation of the central state administration and on the status of the members
of the government and ministers of state].
The situation is further complicated if we look at the foreign language
equivalents of the term kabinet. In Britain the government and the cabinet are
different concepts, too. The cabinet is a smaller body as it is composed of the
ministers selected by the prime minister, and its work is helped by the Cabinet
Office (Fazekas 2014: 146). If we look at the Unites States, we see that the cabinet is
different from the other English speaking countries’ bodies bearing the same name.
In the US the cabinet is the advisory body of the President (who is the head of state
and the head of government as well). Its members are the Secretaries, and in the
case of the Department of Justice it is headed by the Attorney General. Members of
the cabinet are nominated by and dismissed by the President, and the Senate (the
upper house of the Congress, the legislature) confirms their nomination (Fazekas
2014: 149). It is clear from this that the word kabinet (cabinet) may refer to different
concepts from country to country, and while in general language use it appears to
be used in a simplified way as analogous concepts, the above analysis shows that
they are quasi-equivalents. When the terminologist records linguistic data, they
can indicate this by placing a country code beside the definition and providing
the partial equivalents. This way the translator is provided with extra information
when taking the context into consideration, and can decide whether to consider
the concepts analogous and substitute them, or draw attention to the differences.
7. The term
In this section we are going to look at the term, how to define it and how to identify it.
As a start, let us see what happens when we black out the terms in a text. It will become
very difficult to identify what it is about [the example is created based on Picht (2010)]:
Lavandula (common name lavender) is a genus of 39 known species of flowering

plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae.
Lavender is still one of the most recognized scents in the world. The German
Commission E commended lavender for treating insomnia, nervous stomach,
and anxiety. The British Herbal Pharmacopoeia lists lavender as a treatment for
65
flatulence, colic, and depressive headaches, and many modern herbal practitioners
use the herb to treat migraines in menopause. In Spain, lavender is added to teas
to treat diabetes and insulin resistance.
Lavender is particularly rich in aromatic molecules called esters, which are
antispasmodic, pacifying and tonic, while other molecules give it its antiviral,
bacterial and anti-inflammatory powers. Of the many therapeutic attributes of
Lavender oil, respiratory relief would be one of the most consistently reported
benefits.
However, if we cover up other words in the text, the gist of it immediately becomes
clear and only the details are lost:

benefits.
Now let’s see the whole text:

66

benefits.
From the above it is clear that the terms can be considered the key concepts of the
text, they provide the information density of the text. When selecting terms, one
must make a decision over the concepts that belong to the topic at hand, i.e. domain.
Terms usually do not display any formal peculiarities, but can be identified as
pragmatic and communicative units (Cabré 1998: 81).
During practical work, when processing a text, we can select terms using manual
or automatic extraction. Despite being slow, an advantage of manual extraction is
that the person doing the extraction will get a deep understanding of the text, while
machine (semi-automatic) extraction software working on linguistic or statistical
principles (or both) has the advantage of being fast. Terms are usually nouns, but
they can also be verbs, adjectives, adverbs or multi-word lexemes, collocations
(Wright and Budin 1997: 3).
The term can be defined as a lexeme, number, sign or a combination of these
that denotes a concept in a given domain (Fóris 2005a: 37). According to this
definition BL55 is a term, it is one of the codes used in the bakery industry in
Hungary (B = wheat, L = small ground wheat flour, 55 = an indicator of the wheat
bran content).
As translators usually think within a context, they tend to collect terms for
their own glossary together with a so called minimal context. For example they
tend to extract versions such as ‘for the registrar’ instead of the term registrar. The
terminologist would place such contextual extra information into the context field.
Of course, the translator works under tight deadlines, and the above method allows
for the recording of more information at a time. This is such a common practice
among translators that the EU’s multilingual, interactive terminology database
(IATE) also follows this principle, unless users set the search field to find expressions,
which in this case will be highlighted with a different background colour.
Terminologists record terms organised into domains. When processing
a domain, they usually do not apply traditional lexicographical methods, namely
they do not proceed in alphabetical or thematic order. Instead, they select concepts
and terms that belong to a domain and subdomains after mapping and elaborating
the conceptual and terminological systems. The difference and relations between
67
terms can be illustrated in graphs (see Figure 2) and tables (see Table 2) (for
details see: Wüster 1985: 137–201). This facilitates the delimitation of concepts,
and identifying relations of subordination, superordination or co-ordination
of concepts. When using graphs, nodes (classification criteria) can be used to
facilitate grouping.
As an example, Figure 2 below shows the various statuses of a contract from
a civil law perspective (see the explanation of the terms at the following link: http://
anglofon.com/compareb2u4t08).
Figure 2
Statuses of a contract in civil law
Table 2 displays the various terms used in inheritance law for the distributor and
the recipient of the estate in intestate and testamentary processes.
Table 2
Terms for distributor and recipient in inheritance law
Intestate process Testamentary process

administrator executor
Distributor of the estate
(administratrix) (executrix)
Recipient of the estate heir (heiress) beneficiary
68
(See the explanation of the difference between the above terms at the following
link: http://anglofon.com/difference-between-testamentary-succession-and-
intestate-succession).
There are many types of terminology tools, e.g. paper based or electronic
glossaries, terminological dictionaries, however, in practice the most popular
and most widely used form is the electronic, preferably online termbase. There
are several versions of the latter, such as a databank, a knowledge bank or
a terminological information system, depending on the type of information the
database contains. The selection is therefore very wide, extending from simpler
tools to state of the art knowledge bases.
8. Terminology databases
A few decades ago you had to write your own software to make an electronic
termbase, but today there are several termbase managers on the international
market (e.g. SDL Trados MultiTerm, qTerm, Déjà Vu X2, Webstar, Cross Term,
MultiTrans, TermStarNXT, LookUp, flashterm®, termXplorer, quickTerm, Tipp-
Term®) (Tamás 2012: 7; Tamás 2014a). These often come in the software pack for
translation memories of CAT tools, and translators tend to use this latter function
more. They are generally able to convert glossaries stored in an Excel sheet as well.
However, this in itself is only importing data, and does not make a true termbase.
Observing the terminological methods and principles, the central item in the
termbase is a concept, which is manifest in the definition, and the term is rendered
to the concept.
The existence of various levels and therefore the implementation of concept
based editing is possible in both popular termbase management software in
Hungary (SDL Trados MultiTerm and qTerm) (see Table 3). Global enterprises
also use termbases, an example would be IBM (Demeczky 2008). These databases
are usually not made publicly available. However, there is a growing number of
online termbases, such as Termin, Termium Plus, SAPterm, IATE, TERMDAT,
WebTerm, EOHS Term, bistro (Tamás 2012, 2014b), Cercaterm, Neoloteca,
UBTerm, UPCTERM, euskalterm and ONCOTERM (Sermann 2013: 128–142)
(web addresses can be found under electronic sources).
69
Table 3
The implementation of a concept based approach in the editing of
termbases with the key data fields (Tamás 2012: 11, 2014b).
LEVEL DATA TYPE

domain, definition and code
ENTRY LEVEL
number, data of the editor
INDEX/LANGUAGE LEVEL term and/or definition
TERM LEVEL the term and/or information on the term
When recording the data in a termbase, terminologists also work with domains (see
Figures 3 and 4). The conceptual and terminological systems obtained as a result
are sometimes presented beside the entries of the termbase. Such an illustration
of relations is reminiscent of ontologies, which show the network of concepts and
their relations and are part of digital knowledge management.
Figure 3
Terminological systems in the EOHS Term knowledge base (domain and subdomains)
70
Figure 4
Terminological systems in the WebTerm termbase.
Let us now see what a terminographical entry (data sheet) looks like (see Figure 5).
The data fields on the terminographical sheet of the EOHS Term knowledge base
are the following: the term, domain classification with hyperlink, grammatical
information, definition, its source, reference to the regulation, conceptual network
with hyperlink, foreign language equivalents preceded by the ISO language
codes for the target language. It is important that in terminographical entries the
equivalence level between terms is indicated. The EOHS Term knowledge base
uses various signs to do so: full equivalence is marked by an equals sign (=), partial
equivalence is marked by a +, and the lack of equivalence is shown by a ~. These
signs are placed in front of the equivalents or related terms, and indicate their
relation with the main term.
Besides online termbases, there are electronic dictionaries and community
terminology forums on the internet for translators to use. Their quality and
usability vary considerably from a terminological point of view. Electronic
dictionaries are usually made with a semasiological approach, while community
71
forums (such as Proz.com and termwiki) might pose some dangers because the
contributors are not necessarily familiar with the terminological approach, so
forum entries might not be reliable regarding terminological principles (i.e.
onomasiological approach) and methods (e.g. consulting with a field expert or
carefully processed, reliable written source).
Termbases are important tools for knowledge transfer, not made exclusively
for translators, but there are specifically translation oriented termbases as
well. These tools may be useful for any industry or profession, but the extra
information facilitates the translator’s job. Today a full lifetime is too short to
learn about every profession, therefore we need principles and methods on the
one hand, and accurately processed information that is made public on the
other.
Figure 5
The entry for statutory sick pay in EOHS Term knowledge base
72
9. Terminology work done by the translator
We have carefully studied the principles and methods used by the terminologist.
Now let us see the terminology work done by the translator. The different levels
of depth of terminology work are well illustrated by the classification of Schmitz
(2010), who listed three basic terminology working methods:
– ad hoc search for terms;
– text oriented terminology work, as in the preparation of a text for
translation;
– domain oriented terminology work, i.e. the organised and systematic
processing of the terms of a field.
Table 4 shows that the translator mostly does ad hoc or less frequently text oriented
terminology work. With the usual tight deadlines it is unlikely for a translator to
carry out detailed work on all of the terms of the given domain with the help of
a field expert.
Table 4
Different levels of terminology work
urgent solution to an
Ad hoc search for terms translator, terminologist
upcoming problem
text oriented preparing a text

translator, terminologist
terminology work for translation
the full domain, analysing

domain oriented
the conceptual and terminologist
terminology work
terminological system
Based on the above, we can summarise the differences between the work of the
translator and the terminologist in the following table (see Table 5).
73
Table 5
Comparison of the work of the translator and the terminologist (Sager 2001: 251–255)
Translator Terminologist
ad hoc terminology work organised (systematic) terminology work
tight timeframe time consuming
starting point is the linguistic sign starting point is the concept
works with isolated concepts places concepts in the conceptual system
looks for a solution that fits
context serves as an example
the given context
does text level analysis considers the domain
documentation is optional continuous documentation
software use: a termbase in the form
of a glossary that contains term to software use: building a termbase with
term matching (Word, Excel, or in the appropriate CAT tool (maybe using
another CAT tool), may be limited to Excel sheets in the preparatory phase)
the use of the translation memory
individual or group activity
primarily team work
but working alone
10. Conclusion
Although the translator, working under the pressure of the deadline, hardly ever
does the time consuming, meticulous job of a terminologist, the right approach
will help them when making a decision about the term to use during translation.
This is why it is beneficial for the translator to be familiar with the onomasiological
principle that constitutes the terminological approach, the data handling methods
(e.g. comparing concepts based on the definitions, understanding the levels of
equivalence) and knowing and using reliable tools (termbases). This is also true
if the translator does an ad hoc term search keeping in mind the terminological
point of view. In an ideal case, however, the translator has at their disposal
updated terminological data created by terminologists and field experts, which for
Hungarian terms is unfortunately still only among future plans.
74
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Legal acts:
Act XLIII of 2010 on the organisation of the central state administration and on
the status of the members of the government and ministers of state (net.jogtar.
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76
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http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_technical_committee.html%3Fcommid%3D48104
[7 June 2014]
http://www.matt.hu/index2.htm [7 June 2014]
www.proz.com [12 June 2014]
www.radt.org [7 June 2014]
www.termwiki.com [12 June 2014]
77
Project Management
Annamária Földes
E-mail: annamaria.foldes@ipsos.com
1. Introduction
How project management relates to the project and how it is lead is determined by
a strategy based practical approach. A translation company’s project manager performs
several functions during the project’s life cycle. They are ‘polyhistors’ in the classical
sense, playing an important role in the success of language service providers’ projects.
Görög (2008) defines the project’s success on the basis of several criteria which
can be measured either with qualitative (satisfaction, acceptance) or quantitative
(cost-effectiveness, required time) methods. For an explanation of success Görög
reviews the approach of several authors (Wateridge, Atkinson, Baccarini, Cooke,
Davies, Pinto, Kharbanda, Hormozi, Dube, Yeo, Jing, Clarke) and in line with their
studies he considers the following factors as success criteria for any project (i.e. not
just for translation projects):
– precise determination of project outcome’s contents,
– constant communication among all the project’s participants, with the
sharing of necessary information,
– clear determination of project’s strategic goals,
– reasonable time, resource and cost planning,
– professional preparedness of project managers and group members
working on the project,
– mapping of the work’s risks and methodological approach to their management,
– change management.
The identification of these factors is the project manager’s task. It is important to

bear in mind that under any given circumstances every project is unique, complex
and unrepeatable. This makes the project manager’s work all the more difficult
since in every case these factors must be given priority based on individual
judgement (Kenneth et al. 2008, PMI 2013).
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2. Roles of the project manager on the translation market
The term ‘project manager’ can be considered an umbrella term since project
managers have to play several roles during a project’s life cycle – they are
participants with multiple functions. They are leaders, linguists, linguistic
architects, publication editors, IT operatives, salespeople, client contact managers,
administrators; they are responsible for translators, revisers, finance, quality
checks but they are sometimes teachers and psychologists as well.
It is essential for the project’s success that they are able to follow the changes
at all times during the implementation and are also able to react by reorganising
or re-planning if necessary. Besides their professional preparedness they are good
communicators, are able to work precisely in a constantly changing environment,
are flexible in both handling and prioritising tasks, and last but not least, thinking
as a team, always taking responsibility for their decisions. The listing is far from
complete but it clearly shows that this task requires a versatile person. In the following
I am going to introduce the project manager’s roles in various functions, approaching
the subject from actual implementation and following the project’s life cycle.
2.1. Salesperson
Most linguistic and indeed non-linguistic tasks begin with the client’s request for
an offer. Subsequently, the project manager makes first contact with the client. It
is of critical importance that the client’s trust is established before the project’s
launching. The tone of the response should be in keeping with the client; they have
to sense our professionalism in our questions since together with the price these
also influence their decision.
After understanding the task the translation company’s employee assesses
the project’s viability and the resources (the combined capacity of internal and
external colleagues and technical resources). The next step is to send the offer to
the client with the description of the service’s contents, with respect to the client’s
requests. Pricing can take place either based on the client’s and service provider’s
previous agreements or based on an ad hoc assessment. In accordance with
domestic and international common practices the price of reviewed translations
is in most cases calculated by the source text’s word number, so the client can see
the final price instantly and not just a preliminary estimate. In the case of other
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Project Management
linguistic or non-linguistic (such as multimedia or publication editing) tasks the

cost of labour is determined by working hours. Of course, there are some cases
when we offer a package price for the whole project due to its complexity.
2.2. Finance professional
At the very beginning of the process we reply to the client’s request with a commercial
and professional offer. This will determine the project’s budget, i.e. the amount we
can work with. During the budget planning, besides the participants’ cost of labour
we also have to calculate in office maintenance costs and the maintenance staff’s
remuneration, too – if these costs do not appear immediately in the sum spent during
the project’s implementation. Financial tasks also arise after submitting the project:
the issuing of the invoice to the client is also the project manager’s task at some
providers. After accepting the offer the linguistic function plays the dominant role.
2.3. Linguist
Even in the course of preparing a price offer it is necessary to consider which

professional field the text can be placed in, since this is the only way we can plan how
to use the resources in advance. For example, in the case of a legal text the project
manager asks the legal translators about their capacity beforehand. However, for
this, linguistic and translation knowledge is important so as to be able to determine
which legal areas the requested translators have to be specialised in.
For the effective distribution of tasks it is essential to know the translators well.
The client’s order is followed by the thorough study of the text, often involving the
translators. For planning information is required to know whether terminologies
have to be harmonised with the client or whether the text happens to have an
antecedent which could or should be used for the new task.
In addition to the professional field, the special linguistic needs have to be
determined as well, for example, which regional variation of the given language
is required by the client (e.g. American or British English). Therefore, clarifying
questions regarding terminology is also the project manager’s task, as well as
deciding whether a large-scale project requires a language leader who clarifies the
questions concerning translation with a team of translators. The next stage is the
planning of the translation’s technical implementation.
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2.4. Language engineer
The fundamental pillar of technical implementation is the selection of translation

assistance tool. All translation agencies use translation software to optimize
progress, since these enable faster, more efficient and consistent work. The usage
of these tools is always determined by the project manager. The antecedent of
the project plays an important role in their decision but the preferences of the
translator or the client are taken into consideration as well.
The project manager analyses the text using this tool to be able to determine
its exact length and the translation memory’s matches. At this point the project
manager’s role as a publication editor (DTP) starts to take centre stage as they need
to possess basic skills regarding more special file formats and use of translation
assistance tools.
2.5. Publication editor
In the case of technically complex tasks involving document management (e.g.

publication editing in InDesign or FrameMaker, XML-based contents management
systems, files of HTML-based support systems) the difficulties do not derive from
technical implementation, since this task is carried out by specialist colleagues.
However, the challenge is the simultaneous harmonising and organising of the
participants’ work. Last-minute change requests, missing character sets and
graphics can all jeopardize the deadline and require immediate action so they have
to be prepared for such eventualities.
Not all texts come in an editable form. Although it is not the project manager’s
role to make these editable for translation assistance tools in practice it often
happens that at smaller translation providers this is a part of the project manager’s
everyday work. Translation companies usually look for translators with files ready
to use with translation assistance tools, therefore, if there is no other internal
resource available, the project manager must play the publication editor’s role.
It can be the case that before submitting the translation a change made during
the quality check alters the formatting, but there is no longer any opportunity to
ask colleagues for help. In this case an immediate intervention is required which
also needs professional knowledge.
The selection of translators and revisers is also an important part of resource
planning. At this point the vendor manager tasks come into play.
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Project Management
2.6. Vendor manager
For a given text or professional field colleagues with a suitable professional

background and experience have to be selected so that the product’s budget is also
taken into consideration. It may occur that we cannot choose the most appropriate
professionals for a lower budget project due to their high remuneration.
If there are related antecedent projects the first contact is made with those
professionals who worked on them. Sometimes the client chooses the translation
team after a trial translation so we can only plan based on the availability of
a translation and reviser team preferred by them. However, in the case of less
widely used languages, often new translators have to be involved in the project,
which brings new challenges. If the cooperation with the selected translator is
new it is the project manager’s task to negotiate the contractual conditions
(remuneration included), where this function has no particular owner at the
translation company.
The project manager will happily and frequently cooperate with translators and
revisers who, beyond their professional and linguistic skills, are thorough, precise,
follow instructions as well as being cooperative and available. The translator’s
reliability also manifests itself in their accepting a job only if it can realistically be
completed by the deadline. With such a translator a stable working relationship will
develop and they will be in demand with their provider’s employees even if they
did not have time for more work earlier. That is because the provider knows that
they act responsibly in order to perform high quality work. The newly recruited
translator or reviser is not always familiar with the given translation assistance
tool and the agency’s expectations (e.g. regarding the revision), and therefore they
may have difficulties with starting to work with the prepared file immediately. In
these cases the IT-operative project manager helps to clear the obstacles.
2.7. IT specialist
Translators often ask for help in installing or using memoQ or Trados Studio. In
such cases the project manager supports the colleague with practical advice and
tips; sometimes they clear the technical obstacles from a distance. This can only
be accomplished if they are able to provide support as a confident, trained user
prepared to answer all possible questions. The usage of these tools is not always
unambiguous for translators and revisers at first (sometimes even at second)
83
sight, so this kind of support could be the fundamental pillar of cooperation and
a working relationship based on trust. At this point not only the IT skills but also
the pedagogical attitude is important.
2.8. Teacher
The importance of communication has been mentioned several times above.

However, it is not sufficient to simply recognise the situations and to communicate
with the appropriate team member – the content of communication is also
important, as is the intelligibility and clarity of the explanation, supporting the
exact accomplishment of the task from the beginning. The project manager must
give clear instructions, not only for the project team members but also during
consultation with the client they have to strive for clarity regarding process
description, questions and terminological issues. Therefore, the project manager
is like a good teacher: they compose accurately, instruct unambiguously, give
appropriate information and help, teach and explain in a patient manner. They
plan the process in such a way that they think over every step, weigh up the
potential problems and provide suggestions as solutions, but do not perform the
task in place of the participants.
2.9. Quality checker
Back to the life cycle of a translation agency project: the client’s order is always
followed by thorough, circumspect, thought-out and responsible planning with the
assignment of task owners. After preparing the text and technical support as well
as selecting the translators and revisers, the sub-processes are constantly tracked.
The finished translation undergoes a quality check. Here the project manager once
again works as a linguist, or as a publication editor. This sub-process must never
be missed out in the interest of ensuring high quality.
Beyond technical feasibility (translation assistance tools’ built-in check tools),
human knowledge plays a key role again. The project manager often has to check
even those translations which had been completed with character sets unknown to
them. In such cases they always study the given language’s special characteristics,
so that, for example, the French diacritics or Thai vowels are in the right place.
Moreover, they also have to be able to recognise the mistakes of a text written
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Project Management
with Cyrillic script or Chinese characters. The names, numbers and articles can
be checked in such texts as well. If a mistake is found by the project manager, they
ask for help in checking from a colleague, translator, or reviser or an independent
linguist who is familiar with the given language.
2.10. Client contact manager
After completion, delivery comes next. At this point the project manager assumes
the role of client contact manager. They are not only delivering the work but are
also asking the client for feedback for the purposes of preparing for the next
project. They strengthen the relationship with, for example, a few words of feedback
or a short phone conversation. This deepens the trust, ensuring a stable working
relationship and the maintenance of a balanced cooperation.
The client’s feedback does not signal the end of the project, since it is followed by
evaluation: the project manager sends the reviser’s and/or the client’s feedback to
the translator. To convey the satisfied client’s view is just as important as passing on
possible negative feedback. Both are indicators of cooperation and therefore they are
essential parts of the client’s and project team’s communication. This is the way we
can foster a good reputation, handle the unpleasant parts involved in working together
and maintain stability. The project ends with archiving and the translation memory’s
maintenance since a project’s conclusion signals the preparing for the next one.
2.11. Administration
We may well think that administration is a secondary factor, is often hectic, and
that the project manager, juggling with parallel projects, considers it a drag. To be
always able to react to everything it is important to constantly track the particular
steps. The project manager performs the given tasks in a project management
system designed for this purpose or they track the events with their own methods,
which may range from exercise books to any kind of offline software. One part of
administration is also the completion of some financial tasks.
Above I have summarised the professions project management consists of,
and without aiming to give an exhaustive list I have also mentioned some of the
translation company project’s participants. I would like to conclude the list with
the psychologist’s role.
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2.12. Psychologist
The project manager encounters many kinds of players, tasks and problems. For
dealing with them a key to success has to be found; the situations have to be
handled by listening to others with empathy and openness – the project manager
has to be able to listen just like a psychologist or a friend.
Unexpected events and situations may occur where the ‘psychologist project manager’
needs to help the translator, the interpreter or any participant of the project through the
situation by using the full range of their fighting mechanisms to handle individual
cases and not to treat the group members like machines. This might be the most difficult
role because the project manager has to use tools that cannot be learned from books.
3. Conclusion
In summary, we can say that we are dealing with a diverse but often very challenging
role when we try to describe a project leader, i.e. a project manager. They have to
work as leaders in every situation, often under the pressure of a lack of resources
and time. Moreover, they have to make decisions independently, responsively,
prioritising appropriately and constantly thinking through the criteria of success.
For this a little humour is essential, which is sometimes worth more than any
knowledge or problem-solving mechanism.
References
Görög M. 2008. Projektvezetés [Project Management]. Budapest: Aula Kiadó.

Kenneth, A., McKethan, K. A., Jr. &White, G. 2008. Project management for the
PMI. 2013. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)
– 5th edition. http://www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and%20Standards/~/media/
PDF/Standards/PMBOK_Guide_5th_Errata_2ndPrinting.ashx, last accessed
on 8 January 2016.
86
Vendor Management
Veronika Wagner
E-Mail: veronikawagner.translations@gmail.com
1. Introduction
Vendor management is a relatively new development on the translation market.

The term does not necessarily refer to a specific position at a translation company,
as the tasks that it covers need to be carried out at every company offering language
services, and “involves the identification and qualification of service providers,
such as translators, proofreaders, and so forth” (Dunne & Dunne 2011: 5).
It is mostly just the bigger agencies and the ones that work with multiple
languages that have an employee who concentrates solely on vendor management.
The reason for this is that a vendor manager does not directly generate profits, but
does contribute to the effective and successful operation of the company. A vendor
manager’s main responsibility consists of managing the pool of external partners,
i.e. vendors (DePalma & Beninatto 2008; Zhou 2011). Below I will discuss the
various tasks related to vendor management in terms of how they are linked to
other translation company tasks.
2. Tasks related to vendor management
As I noted above, the tasks described below must all be carried out at a translation
business even if the translation company does not employ a vendor manager. In
Hungary, for example, there are only about four or five translation companies
today that have a position that deals specifically with coordinating the translators
and interpreters. At other companies, these basic and essential tasks are usually
performed by project managers (see also Risku et al. 2013). Vendor management
tasks can be divided into the following two categories:
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– selection of translators, revisers and interpreters; negotiating and drafting

contracts,
– following up on the performance of active translators, revisers
and interpreters, organising quality control and managing critical
communication.
Since beginner translators are probably most interested in the first few steps, I will
first discuss the aspects taken into account during the selection process, focusing
less on the tasks listed in the second category.
Regarding the details of the selection process, I will describe the aspects
that come up in my work as a vendor manager. While the fundamental vendor
management tasks at other companies are probably similar, I would imagine that
there are greater differences in and unique approaches to carrying out the various
subtasks, given that these go beyond the solutions applied in theory and depend
greatly on employee interaction.
2.1. Selecting translators, hiring talent
2.1.1. Applications
We can assume that every relatively well-known translation company receives at
least five to ten translator applications a day. However, a language service provider
the size of ours takes on 15 to 20 translators a year, who, in the medium term, are
likely to remain a part of the translation team, working with their target language.
In other words, most of the applications we receive are discarded. This is due to
the fact that vendor managers and project managers working on recruiting new
translators apply a demand-side approach to hiring as opposed to a supply-side
approach. This means that when hiring new talent, vendor managers are not
checking whether an applicant meets certain hypothetical selection criteria in
terms of qualifications, experience or overall background, or whether the candidate
would be a suitable recruit for a project that they are theoretically qualified to
work on. Instead, vendor managers, along with their sales and project manager
colleagues, look to hire new translators based on projects, target languages or
subjects that could later be relevant for the company, or based on fields for which
the company usually has difficulties finding translators or revisers.
The vast majority of applications our company receives – many of which are
just re-sent copies of applications that had been sent to us earlier – are standardised,
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Vendor Management
automated, generally impersonal letters sent to several different recipients. There

is even a feeling among those in our field that in many cases the person whose
name appears on the application is not the actual sender, but someone using that
person’s name and references. The applications that we are interested in, however,
are the ones directly addressed to our company.
Despite the overwhelming amount of applications, we often have difficulty
finding a translator with the language combination and specialisation required
for a specific job. But instead of simply browsing the incoming applications, we
prefer to look for new translators at professional events, conferences or based on
recommendations. The fact that a certain translator attends a professional event
and is willing to pay the registration fee tells us that they are serious about and have
a professional attitude towards translation. The same is probably true if a translator
has an account on the biggest translation websites, has a LinkedIn profile or has
their own well-structured, informative website. The bigger translation agencies
can usually provide their translators with licences for translation environment
tools for the duration of the projects they are assigned, but actually owning such
a software licence shows that the translator has invested in their career.
2.1.2. Professional events, business visibility

A survey of the Hungarian translation market was carried out in 2011, involving
more than 1,000 freelance translators (fordit.hu). Although it may not have been
a representative survey, it was certainly revealing. The results indicate that the vast
majority of respondents do not regularly attend professional events.
As someone who regularly attends these events, I can say from personal
experience that the freelance translators who show up at these events are, for
the most part, usually the same people. But the survey’s findings regarding
professional organisation membership figures are even more disappointing:
a mere 3% of respondents said they were members of the Association of Hungarian
Translators and Interpreters, although nearly a third of respondents who were not
members said they were planning on joining. Another interesting piece of data was
that 57% of respondents said that they had not spent a single penny on marketing
themselves that year. Visibility, entrepreneurship and having an online presence
are topics that come up more and more often at professional events. This is true
not just for Hungary but globally as well. Today it is relatively easy to stand out as
a translator with conscious marketing and a well-constructed business plan, but
attending all the relevant conferences and workshops will slowly pay off and more
and more translators will be able to market themselves effectively.
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2.1.3. Translator qualifications

When it comes to aspects taken into account in the selection of translators,
translator qualification is an interesting issue. The older generation of translators
tends to enter the profession after already having acquired some form of
professional qualification and experience, without having received any formal
translation training. For them, translation is usually a supplementary or temporary
activity. The new generation of translators, on the other hand, generally enters
the profession by obtaining a master’s degree in translation from institutions
where numerous translators earn degrees each year. Over the past several years,
professional translator training has gradually been tailored to labour market
needs: more and more programmes are collaborating with external instructors
from translation agencies, who can teach students about the practical aspects
of the profession. Usually the training institutions have access to translation
environment tools, which students can then learn to use during the course of
their studies. This practical approach complements students’ theoretical studies
on translation, which form the basis of how language service providers themselves
approach their profession.
Given the difference between how the older and the younger generation tend to
enter the profession, employers will probably favour younger translators who have
received formal training for the simple fact that their pursuit of translation studies
also indicates a conscious and professional approach to the job.
A total of 29.1% of respondents in the 2011 survey cited above indicated that
they had a degree in professional translation while 14.5% said that they had passed
the certification exam. Of the remaining respondents, 33.7% said that they had
neither professional qualifications nor certification while 22.7% did not respond
to the question.
2.1.4. Specialisation
Hopefully the formal training procedure outlined above will lead to an increase in
the overall number of qualified professional translators. It is, however, problematic
that the majority of those who pursue a translation degree enter the profession with
a humanities background and therefore have a hard time acquiring knowledge in
other fields that would be necessary to meet market needs. ‘Real world’ texts for
which there is a market need are rarely about general topics. Clients increasingly
demand higher service quality, and therefore insist on translated texts that are no
longer just grammatically and linguistically acceptable but also professionally valid
and accurate to the extent that they can claim professional status. Pharmaceutical
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Vendor Management
companies demand proficiency in medicine while law firms demand legal

knowledge, in other words, they expect that the texts submitted by translators can
be used in their line of work without the need for a significant amount of revising.
This goes to show the importance of specialisation for professional translators.
It is no longer enough for translators to have an excellent proficiency in their
respective target language and excellent writing skills and precision. Translators
need to have a couple of fields in which they are more proficient than other
translators. If they do not have any professional qualifications in a specific area,
then they must rely on dedicated self-training to acquire the knowledge necessary
for gaining an advantage. Specialisation has also become a keyword on the
international market, given that specialisation and familiarity with translation
environment tools are two things translators need to boost their efficiency, which
is crucial in order to maintain their level of income.
2.1.5. The selection process

For most freelance translators, it goes without saying that when applying for a job
at a translation company they are given a test translation assignment to prove that
they are qualified for the position. For the translation companies, however, the
question of test translations is a bit more complicated, as, among other things,
they need senior colleagues to devote their precious time to evaluating these
translations. Another factor that the translation company must take into account
is professional legitimacy. If it wants translators to accept its feedback on the test
translation or their future ‘real world’ assignments, then it must make the effort to
produce highly objective and unchallengeable evaluations.
Translation agencies are not training institutions, meaning that it is nowhere
near guaranteed that they can actually evaluate test translations in this way, since
the result of test translations is rarely clear-cut. It is very hard to draw the line
between translators that must clearly be rejected and ones who can still be steered
in a better direction.
Given that test translations are not very efficient ways of selecting translators,
vendor managers often use other methods to assess the skills of applicants. One
of these methods is conducting an in-depth interview, over the course of which
the translation company can find out more about the applicant’s professional
background, work methods or approach to translating. The company can also
assign a translation report to go along with the test translation, in which the
applicant is asked to expand on the sources they used to translate the given
text as well as the translation dilemmas that were encountered during the task.
91
The translation company can also ask the applicant to write an essay, based on
which it can assess the candidate’s attitude toward their work and evaluate their
composition and writing skills. The combination of these evaluation methods
provides a detailed picture of an applicant’s translation skills, strengths and
weaknesses.
Another important aspect in the selection process is the candidate’s flexibility.
Given that project managers are often tasked with putting together complex work
plans with several different participants, any solution that is different from the ideal
will make the project manager’s job that much more difficult and even generate
extra work for the rest of the participants. This is why it is better if translators
use the software preferred by the client, especially if the language service provider
even supplies a licence, and preferable if they submit the various parts of the
project according to a schedule that the project’s other participants approve of. It
is important that translators follow the client’s specific instructions, although they
can make mention of any disagreements they may have.
2.1.6. Contractual terms and conditions

It is important to note that even a verbal agreement regarding a job counts as
a contract, provided that the contracting parties agree on the key aspects (such
as the object of the arrangement, the deadline and other contractual obligations)
of their legal relationship. It is, however, strongly recommended that parties sign
framework agreements if they regularly enter into working relationships.
As for pricing, it is worth mentioning that if the translator takes part in
the project as the subcontractor of a translation company, then the company’s
translation fee must fall somewhere between the price payable by the client and the
company’s own budgetary limits. Although it is generally the service provider that
determines service fees, in indirect legal relationships such as the one described
above, the translation company usually informs the translator in advance about
the price range that it intends to work with.
Furthermore, signing a contract is also important in terms of confidentiality
and non-competition clauses. When it comes to such clauses, the translation
company once again takes on a mediatory role between the translator and
the client and is usually contractually obliged to transfer obligations to its
subcontractors. Professional translation is a sensitive activity in and of itself, as
apart from the content of the text to be translated, the translation company’s
sources and practices can also be considered confidential information. The
translator, who participates in the project as a subcontractor, is typically not
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Vendor Management
aware of what needs to be considered confidential information or how important

those pieces of information are for the translation company or the client, which
is why it is absolutely crucial that the translator handles the information with
great care. This applies even to private conversations and comments posted on
social media.
3. Following up on the performance of active translators,

organising quality control
Vendor managers do not work in a vacuum, on the contrary, they are very much
involved in the company’s projects. When the company hires a new translator,
the vendor manager must take an active role in influencing project managers’
hiring decisions so that new translators are given a chance to prove themselves.
The majority of project managers prefer sticking with tried and tested methods,
and therefore – understandably – view new translators as risk factors. Expanding
the company’s database of translators, discovering and developing new talent
are, however, long-term goals for both vendor and project managers because the
company could get into trouble if it can only rely on one or two people to handle
a certain type of translation job.
Ideally, if a translator, a translation company and a client collaborate on a regular
basis, the translator will have a good idea of the company’s requirements as well as
the client’s demands and the types of documents they work with. Translators will
then be able to work on the project in a way that also helps the other participants,
or at least does not disrupt their workflow. For instance, translators will know how
to properly copy tags from the original text into the target text, or can comment
on mistakes found in the original text when they submit their translated version.
Perhaps the most difficult thing to learn in such projects is how far translators are
expected to progress on their own, and at what point they are expected to notify the
project’s other participants of any problems they may have encountered. Another
aspect which may cause difficulty is knowing what and how to ask the client about
parts of the text that cause translation dilemmas. Developing the right cooperation
methods is particularly important in today’s collaborative projects that involve
multiple translators, revisers and a target language coordinator all working on the
translation company’s server.
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A translation company’s feedback system is the part of its internal operations

that is most visible to freelance translators. Providing translators with professional
criticism in a way that is constructive is not always easy, but if the feedback system is
well implemented, it can turn out to be one of the strongest points of the collaboration.
Many translation companies go through a process of trying various evaluation
methods before settling on one. Companies may try expressing translation quality
in numerical form based on an industry standard; they may just give a narrative
evaluation or they may combine the two forms. Experience has shown that a good
evaluation is consistent and customized to fit a single given translation. This type
of evaluation, however, implies a coaching relationship between the reviser and the
translator, a method which requires a lot of time and energy.
We often make the mistake of putting together an evaluation that is too negative
and fail to give positive feedback. If, however, there is a mistake in the final product,
which also made its way to the client, it must absolutely be included in the feedback,
since even the smallest numerical error can overshadow the rest of the translation
regardless of how good it may have been. Communication is difficult from both
sides in situations like this. I prefer to advise the translator in such a situation to
look at the finished product through the eyes of the client and offer constructive
advice on how to solve the problem. If the company manages to work through
the problem with its reputation intact, the experience will certainly strengthen
the relationship between the company and the translator. Another interesting
aspect in the relationship is the question of the company imposing penalties for
sub-par translations, and not just because it can be proven that the translator
bears responsibility for them. The consequences of submitting translations that
are below standard go beyond potential reputation damage for the company, as
sub-par performance may also result in losses in profits, which cannot even be
recovered by withholding payment from the translator.
4. Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to stress that although it may seem simple from the
outside, conflicting interests and demands among participants mean that the
translation process is a ’game’ in which freelance translators must have a thorough
understanding of these interests and their own role in the process in order to
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Vendor Management
excel. Although translation may often seem like a lonely activity, vendor managers
tend to look for team players who are also capable of working on their own and
selling themselves, and whose long-term performance consistently delivers on the
promise they showed when they were first hired to the team.
References
DePalma, D. A. & Beninatto, R. S. 2008. Localization Vendor Management. Lowell,

Massachusetts: Common Sense Advisory. http://www.commonsenseadvisory.
com/Portals/_default/Knowledgebase/ArticleImages/080218_R_vendor_mgt_
Preview.pdf, last accessed on 20 November 2016.
Dunne, K. J. & Dunne, E. S. 2011. Mapping terra incognita. Project management
in the discipline of Translation Studies. In: Dunne, K. J. & Dunne, E. S. (eds)
Translation and Localization Project Management: The Art of the Possible.
Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. 1–5.
Risku, H., Rossmanith, N., Reichelt, A. & Zenk, L. 2013. Translation in the netwoork
economy. In: Way, C., Vandepitte, S., Meylaerts, R. & Bartłomiejczyk, M. Tracks
and Treks in Translation Studies. Selected papers from the EST Congress,
Leuven 2010. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. 29–48.
Zhou, P. 2011. Managing the challenges of game localisation. In: Dunne, K. J. &
Dunne, E. S. (eds) Translation and Localization Project Management: The Art of
the Possible. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. 349–378.
95
Technical Preparation of Documents before and
after Translation
Katalin Varga
E-mail: katalinv@ecinnovations.com
1. Introduction
For modern-day translators the translation process does not start with the typing of
the first translated sentence. Materials to be translated can arrive in many different
formats, moreover, the client can also give the translator instructions or have
specific expectations regarding the format of the submitted document. Therefore,
the technical preparation and pre-delivery tasks of the prepared translation are
indispensable parts of the translation process that require a thorough approach.
This phase is an important element in project planning, which means time and
resources must be allocated for it (Kenneth et al. 2008).
When the document to be translated is simple and well-edited without
inserted images or graphs this phase remains unnoticed, and the client receives
a technically impeccable file without any special preparatory or pre-delivery tasks.
However, there are more complicated, yet still editable or absolutely non-editable
source files the client can send for translation. In such cases all the different aspects
must be taken into consideration that are required for a professional translation in
line with the client’s instructions (whether there are non-translatable parts, how
to deal with graphics, how to translate captions for images, what to do when the
text does not fit in the text box, is OCR necessary for non-editable files, is there
a reference, the format of the document to be submitted, etc.).
Nowadays there is no modern translation without the application of computer
assisted translation tools (hereinafter referred to as CAT tools). They not only
make the task of translating specialised texts easier and more unified, but also
offer a wide range of new possibilities (such as the management of references,
terminology management, quality assurance). It is almost impossible to imagine
the adequate technical preparation of a material without a computer assisted
translation environment. In the translation industry the technical preparation
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of textual documents, importing them to a CAT environment and technical

post editing fall under the tasks carried out by the DTP (desktop publishing)
specialist.
There is a difference in what we mean by DTP in graphic design and the
publishing industry compared to the translation industry. For graphic designers
it clearly means desktop publishing, that is, designing the publication as the client
requests, typesetting it and preparing a ready to print version of the document
with the help of a desktop publishing software (Kovácsné Kiss 2003–2004, Mohai
2006). DTP specialists in the translation industry fulfil many similar tasks, which
explains why the same name is used for the position. In contrast to graphic
designers the objective of DTP in translation is the reproduction of the already
designed and arranged source language document in the target language, its
preparation for translation and then typesetting it again.
In addition, it is an important task of DTP in translation – taking into
consideration the unique features of the applied CAT environment – to transform
the non-editable source files (e.g. PDF documents) into an editable format almost
fully identical with the original; or prepare the files for translation that are
editable, but contain complex technical elements or functions that can be hardly
or ill-managed by the CAT tools; and following the translation to execute the pre-
delivery tasks as well.
Prominent translation agencies employ not only DTP technicians, but also
language engineers. Language engineers primarily participate in multi-lingual
localisation projects (software, web localisation), and they prepare the source
files for translation, execute the necessary file conversions and perform the post-
translation tasks and tests as well. In practice there can be a number of overlapping
tasks regarding what DTP technicians and language engineers do.
There are technical aspects related to the linguistic preparation of
a document for translation. It can be the case that the received references and
terminology must be processed so that they could be utilised in a CAT tool
during translation and at the end of a project the use of references could be
checked. There might be instructions which must be consistently adhered to
and it is recommended to have certain custom settings adjusted prior to starting
the translation (e.g. regional settings, date format, non-translatable parts,
measurement units, etc.). In the case of translation agencies a terminologist
or a language lead can also be included in the process, depending on how the
translation work is organised.
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Technical Preparation of Documents before and after Translation
In the following this paper seeks to define tasks and aspects related to
the preparation and post translation of the document from the perspective of
individual translators. For translation agencies these tasks can belong to a number
of different roles within the company.
2. Basic principles
As a general rule, the translation must be submitted in the same format as it was
provided by the client. Font types, spacing, paragraph and page settings, applied
styles and software versions must also be kept.
Besides formatting, the source files can include internal and external
references (hyperlinks). Whether these must be translated or modified is subject to
arrangement with the client, however, the references must be kept as a functional
element. Therefore, fields and references must not be overwritten manually, but
special editing shall be applied for them.
Special attention must be paid to tags that include programming and formatting
information. Not only markup languages (html, xml, sgml, dtd, etc.), but also MS
Office format can contain tags that must not be translated – even an additional
space could be fatal regarding a certain function. It is even more complicated if
the position of the formatting tags must be modified during translation. CAT tools
offer convenient solutions for such cases.
It could be a source of frustration for translators who wish to elaborate
linguistically if the length of the translated text is limited. On the different surfaces
(website, leaflet, presentation, software), editing and graphics set limitations to
text length. If there is such an expectation, it must be taken into consideration
either by the translator trying to be succinct or by providing typesetting during
post-editing. The client must be contacted about which solution is viable in the
given situation.
There are many manual tasks that can be automated with the help of CAT tools.
For example, we can compile a list of items not to be translated, it can superbly
handle terminology or maintain formatting settings during translation. A smooth
cooperation is ensured if CAT tool needs are taken into account even during the
preparatory phase.
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3. Preparatory tasks
3.1. Non-editable source files
3.1.1. Optical character recognition (OCR)

In the case of non-editable source files it must first be decided whether the text
should be extracted in some editable format with the help of an OCR software
or the text is to be translated without the help of computer assisted translation
software. If we decide to extract the text, after the OCR recognition an editable
format must be created that resembles the original as much as possible from
a publishing viewpoint. It is important, because the benefits of CAT tools can be
exploited only if the source text is in an editable format. Some aspects to take into
consideration for OCR:
– it is worth working with a professional OCR software, since they produce
a surprisingly good quality, editable text;
– prior to removing the pictures and graphs, it is worth asking whether the
client has them in an editable (so called vector graphic) format;
– examine each page separately in the OCR software and make adjustments
prior to exporting.
3.1.2. Character recognition with a CAT approach

When you import a document into a CAT tool it recognises the text to be
translated and performs a segmentation process. Segmentation occurs according
to certain defined signs, the so called segment determiners (e.g. full stop at the
end of a sentence, cell limit, colon etc.). The segmented units are entered into the
translation memory along with their translated segment parts, and they appear to
help the translator when a new segment is translated and there is a source language
match. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the text is carefully prepared
even from a segmentation viewpoint. If you fail to pay attention to this, during
translation there will not be useful matches found in the translation memory, and
you will not be able to use a partially or fully identical sentence pair from the
already translated part of the text. The translation memory examines the source
segments, and based on this process it evaluates the percentage of the matches.
The most common mistake related to segmentation during the preparation
phase is when a tab sign is in the middle of the sentence (Figure 1). It frequently
occurs when the content is copied manually from an editable Pdf file. Thus, the
100
two parts of the sentence become two separate segments, while it is added to the
translation memory as a full sentence.
Figure 1
Examples of text extraction
The opposite can also occur, whereby the DTP expert does a superb job, the
prepared document is segmented at an excellent level of quality, but you can see
that in the CAT tool the sentence is divided into two. The reason for this is that
in the prepared file there was a misleading sign that the CAT tool interpreted
as a segment line. It can occur, for example, if there are references to certain
legislation or the different articles thereof. This can be remedied by modifying
the segmentation rules of the CAT tool or by joining segments during translation.
The following sentence was split into four segments when importing
it into the CAT tool by using the default segmentation settings:
The Act on Trade Unions has finally been modified (Act No. XII-364 of 13 June
2013. State Gazette, 2013, No. 68-3405) to address some current problems and
to bring the law in line with the Labour Code and European legislation.
Figure 2
Example for wrong segmentation done by the CAT tool
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3.1.3. Formatting
The creation of the original format follows the optical character recognition. Since
CAT tools handle the formatting almost faultlessly there is no need to include the
formatting of the document among the already time pressed post-translation tasks.
The translation can be started in the edited, final format irrespective of whether the
client expects the delivered translation to be in an MS Office or a desktop publishing
software format.
If there is no other instruction, the following general principles are
recommended when editing the document:
– use a maximum three-level style;
– the table of contents should always be fields generated based on style;
– the index should be generated with the help of fields;
– footnotes, headers and footers should be set with the appropriate function;
– create adequate hyperlinks;
– apply whatever unique formatting is included within the original text;
– use fonts that are very similar to the original.
3.2. Desktop publishing software formats
You may receive materials for translation directly in a desktop publishing software
format. User manuals are generally published in FrameMaker while coloured
leaflets and catalogues are usually created in the InDesign format. There can be
source materials prepared in QuarkXPress, PageMaker and InCopy, however, these
are not very common.
All of these formats are editable and thus translatable in theory. However,
opening these file formats requires the purchase of fairly costly programmes and
expertise to be able to handle them. From a translation point of view, it is not
recommended to do the translation in the desktop publishing software directly,
even if the given software is available to the translator.
In the case of the most popular desktop publishers you can avoid the huge
investment of purchasing and then learning how to use the software if you import an
adequately converted file format into your CAT tool. On the one hand the translation
memory (if there is one) can be utilised, and on the other hand the translation can
be done in the familiar format and at the regular speed. There might not be obvious
signs that the material translated is in a desktop publishing format.
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When the translation is ready, the file has to be exported from the CAT tool,
and the necessary conversions must be carried out so the document could be
submitted in line with the client’s requests. If the source file could not be opened
in the desktop publishing software, but the translator could work with it in the
CAT tool, it is very important to ensure that there is a PDF file or a preview to see
the layout of the whole file.
It is recommended to leave to an expert the conversion, the importing into the
CAT tool, the individual setting arrangements and the exporting of the final document.
Special attention must be paid to texts translated in a desktop publishing
format since it is a fairly fixed format, with an exact layout of graphic elements
and texts that will change in appearance if the target language text is longer than
the original (see more under 3.6). The typesetter technician, therefore, can request
certain parts to be shortened.
3.3. What should be translated?
In many cases not the entire source material has to be translated. If there are such
clearly definable and editable parts, they can be clearly marked as non-translatable
in the CAT tool. (Obviously, these can be removed manually, but then you must
pay attention to reinserting them during pre-delivery tasks).
However, it can happen that there is a non-editable text on a graphic element
that must be changed. In that case you not only have to extract the text, but you
should also negotiate with the client how to insert the translation – whether it
is the translator’s task to place it on the graphic element (e.g. in a text box) or it
should be submitted separately (e.g. under the graphics or in a separate file).
You have to pay attention to screenshots. You may presume that the software
from which the screenshot was generated has already been localised, therefore it
would be practical to regenerate them from the localised software instead. If it is
not a viable solution, the above written procedure is applicable.
It is common for Excel sheets that the different sheets, columns or rows must
be left in the original language. Fortunately, there are very easy and comfortable
solutions for this, also thanks to CAT tools:
– the parts in questions can be hidden in the Excel sheet, therefore they will
not be imported into the CAT tool;
– you can define the parts that are non-translatable in the CAT tool.
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3.4. Fonts
It is a main rule (see more under 2) to use the font type of the source text. However,
it can happen that the source document’s font type does not support the characters
in the target language. In such a case, another font type – with consent from the
client – shall be applied. It might be recommended to replace Serif (Roman)
typefaces and Sans serif typefaces for certain languages. See the following examples
(source: Esselink 2000):
Language Serif Sans serif

English, French, German Times New Roman Arial
Cyrillic languages Times New Roman CYR Arial CYR
Japanese Mincho Gothic
Korean Batang Gulim
simplified Chinese Song Hei, Kai
traditional Chinese Ming Hei, Kai
3.5. Text direction, bi-directional texts
Text direction can be a somewhat hypothetical question when translating from

one European language to another. Nevertheless, it is an indispensable part of the
preparation and post-translation tasks, therefore it must be mentioned here, too.
There are a number of languages which do not have a left-to-right script (LTR), but
a right-to-left one (RTL). It can happen that text directions alternate within a document
(or even paragraph). The latter is called bi-directional texts, ‘BiDi’ in short.
Figure 3
An example of a bi-directional (BiDi) sentence
In such a ‘BiDi’ format there can be elements that have a different script
direction than the generally used one, because it contains an international word,
an abbreviation or a brand name that must not be translated, and cannot be
transcribed into the given language, therefore it has a different script direction, as
can be seen in the Persian text above (see Figure 3).
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Working with ‘BiDi’ texts posed a great challenge before the appearance of
Unicode based systems. Different plug-ins had to be installed in each software and
occasionally even a new operating system that could support the given language.
Unicode character encoding, however, enables the script direction to be encoded
together with the characters, therefore it is sufficient if the software displaying
it – be it a CAT tool, MS Office or any other desktop publishing software – can
adequately interpret the Unicode characters.
Upon formatting a translated BiDi text it must be ensured that the text is
displayed everywhere in an adequate manner. Besides text orientation other
structural details must also be paid attention to, such as a table should not be
featured on the left side of the page, but on the right side, instead. Modern file
formats usually support BiDi languages, both in terms of text direction and also
from a structural point of view.
3.6. Limitation to text length
In the case of character encoded translations special emphasis must be placed on

applying limits during the preparation phase.
In this case you should seek a solution that enables the automated control of
the text’s length. If there is a short text, a ‘length’ formula in the Excel programme
could take care of the issue, but it is fairly uncomfortable to translate a document
in an Excel sheet. CAT tools can offer a solution for this problem, too. For example,
in the comment section of memoQ you can insert a character limit, and during
Quality Assurance the software checks compliance and sends a warning signal if
the limit is exceeded.
3.7. Preparation of terminology and references
Processing and incorporating the received references in the translation

environment is an essential part of the preparation process. There is a linguistic
and technical side to it. In the case of teamwork, the project manager, the translator
and the terminologist must come to an agreement at this phase.
Bilingual references (parallel texts) provide help, but clients tend to send only
monolingual references. They can also provide information regarding style and key
terms, but a monolingual reference does not offer an opportunity for automation.
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If there is a parallel text that serves as a reference, it can be easily incorporated

into the translation environment, becoming available to the translator as an
easily accessible source besides the translation memory. It is not much help if the
reference cannot be edited. In such cases it must be evaluated how long it would
take to convert the reference to an editable format, and how useful or exclusive it is.
One of the best moments of cooperation occurs when the client sends the
translator a glossary containing the expected translation of the key words. Any
lists can be easily converted into an Excel format that can be imported into the
CAT tool. From this point onward these words must be used during the translation
process, and in the Quality Assurance check following the translation the
terminology-related mistakes can be easily identified.
If the client does not provide a glossary, but due to the translation job’s nature
the compilation or the updating of a previous glossary is advisable, a monolingual
glossary can be prepared by extracting terminology from the text. This monolingual
glossary can be made bilingual in the following ways:
– the translation of the terminologies must be selected from the provided
references;
– leave the translation of the terminologies for the translation process, at
the end of which the translation can be unified during Quality Assurance.
It is advisable to get approval from the client regarding the glossary compiled by
the translator.
It is primarily not a technical issue, nevertheless, it should be noted that in the
case of discrepancy between the reference and the received glossary, you should
seek instruction from the client regarding the priority.
3.8. Preparing markup languages for translation
Thanks to modern content management systems it is increasingly more common

for the translator to receive the source file in a markup language (html, xml). In
the past it required significant assistance from a language engineer, but nowadays
these file formats are well-supported by the state-of-the-art CAT tools with different
settings and filters, especially if the document is a well-structured, standard xml or
html file (See Figures 3 and 4).
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The difference between translating these basically editable files and a simple
Word document is that the former contains a number of information and text
parts, markups that cannot be modified during the translation process.
Figure 4
Example for tags in xml files (xml)
The following word uses an

English source text
underlinedtypeface.
in Hungarian A következő szónak aláhúzotta betűképe.
¶
visualisation
A következő szónak aláhúzott a betűképe.¶
Figure 5
Examples for formatting tags
The following questions may occur when opening an xml file:

– What are the elements and attributes that must be translated?
– Are there non-translatable parts (inline tags) in the document that must
not divide a sentence or a segment to be translated?
– Did the client send a file to interpret the file structure of the document to
be translated (dtd, ini)?
If we translate these files incorrectly (namely, any of these tags are damaged) then
the programming or formatting information inherent in that file is also damaged.
It is worth running a pseudo translation first, then export the document and check
whether the file is fully functional in the final format.
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In any event, it is not recommended to start the translation work in the

original source files; they should be translated with CAT tools (or maybe with
a localisation software), but even then careful attention must be paid to the
technical details.
In the case you encounter problems with the default settings, it is recommended
to ask help from an expert or a language engineer, or the IT technician of the
client.
4. Post-translation tasks
4.1. Quality Assurance
Running a Quality Assurance (QA) check is an essential element of modern

translation technology, and a major milestone in the quality assurance of translations.
It enables the filtering of hardly noticeable yet important faults in the translation.
QA can be run only in a bilingual environment. In this technology the software
compares the source and the target language segments based on a given algorithm,
and it seeks expressions that are tangible from an IT viewpoint, such as:
– numbers, dates and units of measurement;
– consistency (at the level of segments and terminology);
– the matching of tags;
– omitted translation (if the source and the target are identical, e.g. a segment
that contains only a brand name);
– punctuation marks.
Machine QA can never substitute, it can only complement proofreading since

it is incapable of checking actual meaning, style, grammar and translation
methodology.
4.2. Checking the format
In an ideal situation, it is not required to check the format if the translation was
prepared thoroughly and a reliable CAT tool was used. Nevertheless, it is still worth
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doing a detailed check of the source and the final target documents’ formatting
prior to delivery to the client.
– If the documents had to be divided up for some reason this is the time to
reassemble them;
– The continuity of the automatic numbering must be checked;
– The images removed temporarily to reduce file size should now be reinserted;
– If we translated the captions to the images, their format must be unified
based on the received instructions;
– It must be checked whether all the footnotes are in place;
– It must be checked whether there is any hidden text that was accidentally
not translated.
4.3. The typesetting of publications
As written in the Introduction this work phase connects the graphical DTP with
the translator DTP tasks, because this is when the original layout must be updated
to the new languages and to the changed length of the translated (multilingual)
publication. This process is called typesetting.
If a translation is not prepared in a CAT tool, but the translator received it
copied into a separate file, then the typesetter must manually copy all the different
text parts into the given file. In many cases, this is how it is still done today. Besides
being time consuming, there is a big margin for error, because it is easy for the
technician – who does not understand the target language – to fail to notice that
a space, an accent or a word is left out.
A translation prepared in a CAT tool makes the typesetter’s job easier since
the format of the translated document exported from the CAT tool – after the
necessary conversions – is identical with that of the original desktop publishing
software format, but in the other language. Thus, there is no need for copying
the texts, only the length of the texts must be checked, the adjustments and the
professional correction of the entire file format must be carried out.
Clients rarely request translators to perform typesetting functions, but it can
often happen that the PDF file of the typeset translation is sent back for a pdf
check. This time it can be spotted if there is a space character missing between two
words, an accent or a separation is incorrect, or if the punctuation marks are not
in the right place. By inserting comments to the PDF version the typesetter can be
informed about the corrections to be done.
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4.4. Checking the functionality
In the monolingual target document the following elements shall be checked for
functionality depending on the file format:
– whether the fields and hyperlinks are functional and direct to the right
place;
– the generated table of contents and index have the same content and format
as in the source file;
– the markup languages appear in the browser as they did for the source file.
4.5. The management of text length
The issue of increased or decreased text length has already been referred to. The
following options are available to adjust the formatting to an increased length of
text:
– enlarge the space designated for the text (by adding pages or text boxes);
– reduce font size;
– reduce row spacing;
– change the page settings;
– reduce font spacing.
4.6. File format for delivery
The translation must be submitted in the file format agreed upon at the launch
of the project. This final format can be open (editable) and/or closed, such as
Postscript or PDF. PostScript and PDF files are closed, independent documents
that cannot be edited or only to a limited extent. They constitute the final electronic
version of the publication, and make it possible to have the document approved in
an electronic form.
In translation agencies usually it is the project manager who generates the file
format to be delivered to the client. It is the DTP technician’s task to generate
a given format from a large number of files or print a closed document from
a desktop publishing software.
In similar situations individual translators should inform themselves about
the technical parameters and seek professional help, if necessary.
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4.7. Implementing feedback in the document
If the translation is submitted in a closed format for approval, it can happen that
the client or the language expert of the client annotates the file which is sent back
to the translator or translation agency. In this case, the translator or the translation
agency must implement the requested modifications in an editable format.
5. Useful software
Finally, below is a list of some useful software that make the translator’s job easier:
– word processing programmes: Microsoft Office Suite,
– Desktop publishing programmes: Adobe InDesign, QuarkXpress,
Interleaf/Quicksilver, Adobe PageMaker, Adobe Framemaker,
– Optical character recognition (OCR) software: Abbyy FineReader,
OmniPage, Presto!OCR, Readiris Pro,
– Painting, drawing and image processing programmes: Corel Draw, Adobe
Photoshop,
– Table and database management programmes: Microsoft Office Suite,
– Computer assisted translation tools: memoQ, SDL, Star Transit, Across,
– Localisation applications: Multilizer, Okapi Framework,
– Other applications: formula manager, voice note editor, AutoCAD, Visio.
6. Conclusion
For modern-day translators the translation process does not start with the typing
of the first translated sentence. Materials to be translated can arrive in many
different formats and the translated texts often need to meet a range of technical
criteria (text length, use of references, terminology, measurement unit conversions,
non-translatables, font related issues, typesetting conditions etc.). File preparation
and pre-delivery tasks are indispensable parts of the translation process, not only
for translation companies but for freelance translators, too.
111
It is therefore essential to be familiar with the pitfalls and opportunities of

handling different file formats in a computer assisted translation environment.
This paper aimed to define tasks and aspects related to the technical and
linguistic preparation and post translation of the document from the perspective
of individual translators.
References
Esselink, B. 2000. A Practical Guide to Localization. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:

John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Kenneth, A., McKethan, K.A., Jr., & White, G. 2008. Project management for the
Navé, S. 2013. Understanding how to Work with Bi-Directionality (BiDi) Text. http://
translationtherapy.com/understanding-how-to-work-with-bi-directionality-
bidi-text/, last accessed on 12 July 2014.
112
Localisation
Márta Snopek
E-mail: marta.snopek@espell.com
1. Introduction
Globalisation, developments in information and communication technologies and

the spread of the internet have resulted in an increase in the number of digital
texts produced. This means that there is a growing demand for translated versions
of these texts as well. Such translation tasks are not always as straightforward as
translating ‘ordinary’ texts. In fact, this kind of translation differs so significantly
from translation in the traditional sense that it has spawned a new profession
beyond translation as interlingual and intercultural mediation. This profession is
known as localisation.
Below I will introduce a definition for localisation and then proceed to discuss the
most important technical and linguistic aspects that translators working in localisation
need to take into account. Next, I will discuss the practical aspects of localising
software along with their related documents and marketing materials. Finally, we
will discuss other important questions pertaining to this area such as the skills and
knowledge translators working in localisation must possess, the role of community
translation in localisation and the characteristics of localisation project management.
2. Localisation: a definition
Localisation is a special case of rendering information from one language into

another. Given that it involves a number of different challenges to translation,
it requires a different approach as well and is usually dealt with separately from
translation. The definition of localisation covers two separate aspects that share
some common points.
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One aspect of localisation involves adapting content to fit a target culture,

also referred to as nationalisation, which is a broader concept than translation.
The other aspect of localisation covers the adaptation of software, websites along
with their supplementary guides, user manuals and marketing content to meet
the needs of several target languages (Esselink 2001; Jiménez-Crespo 2009;
Nord 1997; Sandrini 2005). Compared to translation, this activity is a narrower
concept.
3. Internationalisation
Viewed against an international presence, many companies pay particular attention

to producing documents and texts that will pose as few problems as possible when
they are adapted to other languages. This includes the simple act of composing the
text itself and editing it in a way that ensures it will be free of any cultural, social,
ethnic or aesthetic particularities that would make it inapplicable to certain markets.
Likewise, software needs to be programmed to make sure that data can easily be
displayed correctly in different languages and that the characters of these languages
can be accepted as input. This process as a whole is known as internationalisation
(Pym 2004, 2005; Sandrini 2005).
There are certain types of content, however, that cannot be internationalised,
and even the content that can be may end up being only partially internationalised.
Differing target language environments must be taken into account, as they lead
to several kinds of linguistic and technical challenges for localisation professionals
(translators, language engineers and project managers).
4. Technical aspects of localisation
Since localisation typically refers to the translation of software and their related
documents, the files which translators end up working with are often source code
files created in the programming process. Apart from the texts that need to be
translated, these files also contain the codes needed for the software to function.
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Localisation
This is needed to allow the target language texts to be placed back into their original
places in as few steps and in as short a time as possible.
These files need to be prepared in a way that does not damage the software code
and allows for the translatable parts to be accessible to the translator. This task in
particular is carried out by language engineers, who are professionals well-versed in
both programming and the world of languages, meaning that they have a good grasp
of foreign languages and are also knowledgeable about the various language families
and their characteristics. When the programme code is separated from the text itself,
it is labelled as metadata, since compared with the information in the actual text
displayed, the source code’s text does indeed count as metadata. This way, the code
is separated from the text that needs to be localised and is also secured, because once
it is separated, the translator can no longer access it, thus ensuring that the code
cannot be damaged. Furthermore, the translator can access the data stored in the
source code (such as the length of the text, or the programmer’s comments about the
text) with the help of computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools (Figure 1).
Figure 1
Text to be localised complete with metadata and variables
4.1. Linguistic aspects
4.1.1. User interface

The linguistic challenges encountered during the localisation process depend
greatly on the type of text that needs to be translated. The types of texts that need
to be localised are usually ones that show up in the user interface of software or
on websites. These are known as UI (user interface) elements, and are provided to
the translator in the form of strings (Figures 2 and 3). In other words, instead of
working with linear texts made up of a logical series of sentences, the translator
must work with standalone pieces of text arranged randomly, meaning that
a given string may not necessarily be related to the preceding or the following
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one. This means that one of the biggest challenges in localising such texts is the
lack of context (Pym 2004, 2005, Sandrini 2005). Take the word ‘Save’ for example.
This may refer to the act of storing data but it can also mean spending less money
on something. Without any context, it is impossible to decide which meaning
the word refers to. We encounter a similar problem with the preposition ‘From’.
Once again, depending on context, this word can be interpreted as referring to the
sender of a message or a starting date. The metadata described above may contain
some information about context, such as where the translated text will appear, but
this is still not enough to ensure a completely accurate translation. Given that the
lack or complete absence of context can make it impossible to translate the text, or
at least increase the chance of errors, translators have several ways of obtaining the
necessary information about the contexts of strings throughout the localisation
process.
Figure 2
Strings, as seen by the translator
Figure 3
The same strings as seen on the webpage
In order to obtain this information, it is important that translators make

a conscious effort to find it, that they possess the necessary localisation skills,
recognise potential ‘linguistic traps’ and maintain contact and good relations with
the owner of the content, the client.
Clients who have enough knowledge about the localisation process know
about the difficulties that can arise, and make an effort to provide translators with
materials that can clarify the contexts of strings. These materials can come in the
form of comments pertaining to certain portions of the text, actual screenshots of
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Localisation
the original product or clients can provide help by answering translators’ questions
along the way.
The lack of context is usually offset by a so-called in-context review, when the
translator is given a preview of how the translated text will look as part of the final
product, for instance on the website where it will appear. This is when translators
get a chance to correct any linguistic or grammatical errors (such as restructuring
pieces of texts that are supposed to be parts of a list but were not translated with
a list in mind) or display errors (for example when the translated text is too long
for the space available).
Other elements that can cause headaches when translating strings are the so-called
variables or placeholders. These are also part of the programme code but are usually
found within a single sentence (or segment). The reason why these codes are called
variables is that they can and do store various types of texts when the translation is
used, such as dates, product names or even parts of a sentence. It is important that
the translator ensure that the variable remains completely secure within the segment
but at the same time complies with all grammatical rules of the language. This can
be especially difficult in languages in which an unknown variable could potentially
have different genders. There are also times when the source language text demands
that multiple variables be placed in a single target language sentence, constituting
a serious logical challenge.
4.1.2. Localisation of software-related documents

Another category of texts that often require localisation are software-related
documents and manuals, such as user manuals or troubleshooting guides. Absence
or lack of context is not a problem when it comes to translating these texts, since
the translator is presented with linear segments, causing far fewer headaches and
needing less extra research. Overall, these types of texts take less time to translate.
At the same time, translation fees for these texts tend to be significantly lower than
for UI elements. These documents, however, do have their own particularities
and distinct characteristics that localisation teams must be aware of in order to
successfully translate them.
A software user manual, for example, describes how a given programme is
to be used, and often includes screenshots of the user interface. It is designed in
a way that allows for users to follow along with the guide’s instructions on their
own devices, so it is particularly important that the manual contains illustrations
that are identical to what users see on their screens. When translating these kinds
of texts, the localisation team is expected to incorporate UI elements into the
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translated document (Figure 4) – provided they are available in the target language
– exactly the same way they appear on the screen.
Figure 4
UI elements in the user manual
There are two ways to do this. The first is by carrying out the steps laid out in the
manual on the actual software (if it is available) and making sure that the same
wording is used in the manual as on the software UI. If the translator does not
have access to the software itself, they can simply ask to receive screenshots from
the content owner. Or, as a more convenient method, the translator can use a term
base that includes, primarily, UI elements.
The use of term bases, translation memories and CAT tools in general is inevitable
when it comes to localisation. The nature of the content within these texts means that
repetitions are fairly common, which stems from the life cycle of software products.
Typically what happens is that when a given software product is first introduced in
a foreign market, every single text and document accompanying it is translated and
localised into the target language in a single phase. This first localisation process
usually covers large pieces of text. After these texts are released, only the texts
pertaining to any software updates need to be localised. Given that there are likely to
be multiple updates to a certain software, these texts are much smaller in volume but
are localised separately, each at the time of its release. This usually generates pricing and
organisational problems since a localisation task is time consuming for both the project
manager and the translators, even if the length of the text to be translated is not that
significant. Maintaining linguistic consistency in the long run is also a challenge, but
one that can be handled with the use of CAT tools and database management software.
4.1.3. Adaptation of marketing materials

Although they are completely different from software user manuals, the translation
of marketing materials pertaining to software products also counts as localisation,
because they deal with the same subject. It is important to note, however, that the
translation of these texts requires a completely different approach and skillset than
software localisation, and therefore the various types of texts are often assigned to
different translation teams.
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Localisation
The key to adapting marketing materials is (for the most part) a sense of
style, a good grasp of the cultures of both source and target language users, and
a creative use of language. It is important that translators recognise the aims
of the content’s producers so that they can adapt the material in a way that the
translation takes into account the linguistic and cultural particularities of their
target market. It is also important to be knowledgeable about the product itself
as well as its positioning in order to accurately convey the producer’s message to
the market. Maintaining contact with the producers is once again crucial, as it
helps translators gradually pick up and learn the most important elements of the
product’s communication strategy.
5. Localisation vs. translation
Localisation, by its nature, is generally a less isolated activity than ordinary

translation because although translators working in localisation typically also
work alone, they are usually part of a bigger virtual group, whose members are in
constant communication with each other. Apart from the translators (localisation
usually covers several target languages), localisation project managers, language
engineers and in some cases terminologists and language leads are also part of the
group.
6. The profile of a good localisation translator
Apart from the usual skills translators are expected to possess, translators working
in localisation should know the ins and outs of their profession, have a great degree
of commitment and a genuine interest in the software they are working on. This
is especially important because the software industry is a very fast-changing,
fast-evolving one and in order to keep up-to-date with the latest technology, the
translator must actively follow industry news.
The fact that this is still a relatively new sector also demands a degree of
linguistic ‘freshness’, flexibility and an ability to innovate, because it may happen
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that a translator has to name certain objects or concepts that had not existed up
to that point. The localisation translator must also be aware of and utilise existing
linguistic conventions of the target language regarding the grammatical form of
certain UI elements (e.g. in several languages titles and captions require the use of
the infinitive, where in continuous text the imperative form should be used).
7. Localisation and community translation
Commitment and enthusiasm are considered such attractive qualities by certain

companies in the cases of certain products, that often instead of hiring localisation
professionals, they turn to crowdsourcing and hire anonymous users to translate
their texts. Besides the enthusiasm and commitment that users bring, companies
may also prefer such a solution for its cost-effectiveness.
There are many ways to crowdsource localisation. In some cases, the entire
localisation process can be crowdsourced to anonymous users, meaning that
anybody can edit the text of a software or a website. The advantage of this method
is that translations that are accurate but not optimal in terms of language, will be
noticed and corrected. This was also the method used to localise Facebook.
Crowdsourcing, however, also has less inclusive or less ‘democratic’ methods.
One of these is when the company directly seeks out users of their software on
message boards or other social networks and selects who they consider to be the most
competent and most committed users to localise their product, usually in return for
monetary compensation.
8. Localisation project management
Flexibility, willingness to experiment with new things and optimising the work
process are especially important in localisation. Nevertheless, in most cases,
traditional project management, where project managers plan and oversee the
entire process and mediate between the project’s participants, is also needed when
it comes to localisation.
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Localisation
With its distinct challenges, however, localisation project management differs

significantly from translation project management. One difference is that it usually
involves a lot more participants than translation project management, because a single
localisation process typically covers several, even up to a hundred target languages.
This is particularly important in terms of the project’s pacing, communication among
participants, ensuring that the team consistently keeps to the client’s instructions
and quality assurance. Although there is a wide range of software products available
today that can help with quality assurance, it certainly helps if the project manager
is a professional linguist, has good language skills, is fluent in a variety of languages,
has a comprehensive understanding of the localisation process and can therefore solve
any problems that may arise. It is also important that the project manager be able to
distinguish between problems that are their responsibility to handle and ones with
which they must turn to the client. The key to coordinating a large localisation team is
for the project manager to communicate effectively and emphatically with them and in
a way that ensures that all members remain motivated throughout the project.
9. Conclusion
Translation as a profession is far less homogeneous today than it was a few decades ago.
Among the possible lines of work modern-day translators can pursue, translation in
its traditional sense is but one option. Globalisation and the spread of information
and communication technologies have resulted in an increase in the volume of
digital content that needs to be adapted from one language to another, while taking
into account the cultural, social, ethnic and aesthetic particularities of the target
language environment. This has brought about the need for a related profession of
written interlingual mediation: localisation.
The most common types of texts that need to be localised are software-related
documents and marketing materials for various types of products sold on the
global market. It is not uncommon that a single localisation process or project
covers several different target markets and target languages, which means that the
translators involved must take into account a variety of technical and linguistic
aspects when adapting the original text. A good translator working in localisation
should be curious, show an interest in the product that needs to be adapted to
other markets and display flexible and advanced innovation skills.
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References
Esselink, B. 2001. A Practical Guide to Software Localisation. Amsterdam: John

Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. 2009. Conventions in localisation: a corpus study of
original vs. translated web texts. Journal of Specialised Translation 12. http://
www.jost-rans.org/issue12/art_jimenez.pdf
Nord, Ch. 1997. Translating as a Purposeful Activity. Functionalist Approaches
Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Pym, A. 2004. The Moving Text: Localization, Translation and Distribution.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Pym, A. 2005. Localization: On its nature, virtues and dangers. http://usuaris. tinet.
cat/apym/on-line/translation/translation.html
Sandrini, P. 2005. Website Localisation and Translation. Proceedings of the
Marie Curie Euroconferences. MuTra: Challenges of Multidimensional
Translation, Saarbrücken, 2–6 May 2005. http://www.euroconferences.info/
proceedings/2005_Proceedings/2005_Sandrini_Peter.pdf, last accessed on 3
December 2015.
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Translation Quality Assessment at the Industrial
Level: Methods for Professional Translation
Quality Assessment
István Lengyel
E-mail: Istvan.Lengyel@kilgray.com
1. Introduction
Two thousand years passed between the birth of translation quality assessment
and the birth of translation studies. Even Cicero and St. Jerome had critiqued
translations, but due to a lack of proper methods for translation criticism, early
translation criticism was based on highly subjective standards (Papp 1982; House
1997; Klaudy 2007) and it was almost strictly limited to ‘timeless’ literary texts. The
fact that translation criticism and derivatives from translations can be criticized
the same way that the translation itself can, demonstrates the magnitude of the
problem of translation quality assessment, and leads to never-ending insoluble
debates about it. Translation studies is trying to overcome this difficulty (Reiss
1971; House 1997; Nord 1997), but so far, there has been no agreement reached on
methods of criticism (for more, see: Dróth 2001).
2. Translation quality assessment: an overview
What is there to assess about a translation? A translation can be assessed at

a textual level or at lower levels. We can assess how it fits into target language
culture, or how well it follows translation instructions. We can assess a translation
formatively, with the aim of improving it and giving advice about it, we can
assess it summatively, correct it, grade it or we can give an industrial, professional
assessment. We can also evaluate its qualities and mistakes. Translation quality
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assessment has objective aspects as well: did the translator submit the translation
at the deadline specified, did the translator translate everything in the text, were
there some parts that the translator did not translate, did the translator keep to the
format that was agreed upon?
Who can assess translation quality? In the translation industry, the evaluation
that counts is the one given by the client. The situation, however, is a bit more
complicated than this because the end customer is often not the client. Many times
the end customer does not order the translation to get a better understanding
of the text, but rather to meet certain subjective and objective expectations. As
translators, we can be tasked with translating part of the troubleshooting manual
for a television set. We may get the assignment from a translation agency, which
received the full document to translate into Hungarian, and they divided it up
into three parts. The agency’s client is an international agency working directly
for the television manufacturer. The manufacturer, however, works with five
companies and distributes its documents based on document type and on what
products they cover. The manufacturer employs revisers. Since nobody at the
manufacturer’s company speaks Hungarian, the manufacturer designates the task
of editing to another translation agency, since the company does not believe that
the first translation agency it hired would be able to edit the text it translated in an
unbiased way. Therefore, the manufacturer applies cross-checking.
The results of revision are important, but for the manufacturer, there is really
only one thing that matters: selling the television set and whether it can increase
its revenue in Hungary (or perhaps in Romania, Slovakia, etc., where they will also
be reading the Hungarian language troubleshooting guide). For the manufacturer,
Hungarian is but one language out of many that it needs to get its documents
translated into. It often has non-native English speakers among its colleagues
coordinating the translation task, who may also wish to participate in evaluating
the translation so that the company can draw some general conclusions.
The Hungarian office or retailer of the television manufacturer is closest to the
target market, so when editing the translation, many revisers will use the so-called
in-country review to check regulatory compliance to the same extent that language
is checked, since the manufacturer needs the translation to be acceptable, not as
a text but as a document that gets the right information across. From their point
of view, the ‘translation’ is correct if it contains the Hungarian customer service
telephone number and address, or if there is no Hungarian customer service,
the manual must make it clear how and in which language the customer can
communicate with customer service. Let us not forget that the company’s ultimate
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Translation Quality Assessment at the Industrial Level
goal is still maximizing profits. From an economic point of view, however, they
need to complete the same evaluation process regarding the translated manual as
they do for its Chinese, Spanish or German language versions, meaning that the
company must conduct its evaluation without taking into account which language
it was translated into. The company looks for translation errors and they assume
that any translation errors that occur are language-independent.
In the example above, I assumed that the source language material is in English,
because that is the industrial norm. As far as I know, the original text is written
in the native language only in Japan. In Germany, for example, most companies
write the documentation in German, but the process of internationalisation, when
the Hungarian translation is also produced, uses the English language document as
the source due to the lower costs of translating from English. This process covers the
translation of product-related documents, but it is similar to most other translation
tasks. A study by the Common Sense Advisory (Hedge-Pielmeier 2014) said
mechanical engineering, the manufacturing of software, medical supplies and auto
parts are the top four areas that generate the most money in Hungary (ahead of, for
example, legal or judicial texts). All four of these areas follow the same work process.
3. Translation error
The category of translation error cannot be interpreted on its own: “The perception
of what constitutes a translation error varies according to translation theories
and norms” (Hansen 2010: 385). An error is something that differs from what is
expected, therefore first and foremost we must determine what the expectations
are. An expectation can be theoretical, such as keeping to an equivalence in a text,
it can be practical, such as following translation instructions, the requirements for
a given document type or an expectation can be social, such as complying with the
behavioural norms defined by the professional translator community (Chesterman
1993). The good news is that in practice, we do not need to approach expectations
from this far away, since a company, for instance the television manufacturer,
is usually fully aware of the types of texts most of its documents are and what
language they need to be translated into and for what purpose.
Most of its documents deal with its own products. These documents can be
user manuals, certificates of conformity, troubleshooting guides, instruction
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manuals or advertisements. A small portion of the documents it sends out for

translation are documents containing legal, business and controlling information
on its subsidiaries, such as retail contracts, communications with the registry
court or tax authority, training documents, etc. All translated texts have their own
clear purpose, and the company can see clearly what parts of these documents
do not have a constant function. For example, contracts often include conditions
pertaining to US exports and discrimination. It may also occur that the television
menu is translated into certain languages but it is not translated into others, while
the documentation is. This is why it is easier to evaluate these translations at an
industrial level than at a translation studies level.
4. Translation quality assessment in practice, QA models
Translation quality assessment most often takes place with the use of Microsoft
Excel files, since the various quality assessment models and their practical
implementation are based on finding, listing, categorising and correcting
translation errors. We must first determine where the error is located in the text,
identify that particular area in the text. This is usually done by marking the number
of the CAT tool segment containing the error and copying the source segment next
to it. At this point we must determine the translation error (along with its type
and seriousness and by giving a detailed description of it), the original (incorrect)
version given by the translator and the reviser’s proposed version.
From here, the rest is all about communication: will the translator accept
the reviser’s opinion and implement it as a correction. Or perhaps the translator
will not accept it and will respond to it. The next question is if the translator
does not accept the reviser’s proposal, is the translator’s reasoning acceptable
to the reviser, and so on. Based on the error types and their seriousness, the
project coordinator can either accept the translation or send it back. I would
like to highlight a point for translators here: while many translators believe that
the only purpose of this process is to deduct pay from the translators, project
coordinators see this differently. They are responsible for the quality of the
translation and their aim is to ensure that the quality of the text is as high as it
can possibly be.
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The error, its location, proposed correction and category are each typed into
a row in the Excel table. The errors can also be identified in separate editing
software or in the built-in quality assessment system of the CAT tool. This mainly
depends on what software the company prescribes and to what extent it allows
revisers to use different software. One advantage of Excel is that it is installed on
almost every computer and is far more widespread than any CAT tool, even among
translators.
The difficulty of implementing this system lies not in the technological aspects
but in defining the right error categories in the given documentation environment.
Another difficulty is describing these errors specifically enough so that the Catalan
reviser in the third-party translation agency will interpret it the same way as the
Chinese reviser in the first company, because if they do not interpret it in the
same way, the quantified errors will not even be comparable within the same
company. When companies are faced with this issue, they soon realise that there
are two things that they cannot work around if they are to assess the quality of
a text: an in-house terminology base and a style guide. The more a translator and
reviser understand about the goals of the company and its expectations, the better
translations they will produce. However, the longer and the more detailed the style
guide is, the less likely they are to read it. A translator who knows and applies the
rules of the style guide will be all the more valuable for the company.
If we understand this, we will see why a company would want to work with the
same translators for the long-run, even if this means outsourcing the translation
job to an agency. In terms of company terminology, it is good if the translator
works with a CAT tool, because then he can simply import the company termbase
and the software will effectively assess whether they were translated correctly. This
is one of the reasons why companies require that translators use a CAT tool: for
them, quality comes not from clever one-off translation solutions but from keeping
to the rules they laid down.
We will now examine four well-known quality assessment models, since all
four of them are based on company practices and they are good starting points
for interpreting error categories and forming error typologies. It is important to
determine the following factors regarding error typologies:
1. Application scenario
2. Preconditions for application
3. Error categories
4. Rules and recommendations for overcoming assessment difficulties
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4.1. The SAE J2450 model
This model was originally initiated by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, its
full name being Quality Metric for Language Translation of Service Information.
Its issuer, SAE, or Society of Automotive Engineers, is a US-based standards
organisation for engineering professionals in various industries. Originally it was
used strictly to evaluate translations of automobile repair information. This was
the documentation read only by mechanics. It did not include, for example, the
car’s user manual. The only prerequisite for this standard is a terminology list. This
model says it assesses translation quality only in terms of grammatical errors, and
it does not take into account style, vocabulary or formatting errors.
The SAE J2450 model recommends that quality evaluators declare a translation
error in all cases, even if the error can be traced back to the source language document.
It also declares that in line with the agreement between the manufacturer and the
translation agency, the translation agency is not liable for these kinds of errors. As seen
below, the model employs 7 error categories and 2 severity levels with point weights:
Table 1
Error categories applied by the SAE J2450 model
Category Major error Minor error

Wrong term 5 2
Syntactic error 4 2
Omission 4 2
Word structure or agreement error 4 2
Misspelling 3 1
Punctuation error 2 1
Miscellaneous error 3 1
The model defines two of these categories. First, both spelling and typing errors
count as misspelling. Its second definition concerns the category of wrong term.
The model says that a term is defined as any single word or multi-word phrase used
as a single lexical unit, including abbreviations, acronyms, numbers, numerals,
and proper names. Based on this definition, it says a term is wrong when it:
– violates a glossary,
– violates standard language or industry usage,
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– is inconsistent with other translations of the same source term,

– denotes a concept different from the concept denoted by the source term.
The model also gives two meta-rules to be applied when the evaluator is in doubt:
1. When an error is ambiguous, always choose the earliest primary category.
2. When in doubt, always choose ‘serious’ over ‘minor’.
3. (SAE. J2450 2001: 4).
If, for example, the translator made a spelling error in an expression, which is
spelled correctly in the client’s terminology list, the error can be considered as
a wrong term or a misspelling. In a case like this the evaluator must categorise it
as a wrong term, because that is the earlier primary category. The model also states
that it is nearly impossible to define what a minor or a major error is. It can only
suggest what a major error could be. The second meta-rule says a major error is an
error that impacts the mechanic’s work or the meaning of the translated text. If the
reviser is unable to decide which severity level is appropriate, then according to the
model, they should always choose ‘major’ over ‘minor’.
The total error score is determined by adding up the scores, and it is best to
apply the score per 100 or 1,000 words.
4.2. The LISA QA model
The LISA QA model developed by the Localisation Industry Standards Association

(LISA) provides an extensive, broad solution to evaluating translation quality and
recognising errors. The model applies a far broader meaning to translation than
SAE J2450 does. It interprets the translation as being more than just the text itself:
the translation is considered to be the entire product. It evaluates graphs, the table of
contents, the localisation of the text and its topic. It gives a comprehensive overview of
what kind of linguistic and non-linguistic factors need to be taken into account during
the translation process, which makes it a far more complex model than the SAE J2450.
The model’s developers say it can be used for any type of translation, since
unlike the SAE model it does not restrict the areas to which it can be applied.
However, all of its examples are borrowed from the field of IT. In addition, it lists
six editing tasks: document formatting, document functionality testing, document
language, software language, software formatting and software functionality
testing. As noted, three of these apply to IT.
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In contrast to the SAE, the LISA QA models say that the reviser does not need
to take into account any errors stemming from the source document. It does,
however, recommend that the source document be checked the same way the
translation is.
Like the SAE J2450 model, the LISA QA model also employs error categories
and severity levels. The error categories are in line with the editing tasks. In terms
of severity, they can be critical, major or minor. The weighting figures are always 10,
5 and 1. The central category of the model is “minimal acceptability”, which it says
needs to be defined depending on the project or client and has no absolute value.
Many organisations that use the LISA QA model look only for language-related
errors and they do not evaluate the text based on the other categories. The graph
below shows the evaluations that need to be carried out in terms of documentation
language (Figure 1).
Figure 1
Error categories of documentation language in the LISA QA model
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The most interesting category is probably “cross references”, which takes into
account text formatting and logical structure. Chapter titles in the text must
correspond to the titles listed in the table of contents, and if a chapter is omitted, the
references must also be modified. The categories of company and country standards
are also interesting. A translation is considered good if it suits the company’s style.
Regional standards refer to cases like the need to re-write references that would not
be relevant for or would not resonate with local audiences.
Country standards apply to numbers, units of measurements and alphabetical
orders. Country lists, for example, when they are in alphabetical order, can seem
strange when they are translated and suddenly appear out of alphabetical order.
The functionality testing of the document is a category that most translators
would not assess on their own, but in reality, it contains very important error
categories:
– Terminology of the user interface: if the elements displayed on the
interface do not show up as they do in the document, then the translation
is incorrect.
– Terminology across applications: documents for related products must
use the same terms for corresponding functions. This applies to new
versions of existing products, products from the same product family or
one product designed to fit different platforms (for example, software for
Windows or Macintosh), etc.
– Abbreviations: abbreviations for given words must be the same in the
software as they are in the document.
– Key combinations and keystrokes: if, for example, a letter can be made
bold with the keyboard shortcut CTRL+F, then the same action should be
performed with the same key combination in the localised version of the
software.
– Screenshots: screenshots in the document must be target language
versions.
– Graphs: graphs must fit and be acceptable in the relevant target culture.
– Country standards: screenshots and other figures must be country-
specific, for instance, the date format must be the format used in the target
country.
– User text input: if the software requires the user input to be “Hello”, the
document should not say that the user input needs to be “Szia” or “Hola”, etc.
– Accuracy of graphics: the relevant graphical elements must be in the right
place in the right localised version.
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– Lists: lists in the document must be complete and they should show the
complete process of the action they are instructing the user on, without
omitting any steps.
– Practical visual information: the various technical details and terms
referenced in the document must accurately represent the software itself.
For example, in the translated version, it would be incorrect to refer to the
button that turns the machine on as the “Power” button if that button is
labelled as “On/Off”. The document should also reference other products,
components and functions correctly. It would be an error for the localised
version of the manual to refer to a publication that is not available in the
given language.
Due to space constraints, this article will not discuss the three editing tasks
listed in the model that refer strictly to software localisation. Readers looking for
more information on software localisation can take a more in-depth look at the
LISA QA model.
4.3. The MQM model
Let us now examine a dynamic model after the previous two static ones. The first
two steps this model takes are to define what it is that is being evaluated and why.
The central categories in the Multidimensional Quality Model are the following
dimensions:
– Language/language community: the language into which the text is to be
translated.
– Subject field/domain: the subject field(s) / (domain(s) of the source text.
– Terminology: the list of terms or reference to terms to be used, including
– Text characteristics, which is divided further into the following categories:
■ Text type: the type and genre of the content. For example, a novel,
a technical user manual, or an advertising text.
■ Audience: the project’s target audience, for example, the users of
the 2934x washing machine are secondary school students studying
environmental studies.
■ Purpose: a statement of the purpose or intended use of the translation,
for example, a text pertaining to a draft bill may inform the reader
about his or her rights.
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■ Register: description of the linguistic register to be used in the target

language.
■ Style: information about the document’s style.
– Content correspondence: specifies how the content is to be translated, for
example, it can specify that information can be omitted from a summary or that
a text needs to look and sound as if it had been written in the target language.
– File format: the file format(s) in which the translated content is to be
delivered.
– Production technology: any technology or software to be used in the
translation process.
– Output modality: information about the way in which the translated
text will be displayed/presented, for example, in the form of subtitles on
a video, as an announcement on a loudspeaker or as text on a cellphone.
The MQM model evaluates the translation based on the dimensions listed
above. The types of errors that need to be evaluated are also determined by these
dimensions. The model, however, only gives a general overview of the types of
errors that can occur in the translation, it does not define exactly what is to be
evaluated according to which dimension.
The model describes three basic evaluation methods. The three aspects that
need to be taken into account are the following:
– Accuracy: evaluation of the relationship of the content of the source and
target texts to each other and how well the target language information
reflects the source language information.
– Fluency: this can be evaluated simply based on examining the target or the
source language text.
– Verity: evaluating the relationship of the text to the world and whether
it contains all the necessary elements, for example, every part of a piece
of furniture that needs to be assembled, or if the steps listed in the text
really lead to the outcome that is described. Verity can also refer to legal
consequences of doing something (it is an error if a text does not contain
certain sentences that were specified by the relevant authority) or even local
conformity, for example, a telephone number that can only be reached in
Germany should not be in the Hungarian document.
The model has a modular structure, as each basic category contains subcategories
and there are also some complementary categories: design, which corresponds
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to the category of formatting in the LISA QA model and internationalisation,

which evaluates whether the product is ready to be used internationally. The third
complementary category is compatibility, which is basically the ‘rubbish bin’ of the
MQM model as this category contains evaluations that are present, for example, in
the LISA QA model, but which the developers of the MQM model thought were
pointless. Why then, does the model have a category for compatibility? Because
the MQM model also wishes to be a standard for data display and wants to both
replace Microsoft Excel in helping revisers search for errors and make it possible
to display the LISA QA model.
MQM also has some meta-rules to make it easier to categorise errors and these
are similar to the meta-rules laid out by SAE: when in doubt, choose the primary
category. MQM also encourages specifying the error: if an error fits into both
a general and a specific category, it should be placed in the specific one.
4.4. The TAUS DQF model
The Translation Automation User Society (TAUS) created its own translation quality
assessment models, seven of them, in fact. To determine which of the seven should
be used in which cases, the reviser must answer the following four questions:
– What category does the content fall into (user interface, online content,
marketing materials, user manuals, instruction manuals, online help,
audio/video content, social media content, etc.),
– Is the content regulated by the industry (yes or no),
– Was it produced for in-house use (yes or no),
– Is the communication channel B2B, B2C or C2C.
The application of the relevant model is determined based on how important one
of the following three parameters is: time, utility and sentiment.
Out of the seven DQF models, we will briefly examine the following six:
1. Adequacy/fluency: TAUS determines the meaning of adequacy and
fluency based on the definition given by the Linguistic Data Consortium.
They say adequacy means “how much of the meaning expressed in the gold
standard translation or the source is also expressed in the target translation”,
while according to them a fluent translation is “one that is well-formed
grammatically, contains correct spellings, adheres to common use of terms,
titles and names, is intuitively acceptable and can be sensibly interpreted by
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a native speaker”. Revisers tend to go over the text sentence by sentence

and evaluate adequacy and fluency on an even-numbered scale. After this,
inter-rater reliability is used to eliminate randomness from the evaluations
of the individual revisers.
2. Adherence to regulatory markets: when a translation is intended for
a regulated industry, the industry’s checklists must be used to see if the
translation complies with sector regulations.
3. Community-based feedback: translations are evaluated by the end users based
on any dimensions (for example, adequacy or fluency). Although it may seem
like an inexpensive evaluation method, this is actually the most expensive,
because the process needs to be inserted into the product’s documentation
process and users need to be motivated to evaluate the translation.
4. Customer feedback: if a customer requires an unusual amount of support
or has too many questions, it is possible that there is a translation error
in the document. Customer feedback will usually make its way to the
people responsible for the translation, who can then make the necessary
corrections.
5. Readability: this model measures the readability of the translation with
subjective feedback. Although there are automated quantitative methods
to evaluate a translation in this way, feedback from native speakers is
probably more valuable.
6. Usability: this model uses comprehension tests, which involve users having
to answer questions after reading the product information. The evaluation
can involve a test in which a user is asked to perform a certain task based
on what the text says, while the evaluators check to see if the user succeeds.
Other methods can be the use of screen recordings, think aloud protocol
or eye tracking.
5. Conclusion
My goal with this text was not to give a detailed presentation on error typologies,
but rather to simply get the reader to understand why there is a need for objective
and language-independent quality assessment, from the point of view of the client.
Something else I wanted to demonstrate is that there is no better solution than
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the use of error typologies if there is only one reviser revising the translation.
I presented the four most well-known quality assessment models, since knowing
about these models can help the reader in introducing error typologies if there is
ever a need. It is important to know, however, that all error typologies are based
on observation, and that all successful evaluation methods were developed under
unique circumstances. Finally, it should be noted that not everybody favours
quantifying translation assessment. We should never force these methods onto
others without first listening to what they have to say about them.
References
Chesterman, A. 1993. From ‘is’ to ‘ought’: Laws, norms and strategies in translation
studies. Target 5(1): 1–20.
Dróth J. 2001. Formatív értékelés a fordítás oktatásában [Formative assessment
in translator education]. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Pécs: Pécsi
Tudományegyetem.
Hansen, G. 2010. Translation ‘errors’. In: Gambier, Y. & van Doorslaer, L. (eds)
Handbook of Translation Studies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing
Company. 385–388.
Hegde, V. & Pielmeier, H. 2014. The Top Industries for LSPs. Lowell. MA: Common
Sense Advisory.
House, J. 1997. Translation Quality Assessment: A Model Revisited. Tübingen: Narr
Verlag.
Klaudy K. 2007. Fordítástudomány az ezredfordulón [Translation Studies at
the Turn of the Millenium]. In: Klaudy, K. (eds) Nyelv és fordítás. Válogatott
fordítástudományi tanulmányok [Language and Translation: Selected Papers
in Translation Studies]. Budapest: Tinta Könyvkiadó. 33–43.
Nord, C. 1997. Translating as Purposeful Activity. Functionalist Theories Explained.
Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Papp Gy. 1982. Miféle kritika a fordításkritika [What does Translation Criticism
Criticise]? Híd 46(9): 1034–1043.
Reiss, K. 1971. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Übersetzungskritik. München: Max
Heuber.
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Sources
SAE J2450. Society of Automotive Engineers, Vehicle E E System Diagnostic
Standards Committee. Warrendale, PA, 2011. http://standards.sae.org/wip/j2450/
LISA QA model 3.1. User’s Manual. Localization Industry Standards Association.
Romainmotier, 2007.
QT Launchpad MQM model. DFKI. Berlin, 2014. http://www.qt21.eu/launchpad/
TAUS DQF model. Translation Automation User Society. De Rijp, 2013–2014.
https://evaluation.taus.net/resources/error-typology-guideline, last accessed
on 15 December 2015.
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Volunteer Translation and Interpreting
Ildikó Horváth
E-mail: horvath.ildiko@btk.elte.hu
1. Introduction
The language service provider profession has evolved and undergone considerable
changes over the course of the past several decades. One of the most important
changes in fact was that it started to evolve into a profession. Professionalisation
involves several individual and collective factors, such as the attainment of
a certain social status, suggestions to define standards of best practice, to control
access to professional knowledge, and to control education and work opportunities
(Wadensjö et al. 2007: 2). The language service provider profession today has its
own professional organisations, codes of ethics, different training courses, post-
graduate training courses, advanced training courses for teachers, online message
boards, blogs, etc.
Language service providers can be divided into two broader categories:
professionals who mediate between languages in writing, or translators, and those
who mediate between languages orally, or interpreters. The profession, however,
is nowhere near homogeneous, since both translators and interpreters can work
in a variety of contexts: they can be freelancers or employed at companies. They
can also specialise in a variety of fields or work for international institutions. They
may have formal qualifications or they may have taken up the profession without
having received any formal training.
The translation profession has more and more variety. Instead of ‘traditional
translators’ the market now looks for versatile language service providers who
have a good grasp of the different phases of the translation process, meaning that
besides being skilled in translation in the traditional sense, they also know how to
prepare, revise, post-edit translations or create and manage termbases. Interpreting
is an equally diverse profession: depending on the mode of interpreting, we can
distinguish consecutive interpreting, simultaneous interpreting and chuchotage.
We can also distinguish a variety of interpretation types based on the subject and/
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or venue of the interpreting event: these types can be judicial, medical, church,
community or conference interpreting. Furthermore, many freelance interpreters
also regularly take up translation jobs.
Alongside the diversity, it is clear that there is a kind of uniformity to the
everyday jobs of translators and interpreters. What Gouadec (2007) says about
translation applies to interpreting as well. He says that all language service
providers face the exact same challenges: a lack of appreciation for their work,
complexity of their tasks, information and communication technologies impacting
their work methods, the pressure for cost efficiency and the battle for professional
status (Gouadec 2007: XVIII).
The process of professionalisation seems to be contradicted by the spread of
non-professional language services, in other words translation and interpreting
services that are not paid for. Pérez-González & Susam-Saraeva (2012) say there is
such an abundance of these services that professional translation and interpreting
is now considered a subcategory of translation and interpreting and not its
norms-defining prototype. These services are spreading so fast that there are now
online data management systems to support the work of volunteer translators and
interpreters (Bey et al. 2006; Boitet et al. 2005; Utiyama et al. 2009).
The reasons for the proliferation of volunteer translation and interpreting are
manifold: the perennial priority of cost saving; the ever accelerating development
of the internet and ICTs; the rise of online communities. In what follows, I will
define the concepts behind volunteer translation and interpreting and illustrate
several fascinating examples. Then I will discuss who undertakes translation and
interpreting on a voluntary basis and the motivation factors for them doing so.
Finally, I will turn to the questions this issue raises for the profession itself.
2. Volunteer translation and interpreting
Over the last four to five decades, translation studies literature generally focused on
the most important questions in interlingual mediation, its universal characteristics,
quality, training and its professional status. It was not until the recent past that it
started to explore the topic of volunteer translation and interpreting.
The subject is so new that not even the term unpaid translation and
interpreting has been clarified yet. We see this phenomenon presented in a variety
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of ways: fansubbing, fan translation, crowdsourcing, amateur translation and

interpreting, community translation, user-generated translation, cooperative
translation or informal interpreting. Another common term used to refer to these
services is non-professional translation and interpreting. This wording indicates
that it is a service provided for free. A disadvantage of it is that it implies that
only people who are not professional language service providers and who do
not make a living out of translation and interpreting would offer such services.
This, however, is not the case, since more and more professional language service
providers engage in non-professional translation and interpreting, meaning that
they do it for free. This is why the term volunteer translation and interpreting is
the one that best expresses the two most important characteristics of the concept.
The first is that these services are free, translators and interpreters are not paid to
do them, and the second is that both highly-qualified and trained professionals
and non-professionals can take up these jobs. Below we will discuss the most
interesting types of volunteer translation and interpreting.
2.1. Fansubbing
Dwyer (2012) says that fansubbing is a heterogeneous and fast expanding area of
volunteer translation. A good example of a service that survives on fansubbing is
Viki (www.viki.com), a video streaming website that aims to provide everybody
with the opportunity to enjoy the best international films and television
programmes in their native language. More than 125 million subtitles were created
in 157 languages with the help of fansubbing. This sort of activity is an ongoing
process which feeds on the contributions made by the entire online community.
Viki says its fansubbers are united in their fandom and passion for their favourite
TV shows and movies. The aim is to share this content with as wide an audience
as possible. Viki considers itself a start-up company, and therefore contradicts the
general assumption that fansubs are not created for financial gain (Dwyer 2012:
217–219).
The model created by Viki raises a number of debated questions in translation
studies. The most important of these is the question of quality. The philosophy of
Viki is that it does not limit participation, in other words, anybody can translate
subtitles. Therefore we have reason to assume that this will affect the quality of the
subtitles. Dwyer (2012) says Viki carried out an experiment in which the website
limited participation for a brief period in the cases of five projects. The result of
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the experiment indicated that less controlled environments led to a larger number
of target language solutions, which led to higher quality subtitles within a shorter
amount of time. There are still some translation errors in the subtitles, but users
can quickly correct them. O’Hagan (2008) said fan subtitles created for anime are
often of higher quality than professional translations created for this genre, mainly
because of fans’ greater background knowledge about the shows. Furthermore, fan
groups often make up real translation communities in which amateur translators
can learn from their peers (also experts in the genre) in a cooperative environment.
2.2. Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing generally occurs in the form of social media users translating the
social media website into a variety of target languages. Perhaps the best known
example of a website whose content is also created with the help of crowdsourcing
is Wikipedia. Kelly & Zetsche (2012) say Wikipedia is one of the first internet
portals to provide information in several foreign languages. In 2012, Wikipedia
had articles in 284 different languages. These translations are created by volunteers
from a global community. Wikipedia has about 100 thousand users who regularly
edit and update articles. Not all of them are translators but many of them are fluent
in multiple languages. Editing Wikipedia articles, however, is not an example for
traditional translation since not all of the articles produced in different languages
are copies of each other. Each new version of an article is its own cultural product
created by volunteer communities. Furthermore, it is not unusual for a single
Wikipedia author to produce articles in multiple languages. There are, however,
certain articles, like the ones for basic sciences or mathematics that are translated
in the traditional sense. It is also important to note that the communities producing
the different versions for articles create a very important database of knowledge
that can help the survival of certain less widely used languages. Translation plays
a key role in this (Kelly & Zetzsche 2012: 202–204).
Interestingly, translation also played a key role in the history of Facebook and
still contributes to the rapid spread of the social media giant (Kelly & Zetzsche
2012: 202–204). In 2007, Facebook tested an experimental translation method: it
allowed crowds of users to decide what they wanted the website to look like in their
native language. Within a few weeks, Facebook launched its first non-English
version, the Spanish edition of Facebook. After positive feedback from users,
Facebook opened its crowdsourcing platform for the creation of a German and
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French edition. This created a snowball effect as 2008 became the year Facebook
went international which resulted in the number of its users of its international
pages multiplying within months. For the French version, it resulted in the 1.4
million French users expanding to 2.4 million users over the course of the first
three months when the French version of the website became available. After the
Italian version appeared, the number of Italian users grew from 375 thousand to
993 thousand within the first four months. We can therefore easily conclude that
these translations had a significant effect on the growth of Facebook. In 2012,
Facebook was accessible in 77 languages and a further 30 international versions
were under development.
The reason why the case of Facebook is interesting is that it represents a balance
between unpaid and paid translation, since the international versions are not
created solely through volunteer translation. Professional translation agencies
work on about 30 versions. These professional translation service providers are
needed because their primary job is to manage and organise the versions that were
translated by volunteer translators, as it is challenging to ensure that every single
update is available for every single international version immediately. Furthermore,
ensuring that the international versions of updates are available when they launch
is not the only task at hand: security risks must also be managed. At the same time,
professionals need to coordinate the work of the volunteer translators to ensure
that they translate the right platforms. They must also stop anyone from joining
the volunteers with intent to damage users’ pages (Kelly & Zetzsche 2012: 210–213).
2.3. Church interpreting
One particular area of volunteer interpreting could be providing interpreting

services to a church. Hokkanen (2012) says volunteer translation in religious,
church environments is common in the world. In the Tampere Pentecostal Church
in Finland, the service is interpreted by volunteers for church members who do
not understand Finnish. The service is primarily interpreted into English, Russian,
German, Spanish and Chinese. This kind of interpreting fails to qualify as quality
professional interpreting for a number of reasons. Most of the interpreters are
themselves members of the congregation who have no formal training in either
interpreting or translation. Nor are they ideologically neutral to the content of
what they are interpreting. However, in this context, interpreting is not merely
volunteer work or a service provided for the members of the church. It is about
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serving God. Hokkanen (2012) came to the conclusion that volunteer interpreting
in communities that are partial to certain ideologies calls into question the
traditional rule that interpreters should be neutral mediators, because in such
ideologically non-partial contexts interpreters also contribute significantly
to spreading the ideology itself. Hokkanen (2012) says this factor is at least as
important as the interpreter’s level of training or the quality of the interpretations.
2.4. Medical interpreting
Schouten et al. (2012) use the term ‘informal interpreting’ to describe volunteer
interpreting done in a medical environment. Informal medical interpreting
is a part of the lives of millions of people and it usually concerns migrants,
immigrants, tourists and their doctors and nurses. This type of interpreting
is usually done by family members or acquaintances. Schouten et al. (2012)
conducted thirty interviews and after assessing the results they concluded that the
informal interpreters were very much ‘visible’. They employed many different kinds
of communication strategies, took on many different roles and were occasionally
the primary speakers.
2.5. Volunteer translation and interpreting in disaster situations
Disasters are very hard to predict, but when they do occur, the ability to mediate
between two parties who speak different languages could mean the difference
between life and death. Kelly & Zetzsche (2012) say simply being able to utter the
sentence “If you can hear me knock three times” can save lives. Time is also of the
essence in disaster recovery efforts and language barriers can waste even more
time. In the case of domestic or international disasters, entire rescue operations
can depend on language and being able to overcome language barriers. Luckily,
technological advances can now speed up and facilitate language assistance in
rescue efforts.
A good example of this is the earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, when
text messages were the only means of communication between Haiti and the rest of
the world. However, most of the outgoing messages were written in Haitian Creole,
which the majority of the disaster response crew did not understand. And so Enter
Rob Munro created the Mission 4636 project. Within the first week he was joined
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by 1,000 volunteers from over 49 countries. One of the most important parts of
the project was the online chatroom that was used to direct new volunteers and
which facilitated constant communication between disaster response forces on the
ground and translators. There were many cases where the meanings of certain
vernacular expressions needed to be clarified in real time. The Mission 4636 project
operated for a total of 100 days. The project received and translated and re-sent
40,000 incoming text messages over the first month. It took about 10 minutes for
a text message to reach the translator, be translated and then to be sent back in the
target language to the response crew. One month into the project, the volunteer
work was gradually turned into paid work, creating job opportunities in a country
that was already struggling with high unemployment before the earthquake (Kelly
& Zetzsche 2012: 12–14).
A fairly recent example of volunteer interpreting is the downing of the Malaysia
Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft on July 17, 2014 in eastern Ukraine where pro-Russia
separatists had been fighting the Ukrainian army for months. The plane was
carrying 295 people. A few days after the tragedy, a professional interpreter living
in Ukraine took to Facebook to offer his and his colleagues’ services in interpreting
for free to relatives, detectives or experts arriving at the scene, with language
combinations using English, Russian, Ukrainian, German and French.
3. Motivations
The intrinsic (internal) and instrumental (external) motivation factors of altruistic

behaviour are complex and hard to study. Lowe and Fothergill (2009) studied the
motivations of volunteers assisting with rescue efforts after 9/11. They concluded
that workers who volunteered after the attacks spontaneously wanted to help the
community out of altruism and also wanted to help themselves come to terms with
the tragedy.
In the field of translation and interpreting, there have been few papers published
on research about the motivations behind volunteer translation and interpreting
(Olohan 2012). One of the exceptions to this is the work of McDonough Dolmaya
(2012) in which the author attempted to find out who translates on a voluntary
basis for Wikipedia and why. The survey sampled 75 people who had already taken
up volunteer translation jobs for Wikipedia into English. Regarding the question
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as to who takes up unpaid translation assignments, results indicated that 84% of them
were male while 76% of those 84% were 35 years old or younger. Fully 6.5% of them are
qualified translators while 68% of them have never received any formal translation
training. The rest all studied some form of translation at work or over the course of
their higher education studies (McDonough Dolmaya 2012: 171–173).
The translators who participated in the survey could be broken down into
two categories in terms of their motivation: professional and non-professional
translators. The survey indicated that the main goal of non-professional translators
is to make information accessible to audiences other than the source language
audience, to engage in an intellectually stimulating activity, to develop their
translation skills and to support the organisation that had initiated the translation.
Volunteers who do not have formal training in translation often devote more time
to translation than their professional counterparts. Professional translators are
also intrinsically motivated to do volunteer work and one of their goals is making
information accessible to others. For them, the survey also concluded that their
volunteerism is also influenced by instrumental motivation factors. Professional
translators often responded saying that they volunteer to gain new clients or that
they want to improve their reputation by participating in community translation
projects (McDonough Dolmaya 2012: 187–188).
One important aspect in what was discussed above is that by being involved
in a community translation project, volunteer translators contribute to achieving
the goals of the ‘client’. This is true not only for Wikipedia but Facebook as well,
whose mission is to create a more open and more connected world. Language and
translation play crucial roles in accomplishing that mission. The same can be said
about Twitter’s volunteer translators and moderators, who are proud of the fact
that they can be a part of the formation of a social network that allows users to
express their different opinions (Kelly & Zetzsche 2012).
4. Conclusion
Volunteer translation and interpreting, in general, can be traced back to the spread
of information and communication technology, the emergence of online, virtual
communities and online networking. Facebook and Twitter are good examples
to illustrate that volunteer community translation is often closely related to the
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emergence and use of community platforms. We also saw that with the help of
new communication tools, volunteer translation and interpreting can be organised
faster and more efficiently in serious disaster situations. In cases like this, directly
after accidents, it is often difficult to get a hold of professional interpreters both
physically and financially.
Nonetheless, volunteer translation and interpreting is an oft-debated question.
There are many reasons for this. One of them is quality. Assessing the quality
of translated texts and interpreted speeches is a central topic of translation and
interpreting studies and for the other representatives of the profession (clients,
translators, interpreters, revisers, vendor managers, project managers, professional
organisations). Some believe there are certain topics that volunteer translators are
better at than professional translators, (for example, anime) because of their greater
background knowledge (O’Hagan 2008). It was not because of quality issues that
Facebook required professional translators either, as there was nothing wrong with
the quality of the translations the volunteers produced (Kelly & Zetzsche 2012). This
might raise the question whether there is even a need for professional translators if
volunteer translators do indeed produce similar or sometimes better quality work
than them. One reassuring answer is that assessing translation quality could be
a complex and often subjective process: it depends greatly on who is doing the
assessing. It may happen that clients are more indulgent to translations done by
volunteers than they are to professional work which they have to pay for. There is
more research needed, however, in order to be able to say this for certain.
The above is strongly connected to the professional status of translation
and interpreting. Professional, highly trained translators and interpreters are
constantly fighting for the recognition of their profession and for improving its
status. One of the main arguments in this is that translation and interpreting is not
strictly about the knowledge of a language. Having a good grasp of two or more
languages is but a basic requirement, and there are several other skills that are
needed to produce high quality translations and interpretations. Among these, the
most important ones are: language transfer skills; the ability to process information
quickly and efficiently; conscious language usage; secondary communication skills;
intercultural knowledge and competence; in-depth background knowledge; being
up-to-date with current affairs; professional ethics; knowledge of the language
mediation process, etc. This raises the following question: how does it affect the
view people have of the profession if people who have not shown themselves to
be in possession of these skills can get translation and interpreting jobs with
multinational companies?
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Volunteer work in general is fairly common. Companies often provide their

employees with volunteer work within their regular working hours. When
volunteers are not providing the professional skills that they have acquired, they will,
by way of contrast, most likely be repainting the fence of a kindergarten, a school
or benches in a park. Apart from being helpful for the community, volunteer
work is also a great team building exercise. Another example of volunteer work
is the European Voluntary Service which provides volunteer work for 18-30-year-
olds in different countries. From January 1, 2016, doing volunteer work will be
a precondition for secondary school graduation in Hungary. Graduating students
will have to provide proof of having completed 50 hours of community service. It is
very important to note, however, that the examples of volunteer work listed above
do not require as complex competences as translation or interpreting does.
Herein lies the danger, even if it is unpaid work, that this could reinforce
the belief for many people that translation and interpreting is more “manual
labour” than an intellectual activity given the practical nature of it (Venuti 1992).
Dwyer (2012) says that the main problem with community translation and more
specifically fansubbing is that it is not a controlled activity, and can be done by
anybody and does not have any prerequisites.
Pym (2011) said that due to technological developments and the spread of
machine translation and translation memories, professional translators will be
forced to relinquish certain markets to volunteers who, thanks to their dedication
and knowledge, are capable of using translation memories and can post-edit
machine-translated texts at a high level. It is possible, therefore, that technology
will lead us to enjoying amateur entertainment. In such a world, translation is not
some special activity that can only be performed by professionals specialising in
a given domain. In such a scenario, translation becomes the fifth basic language
skill in addition to listening, reading, writing and speaking.
Finally, it is important to note that volunteer, unpaid translation raises certain
serious moral dilemmas, especially in the cases of profit-driven companies which,
through volunteering will have access to free labour in the name of openness and
information sharing (O’Hagan 2011). Fansubbing may also be a cause for concern
in terms of copyright, and the same goes for translating video games. In fact, these
activities have already led to the coinage of the term ‘translation hacking’.
In conclusion, we can say that volunteer translation and interpreting has by
now become a kind of professional movement. Many people are motivated to take
up unpaid translation and interpreting jobs for a variety of reasons. Volunteer work
is beneficial in itself for both professional and non-professional language service
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providers. Indeed, if it were not so, they would not volunteer in the first place.
They take on such work purely because they enjoy it. It usually involves a special
area that is of particular interest or concern to them. Professional translators and
interpreters do not necessarily have to be worried about the phenomenon, since
most volunteers tend not to translate complex legal, economic or technical texts
in their free time. Obtaining a deeper understanding of volunteer translation and
interpreting, however, will require further research.
References
Bey, Y., Kageura, K, & Boitet, C. 2006. Data Management in QRLex, an Online Aid
System for Volunteer Translators. Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language
Processing 11(4): 349–376. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/O/006/O06-5003.pdf
Boitet, C., Bey Y., & Kageura, K. 2005. Main research issues in building web services
for mutualised, non-commercial translation. Proceeding of the 6th Symposium
on Natural Language Processing, Human and Computer Processing of Language
and Speech. SNLP-05, Thailand. http://panflute.p.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~bey/pdf/
SNLP05-BoitetBeyKageura.v5.pdf
Dwyer, T. 2012. Fansub Dreaming on Viki. ‘Don’t Just Watch But Help When You
Are Free’. The Translator 18(2): 217–243.
Gouadec, D. 2007. Translation as a Profession. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Hokkanen, S. 2012. Simultaneous Church Interpreting as Service. The Translator
18(2): 291–309.
Kelly, N. & Zetzsche, J. 2012. Found in Translation. New York: Penguin Group.
Lowe, S. & Fothergill, A. 2009. A Need to Help: Emergent Volunteer Behaviour
after Sep-tember 11th. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American
Sociological Association. Atlanta Hilton Hotel, Atlanta, 26 May 2009. http://
www.colorado. edu/hazards/publications/sp/sp39/sept11book_ch11_lowe.pdf.
McDonough Dolmaya, J. 2012. Analyzing the Crowdsourcing Model and Its
Impact on Public Perceptions of Translation. The Translator 18(2): 167–191.
O’Hagan, M. 2008. Fan Translator Networks: An Accidental Translator Training
Environment? In: Kearns, J. (eds) Translator and Interpreter Training: Issues,
Methods and Debates. London: Continuum. 158–183.
149
O’Hagan, M. 2009. Evolution of User-generated Translation: Fansubs, Translation

Hacking and Crowdsourcing. Journal of Internationalisation and Localisation
1: 94–121. http://www.academia.edu/4462788/Evolution_of_Usergenerated_
Trans-lation_Fansubs_Translation_Hacking_and_Crowdsourcing.
O’Hagan, M. 2011. Introduction: Community Translation: Translation as
a social activity and its possible consequences in the advent of Web 2.0 and
beyond. Linguistica Antverpiensia 10:1–10. http://www.academia.edu/4462748/
Community _Translation_Translation_as_a_social_activity_and_its_
possible_consequences _in_the_advent_of_Web_2.0_and_beyond.
Olohan, M. 2012. Volunteer Translation and Altruism in the Context of
a Nineteenth-Century Scientific Journal. The Translator 18(2): 193–215.
Pérez-González, L., Susam-Saraeva, Ş. (2012) Non-professionals Translating and
Interpreting. The Translator 18(2): 149–165.
Pym, A. 2011. What technology does to translating. Translation & Interpreting. 3(1):
1–9. http://trans-int.org/index.php/transint/article/view/121.
Schouten, B., Ross, J., Zendedel, R., Meeuwesen, L. 2012. Informal Interpreters in
Medical Settings. A Comparative Socio-cultural Study of the Netherlands and
Turkey. The Translator 18(2): 311–338.
Venuti, L. 1992. Introduction. In: Venuti, L. (eds) Rethinking Translation: Discourse,
Subjectivity, Ideology. London & New York: Routledge. 1–17.
Utiyama, M., Abekawa, T., Sumita, E. & Kageura, K. 2009. Hosting Volunteer
Translators. Machine Translation Summit XII. proceedings. Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada, August 26–30 2009. http://www.mt-archive.info/MTS-2009-
Utiyama-2.pdf.
Wadensjö, C., Dimitrova, B. E. & Nilsson, A-L. (eds) 2007. The Critical Link 4.
Professionalization of interpreting in the community. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
John Benjamins Publishing Company.
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PART 2:
Information and Communication
Technologies in Translation and
Interpreting
Machine Translation
Ágnes Varga
E-mail: Agnes.Varga@kilgray.com
1. What is machine translation?
Machine translation is an increasingly common term and one that we hear quite
often. We may even have reason to think that it is a completely innovative and
modern concept, but the reality is that researchers have been studying machine
translation since before the spread of personal computers. Machine translation
as an idea has been around even longer than that, but research did not really gain
momentum until after the Second World War, since when it has enjoyed a fairly
interesting history both in terms of interest in the subject and technological
advancements.
What is machine translation? The term itself refers to both the translation
process and its product. As a process it is a series of steps over the course of which
a computer transforms a text or speech from one language to another. Machine
translation is also used to refer to the product of this series of steps. To distinguish
between the two meanings, we may refer to the latter as machine-translated text,
but due to its length this term is rarely used.
The use of human assistance is permitted but it is important that the translation
(or transformation) itself is done by a computer. In other words, the term ‘machine
translation’ can be interpreted in a broader and a narrower sense. Machine
translation in the broader sense, as Somers (1998) says, is the automated process by
which computer software is used to translate a text from one language to another,
as well as the process known as interactive translation together with the pre-editing
and post-editing process. In practice, machine translation generally refers strictly
to the completely automated translation process without any pre or post-editing.
When researching cases of machine translation, it is crucial to know whether the
translation process began with pre-editing or if the text has been post-edited, in
other words, if there was any human assistance in the translation process. A look
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at the final product itself will not be enough to determine the extent of human
input, although whether it even matters for the reader is an interesting question.
In some ways, automated machine translation is similar to human translation
and yet in others it is very different. Machine translation, like human translation,
is bilingual mediated communication (Reiß 1978). Machine translation only takes
into account the narrower aspects of communication: the ones that are required to
transform a source language text into a target language text. In other words, it is
not necessary to take into consideration the other elements of the communication
process, as those do not impact the final result. Machine translation cannot take
into account the communication situation, the reader, etc. To understand the
machine translation process, it is enough to observe Nida’s model in which he
divides the translation process into a decoding phase and an encoding phase.
The primary objective of the machine translation process is to ensure formal
equivalence (Nida 1964).
The input in machine translation is the source language text while the output is
the target language text. Whether the output can be considered a text, however, is
debatable. From the point of view of text linguistics, it does not meet the standards
of ‘textuality’ which Beaugrande says are cohesion, coherence, intentionality,
acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality. Beaugrande states
that if a text fails to meet any of these standards, it will not be communicative and
non-communicative texts are treated as non-texts (Beaugrande 1981). Machine-
translated texts meet all seven of these standards to at least some extent, although
naturally not every translation will meet them to the same extent. It is best to treat
the machine translation output as a text the same way that we would treat a written
composition by a language learner as a text. In line with the international literature
on machine translation, we will also treat the output, which is essentially a ’pile of
words’, as text. In my opinion, of the seven standards of textuality, acceptability is
slightly more important than the other six, because if a text is acceptable despite
all its other shortcomings, then the reader will also treat it as a text.
We have established that the input and output in the machine translation process
are ‘the same’ as they are in the human translation process. Another similarity is
that from the participants of the human translation process, the original author
and the reader of the translated product – whom we will not consider to be
a part of the simplified process of translation – are also present in the machine
translation process. The only participant missing is the translator, who in this case
is substituted by the translation software. Klaudy says translation is a creative
activity, since the translator “encounters a set of choices when translating each
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sentence with the final product being a result of an infinite number of decisions.
[…] It is an activity done based on certain objective rules but one that also allows
for numerous subjective decisions” (Klaudy 2004: 15, own translation).
Newton says that adapting texts from one language to another is based on
subjective criteria and that “producing a translation […] requires considerable
resourcefulness and creativity” due to the amount of acceptable renderings that
can be produced (Newton 1992: 5).
As we can see, the translator is always forced to make choices, and often
subjective ones. How can we then even consider the possibility that a machine
is capable of ‘imitating’ such a difficult process? How could a computer make
subjective decisions or even engage in any creative activity? The difficulty of
machine translation stems from the nature of the activity of translation and the
complexity of the entire process.
Looking at it this way, machine translation seems like an impossible task, yet
experience has shown that machine translated texts can definitely be used in real
life and the process itself can definitely be considered translation. The nature of
the machine translation process, however, means that texts translated this way will
vary in quality depending on the software used or the language pair. It is therefore
better to apply a more grounded, pragmatic approach to studying this process.
Let us for now ignore the view that translation is a creative activity requiring
decisions. For the time being, we will say that translation is simply a process that
involves finding a temporarily reasonably acceptable target language equivalent
for a source language unit. If that equivalent is not perfect at first, we can find
a suitable alternative later on. The result of the machine translation process will
most likely never be the same as what a human translation would come up with,
but if we are honest, human translations are not always perfect either, since we too
are prone to make errors. But it is extremely important to see machine translation
for what it is: we must never consider it a perfect translation or a result of a creative
process. It is merely a tool that we use when human translation is unavailable or
difficult to get hold of.
The translation process consists of three steps: decoding, transcoding and
encoding (Klaudy 2004: 152). Each of these steps is complex enough on its own
and if there is an error in any of the steps it will impact the entire translated
product, since the error will inevitably be carried on to the following step. Machine
translation in general – depending on the algorithm or methodology employed – is
also made up of these same three steps, and therefore errors in any of the steps
will have the same result as they would in a human translation process. Below we
155
will see that there is a machine translation methodology that ‘imitates’ the human
process, complete with the above three steps. Other methodologies, however, skip
certain phases.
2. Types of machine translation
2.1. Direct machine translation systems
Boitet et al. say machine translation types were categorized differently in

different time periods of research. At first, in the 1970s, machine translation
methodologies were categorised according to the technology used in the three
translation steps listed above (Boitet et al. 2009). In the period after the Second
World War, researchers, especially computer scientists, naively delved right into
the world of machine translation out of enthusiasm about artificial intelligence.
Using cryptography, they created the first direct machine translation systems
that simply substituted words with their dictionary-based equivalents instead of
completing the phases of decoding and encoding. The system completely skipped
the transcoding phase. This methodology was obviously unsuccessful but research
and development at the time considered the role of linguistics to be superfluous
and therefore did not even resort to applying linguistics as a science. Theories on
formal language had yet to be written and scientists did not even consider the
possibility of having strict and formal rules pertaining to language that could
help computers create acceptable translations, while computer scientists had no
adequate knowledge about linguistics (Somers 2000).
This is hardly surprising given that the ALPAC report issued in 1966 was
very sceptical of research done in machine translation up to that point, and
although it emphasised the need for basic research in computational linguistics,
it did not express great expectations about the usefulness of machine translation
in the near future. The prediction made in the ALPAC report has since been
contradicted as, for example, the translation system METEO was used to
translate weather forecasts as early as 1977 in Canada (Thouin 1981). In the cases
of certain language pairs, machine-translated texts were also used in practice,
albeit with post-editing.
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Machine Translation
2.2. Indirect machine translation systems
Although research on machine translation at this point came to a halt in the United
States and the UK, mostly due to a lack of funding, research continued throughout
the rest of Europe. It was not until the 1960s that V. Yngve (Boitet 1998) suggested
that machine translation should be broken up into three stages instead of using
direct methods. Yngve said the process should be broken up into source language
analysis, bilingual transfer and target language synthesis, which corresponds to
the three-step approach to the translation process. The representation resulting
from analysis had to be an intermediary representation not relying on the target
language. This method is known as the transfer approach.
In 1951, Bar-Hillel suggested the use of an interlingua for intermediary
representation, for example Esperanto or an abstract intermediary language so
that synthesis could then be carried out into any other language. Schubert also
recommends the use of Esperanto as an interlingua (Schubert 1992: 79). This
is known as the interlingua approach, and although its popularity peaked in
the 80s and the 90s, it is still used today in experiments (e.g. Dave et al. 2001).
The transfer and interlingua approaches are the second generation of machine
translation and are also known as indirect machine translation systems. These
approaches are illustrated below in the Vauquois machine translation triangle
(Vauquois 1976: 131):
Figure 1
The first and second generation of machine translation
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2.3. Knowledge-based machine translation systems
The third generation of machine translation methods are the ones that apply
knowledge about the world. These are known as the knowledge-based machine
translation systems, but they did not gain ground at all.
After 2000, emphasis gradually shifted to Rule-Based Machine Translation
(RBMT) and Statistics-Based Machine Translation (SMT). In the 1980s, machine
translation research started using corpus-based methods, which apply statistics-
based and example-based machine translation (EBMT) approaches. Both SMT
and EBMT use bilingual parallel corpora in research.
Statistics-based methods are mainly based on the following model (Hutchins
2005b): words and sentences are aligned to create a bilingual parallel corpora to
create a translation model (based on frequency of co-occurrence) and a linguistic
model (based on probability for certain word sequences). This is followed by
selecting the most probable target language equivalent for each source language
word and the most probable sequence of these words in a sentence. The basic units
of translation are words. The translation model determines the probability of
a target language word being the equivalent of a given source language word, while
the linguistic model determines the most probable acceptable sequence of a given
set of target language words in the target language.
Example-based systems are similar (Hutchins 2005b), but in this case the
units of translation are phrases. In the analysis phase, the system divides the
input sentence into segments which are then aligned with the correct source
language segments in the database. These segments are patterns that may contain
variables. In the pre-synthesis stage, the source language segments are aligned
with the target language segments in the database and templates are derived. In the
synthesis stage the derived target language segments are transformed, combined
and the output sentences are formed. Example-based machine translation systems
integrate several different methodologies and techniques from other types of
systems (RBMT, SMT, translation memories). Any system can combine the various
methodologies.
Rule-based systems are based on linguistic information about source and
target languages retrieved from rules and grammars. The rules are used to analyse
the source language text and then to generate the target language text based on
that analysis. RBMT can also make use of dictionaries. The systems use the rules
to generate an intermediary representation and then a target language text.
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Machine Translation
2.4. The MetaMorpho translation system
The highest quality translation system in terms of English-Hungarian translation

is the pattern-based MetaMorpho (www.webforditas.hu) (Prószéky & Tihanyi
2002). The system aims to find the optimal solution between example-based and
rule-based systems. The system’s ‘knowledge’ is comprised of patterns that possess
certain attributes. If these attributes have specific values, these patterns are called
examples but if the values of the attributes are not ‘filled out’ the patterns are
considered rules. The generalized rules are rules with certain defined attributes.
The examples are generated from dictionaries, corpora or collocation databases and
the rules are created manually. Every source language pattern has a corresponding
target language pattern, which are then paired up in the translation process. There
is a chance that a given target language unit corresponds to more than one target
language unit. In this case more specific patterns override general ones, in other
words the system will choose the source language pattern whose attribute has
a more defined value.
In the translation process (Figure 2) the analysis phase is followed directly by
the target language synthesis phase, thus generating the target language tree. The
transfer phase is skipped in this process. The target language tree is immediately
used to generate the target language sentence. The three phases of analysis are the
following:
1. Sentences are tokenized into words; morphological analysis.
2. Syntactic analysis of the input sentence with a bottom-up analyser which
generates the target language tree with terminal and non-terminal
symbols. If the sentence is correct, the analyser will create one or more
root symbols.
3. The target language tree is formed, the morphological generator then
creates the output sentence from the terminal symbols on the leaves of the
tree. The set of terminal symbols is a finite one containing the elements
that make up the sentences of the language (Prószéky & Kis 1999: 115).
This process does not require a transfer phase to transform the source language
representation into a target language representation, nor does it require an
intermediary language.
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Figure 2
The MetaMorpho translation process
The system uses unification grammar and the morphological analysis that follows
the tokenization is done by the HUMOR morphological analyser (Prószéky 1994).
MetaMorpho can be used to translate smaller texts and entire webpages (http://
www.webforditas.hu).
3. How can machine translation be useful?
I would first like to emphasise how machine translation cannot be used. In no way
can it be used for literary translation or for translating texts that aim to impress
the viewer in any way. Examples of these sorts of texts would be advertisements
or company brochures. In other words, it is not a good idea to use raw or slightly
post-edited machine translations for texts where besides the information itself,
appearance is also important. Put another way, out of Reiß’ texts, only informative
texts can be translated using machine translation systems (Reiß 1981).
Sager says machine translation can be most useful in the following situations:
a) When there is an insufficient amount of human resources available.
b) When there is a significant demand for quick and inexpensive translations.
c) There are certain situations and functions for which machine translation is
optimal, while human translation is not. It is important to recognise these
situations and take advantage of them (Sager 1994).
Consistent terminology use or spelling could be some of the functions referred to

in point c. Another situation can be when a user is in urgent need of a translation
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of a certain piece of information in a text. Online translation tools or machine

translation modules in CAT tools are perfectly suitable for these purposes.
Translators should only invest in their own personal machine translation system if
they plan on using it for commercial purposes.
A machine translation system is an adequate tool when translating between
languages within the same language family, in fact even raw translations are
reliable in this case (Kis 2008). Machine translation is suitable for the purpose
of obtaining information, determining the subject of a text or for determining
whether further analysis, processing of a given text requires human input.
The quality and acceptability of a machine-translated text depends on the
source language text and the purpose of the translation. It does not even need to
be perfect in order to be used for its purpose, what matters is that the translator
is aware of the errors in it. A raw machine translation normally is not considered
a finished product as it usually requires editing and fine tuning. If communication
is rendered impossible due to the differences between the source and the target
language and a translation is not available or would take too much time, a raw
machine translation will suffice. In the case of a disaster, for instance, the ability
to communicate with medical staff can make the difference between life and death
(Bellos 2010).
Machine translation can also be used to translate technical texts that are
similar and in cases where conveying information is the most important objective
while format matters less.
When reading or using machine-translated texts, it is important to keep
in mind and approach the text according to a principle defined by Sager: “[A]
machine-translated text is never comparable to a human product of writing or
text modification. It has to be considered a product in its own right with its own
characteristics. It is the result of a particular automated process chosen deliberately
by a writer, an end user, a communication agent or a mediator” (Sager 1994: 258).
Machine-translated texts must be considered artificial texts. Artificial
language is limited, it has no emotive or aesthetic meaning (Sager 1994). If,
however, a machine translation still possesses such meanings, it is not deliberate.
In most cases, machine translations do not possess such meanings at all, which is
important to keep in mind when reading machine-translated texts. The artificial
language in which a machine translation is presented has its own stylistic
characteristics, which are different from the style of the source language. The
style of a machine-translated text can have comical effects which stem from the
unusual language structures, strange word combinations, language errors and
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literal translations. A comical effect can also be traced back to the translation
software not choosing the most suitable dictionary equivalent of a source language
word. Even texts that cover sad or serious topics can have comical effects if they
were translated by a machine. The style of a machine-translated text often sounds
similar to the style of language learners translating a text into a language other
than their native one.
There are of course differences in the nature of the various errors in these
texts, but overall, translations done by language learners tend to be similar to the
results we get from machine translation. But while we are patient and tolerant
with language learners, we tend to be critical of and have a negative attitude
towards machine translations when they are of similar quality. As Heltai says after
(McAlester 1992) and (Campbell 1998): “When it comes to translating to a non-
native language, we are often prepared to accept the performance that a non-native
speaker translator is able to give”. He adds, however, that such compromises are to
be avoided in the cases of certain types of texts, for instance in the case of literary
translation (Heltai 2005: 46, own translation). If we accept errors by humans, then
why do we not accept them by machines?
Let us see what Sager says about texts that can be translated by machine:
a) Larger, homogeneous texts that contain many repetitions and are made up
of several documents are more suitable for machine translation.
b) The text should be easily readable by the machine and correctly formatted.
This includes proper spelling, punctuation and text type.
c) The terms used in the text should appear in the dictionary.
d) The style of the text must be straightforward and consistent.
e) The text should be free of typing errors.
f) Sentences and phrases should be complete without any elliptical
ambiguities.
(Sager 1994: 292)
These points are supported by the five arguments Hutchins lists in favour of
the usefulness of machine translation. His first reason is that there is now far
too much to be translated. The second reason he lists is that technical materials
are too boring for human translators and they are not interested in translating
them. Thirdly, Hutchins argues that corporations tend to want certain terms to
be translated the same way all the time, and humans are not consistent enough
to meet this demand, while computers are. The fourth reason is that computers
can increase the volume and speed of translation, while the fifth is that the high
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quality translation that humans can provide is not always needed. Hutchins says
the fact that organisations like the European Union or the United States Air Force
regularly use machine translation systems, because of the enormous amount
of material that needs to be translated, is further testament to the usefulness of
machine translation (Hutchins 2005a).
4. Conclusion
There have been great strides made in machine translation research over the past
few decades, and the method has now evolved past the stage of being used strictly
by researchers for experiments. Machine translation is heading in a direction that
favours statistics-based methods, which means linguists will once again be likely
to play second fiddle to computer scientists. Although the quality of machine-
translated texts is nowhere near the quality of texts translated by humans – and
I doubt that it will ever be of similar quality – we must accept the fact that machine
translation has a place in the world and even in our everyday lives. Whether we
view it as a friend or a foe, it is important that we get to know it and handle it the
way we see fit.
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Translation Environment Tools
Henrietta Ábrányi
E-mail: abranyi.heni@t-online.hu
1. Introduction
Nowadays, it is well known in the translation profession that globalisation and

technological development have fundamentally changed the work of translators.
Translators have less and less time to create quality translations of more and more
text. To meet the ever increasing demands, various computer tools have appeared
that are trying in some way to help translators get out of a tight corner. Today, the
most common tools are the so-called translation environment tools that integrate
important features, such as translation memory, a terminology tool, an alignment
tool, or an analysis tool.
Biau-Gil and Pym (2002) pointed out more than ten years ago that the use
of such tools is not a matter of choice anymore, and this is especially true today.
Translation environment tools have become an essential part of translation work,
their use is practically mandatory, a required skill for all translators. This is well
supported by the fact that the knowledge of translation assisting tools has been
added to the required competences of translators (Gambier et al. 2009), and that
learning their use has become an integral part of the curriculum at the majority of
training institutions.
In the following, I briefly define the basic expressions related to this topic,
introduce the main components of translation environment tools and the
characteristics of texts that ‘can be translated’ in such tools, and then turn to their
advantages and disadvantages. After that, I present some of the best known tools
on the market today. However, my only goal is to inform, as I do not aim to form
an opinion on the listed programmes, as preference largely depends on the nature
of the work, the translator’s personality, together with many other factors.
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2. What is a translation environment tool?
The term translation environment tool (TEnT) has only appeared recently, and
refers to software having translation memory as a central component and also
integrating additional functions, such as a terminology tool, an alignment tool, or
an analysis tool (Zetzsche 2008).
However, the academic literature mentions further names that may be
misleading and therefore it is important to deal with them here. Two expressions
have mainly been used for translation environment tools in recent years. One is
the term computer-assisted/-aided translation tool (CAT tool) and the other is the
so-called translation memory tool (TM tool), neither of which are able to describe
today’s translation environment tools appropriately.
Basically, CAT tool is a broader term, as it covers every tool that helps the work
of translators in any way (Zetzsche 2008). Thus, it includes TM tools, terminology
management tools, corpus analysis tools, but also text editors and spell checkers,
online or offline dictionaries, glossaries, reference materials, grammatical aids,
parallel texts, OCR (optical character recognition) or DTP (desktop publishing)
programs, as well as tools for project management and administration (Bowker
2002; Craciunescu et al. 2004). Therefore, a translation environment tool is
practically a subtype of CAT tools.
Traditionally, this category was the opposite of machine translation (MT): in
the case of CAT tools, the translation task is still carried out by (human) translators
while computer tools only help their work in some form (e.g. they speed up the
translation process). In the case of machine translation, the translation process is
carried out by a computer, it is therefore automatic, and translators only enter into
the process in the pre-editing or post-editing phase. However, it is important to
note that there are no clear dividing lines between CAT and MT, they are rather
two endpoints on a scale, wherein there are many different translation modalities
between the two depending on the degree of automation, that is to what extent
translators may participate in the process (Alcina 2008).
Returning to the above mentioned expression, the term translation memory
tool covers only those tools that work with a translation memory at a minimum.
This term was perfect in the past, as there were no integrated translation
environment tools – with the most important functions available within the same
program – at that time. However, this expression has become too narrow, as it only
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places emphasis on a single component that while being of central importance, is

not the only useful one (Zetzsche 2008).
Furthermore, we may also encounter other denominations, such as translation
tool or translator tool. It is important to note that both are too vague and may even
refer to machine (automatic) translation that may arouse very strong opposition in
some, therefore, we should be very careful in using them.
3. Main components of translation environment tools
The central component of a translation environment tool is the so-called translation

memory (TM) which is a database storing our previous work. It contains source
and target texts broken down into segments (which is on the whole a sentence, but
may also be a title, a table cell, etc.) and the segments belonging together are linked
to each other (Bowker 2002). Whenever we import a new text, the program divides
this text into segments, compares it with the content of the translation memory, and,
if it finds a match, it offers the result to the translator. Then the translator decides
whether they use it, reject it, or modify it according to the new context. A match
may be an ‘exact match’, when the new segment and the stored segment are identical
or a ‘fuzzy match’, when the new segment and the stored one are only partially
matching (a fuzzy match may be anything between 1 and 99 percent, but programs
are usually set to display only those results with at least 60 percent match) (Bowker
& Fischer 2010). This means that in an ideal world, translators never have to translate
the same thing twice, as all their previous work is stored and reusable (Bowker 2005).
A further important component is the terminology tool which is an integral
part of many translation environment tools, but there are also examples of
tools having a separate terminology tool. Basically, terms in a specific field of
expertise and related information are stored in a terminology database and used
during translation. We can usually add definition, source, context, picture, or
grammatical data to the terms. In some cases, we even have the opportunity to
create the whole structure of our terminology from scratch and specify fields for
any additional information. During translation, we get all the relevant results from
the terminology databases assigned to our project, so we can use them immediately.
In addition, with the help of the so-called term extractor, we can command the
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program to list the (potential) terms of a given text before starting the translation
(Bowker & Fischer 2010).
Another important component of translation environment tools is the
alignment tool, with the help of which we can store previous translations, available
electronically but created without translation tools, in a translation memory for
reuse within the translation environment (Zetsche 2008).
According to Bowker and Fischer (2010), the following components are also
worth mentioning: with the help of concordance, we can search for a specific (part
of) word, expression, clause, or even a whole sentence, and we can take a look at all
the occurrences of the word in question, and also the context in which it appears.
The so-called analysis function enables us to check how many words/characters/
segments the text contains as well as how many and what kind of matches there
are compared to the translation memory. We can use this feature to create a more
differentiated quotation and even assess how much time we will need to complete
the translation task. The so-called quality assurance (QA) module checks, among
others, whether non-translatable elements (e.g. numbers, dates, proper names, etc.)
are transferred correctly, whether there are any inconsistencies (e.g. whether we
translated the same source segments differently in the target text), whether we used
the terms correctly, or whether there are any omissions. Furthermore, translation
environment tools are able to manage a variety of file formats and many also
provide an administrative module (project management).
More recent tools provide a further function as well, the so-called sub-segment
matching that allows us to reuse even those units that are smaller than a segment
but larger than a term. The program uses this function to monitor our work (i.e.
the selected resources) and gives us suggestions while we are typing (O’Hagan
et al. 2010). Suggestions may include words, expressions, or clauses. Finally, it is
also possible to ‘prepare’ the text to be translated automatically using the machine
translation module.
4. When should we use translation environment tools?
If you ask professionals, the answer would surely be ‘always.’ Translation

environment tools are now an integral part of the translation process, their
use is virtually unavoidable. However, it is worth discussing this issue in more
170
detail, as we can often encounter the argument that there are text types that are
‘recommended’ to use in a translation environment tool and text types that are ‘not
recommended’.
Basically, the more repetitions that texts to be translated contain, the simpler
and more consistent the sentence structure and the style is with regards to
terminology, phraseology (choice of words), and grammar, while the more we
work in a particular field of expertise, the more profitable it is to use a translation
environment tool (Feder 2002). In this case, the translation environment tool
speeds up the translation process, as the translator can avoid the very time-
consuming process of looking up previously translated parts and searched terms
repeatedly. Furthermore, its use results in a better quality and a more consistent
translation. However, it should be noted here that using a translation environment
tool is not only ‘profitable’ in this case but virtually mandatory, as translators often
do not have time to carry out all the tasks manually.
The most recommended texts are therefore those, (1) the content of which is
modified during the translation process, for example, the translator is working on
a draft, while the final version is still being created (update); or those (2) where the
new version of a previous text is translated, that is, the older version is improved
(revision).
Such text types are, for example, manuals, instructions for use, product
information, documentations (Feder 2002), but legal texts and texts relating
to business activity may be recommended as well (Webb 2000). In contrast,
literary texts, newspaper articles, marketing materials, or advertisements are
not recommended to be translated in a translation environment tool (Bowker &
Fischer 2010).
These criteria may suggest that if a translator works in a variety of fields
and with different text types, or they mainly translate ‘not recommended’ texts,
the use of a translation environment tool is not really of use for them. In my
opinion, however, it is not as clear-cut as it seems. As Feder (2002) points out, the
text type or topic alone is not enough to determine whether to use a translation
environment tool, because the above mentioned criteria all refer to the surface
and the structure of the text. Furthermore, if we take another look at the criteria,
we can see that most of them focus on the reusability of stored segments in
a translation memory, but translation environment tools may be beneficial in
many other cases. Due to space limitations, I discuss three components below
with the aim of pointing out how a translation environment tool may be
beneficial in cases other than the ‘ideal’.
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4.1. Terminology
Most translation tasks require terminology work, even when dealing with general
texts. Although terminology databases usually contain terms relating to a specific
field of expertise (i.e. expressions defining a particular concept and thus having
a specific meaning in a specific field of expertise), we can also create ‘colloquial’
databases containing any words/expressions that we often encounter. However,
a ‘bulk’ terminology, consisting of entries on different topics, is not necessary
because we can group our entries in different topics. In most of today’s translation
environment tools, we can assign more than one terminology database to a single
project, that way, if we translate a geography-related text where also historical
expressions occur, we do not need to search for terms we have already added to
another database. In addition to all this, definition, source, example, context, or
even a picture can be added to the entries, helping the translator decide whether
a given expression is appropriate for the context. All this speeds up the translation
process, as we do not have to look for the same expression twice, it allows for
a more consistent translation at the level of words, both terminologically and
phraseologically. Furthermore, even quality is improved, since we are more likely
to use the correct expressions.
Let us take a look at a rather extreme example: the translation of literary
texts. Basically, according to the academic literature and the profession, there is
no point in using a translation environment tool for the translation of literary
texts, as the probability of encountering any reusable items is low. In my opinion,
however, these tools may be of use even here: suppose that the book to be translated
is full of ‘speaking’ names that are translated with a similar method (i.e. using
‘speaking’ names in the target text as well). In the case of a long book containing
many different names to remember, we can build a ‘dictionary-like’ terminology
database, thus avoiding constant searching.
4.2. Alignment
As we have seen above, alignment is especially useful in those cases where we

would like to use previous translations, available electronically but created without
translation tools, within the translation environment. Although we primarily
need this function if there are many repetitions, today’s tools offer more.
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Let us assume that we translate a general text and we find or get a reference
file that has a translated version. In this case, we can align the document pair in
a translation environment, store their segments in a translation memory, and use
it in different ways. In some of the most recent translation tools, we can add terms
directly from the aligned material and search for words, expressions, clauses, and
even whole sentences, though the chances are rather slim, with the concordance
search feature. In one of the most common translation environment tools, we now
have the opportunity to store monolingual texts besides aligned documents and
use them for reference. We can also use these to add expressions to the terminology
database or search with concordance. Thus, everything relating to a specific
translation task can be stored in one place, within the same program.
Similarly to terminology, this function may speed up the translation process,
contribute to a more consistent text (e.g. in terms of style) and, if authentic target
language texts are added to the corpus, it may help translators distance themselves
better from the original text, thus avoiding the creation of a text that reads like
a translation. Although translators around the world usually translate only into
their native language, in Hungary this is usually not the case, as many translators
have to translate into their first (or even second) foreign language. The above
function is therefore even more useful because, as a non-native speaker, it is very
difficult to create a text that sounds authentic to the target reader.
4.3. Sub-segment matching
A further useful function is the so-called sub-segment matching. Basically, it

means that the translation environment tool monitors the selected resources (e.g.
translation memory, terminology database, corpora, or dictionaries) and provides
the translator with suggestions, while they are typing. Suggestions may include
words, expressions, or clauses.
Thus, even smaller units that otherwise would not appear among translation
memory (too low percentage) and terminology (larger unit) results can be reused.
This is yet another function that speeds up the translation process as (1) translators
do not have to type each character and (2) even those elements appear that would
be otherwise ‘lost’ using only the other two features and meaning long hours
searching. It also contributes to consistency as suggestions are provided based on
previous work.
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As we could see above, translation environment tools are especially useful (and
indeed essential) if we work in the same field of expertise, we mainly deal with
specialised texts that, due to their nature, consist of many repetitions. It is also
important that these texts use a rather ‘limited’ language, meaning a simple and
consistent style, grammar, and sentence structure, as well as a unified terminology.
Furthermore, we could also see that if we go beyond the emphasis on translation
memory and reusability, there are many other arguments for the use of translation
environment tools, even in those cases where a translator works in different
fields of expertise or works mainly with texts ‘not recommended’ for the use of
translation tools.
5. Disadvantages of translation environment tools
We have already seen how a translation environment tool may help our work: (1) it
speeds up the translation process and (2) has a beneficial effect on the quality of
the translation. I will discuss these in more detail below, also referring to potential
drawbacks.
A translation environment tool may speed up the translation process the most,
that is, increase the translator’s productivity the most spectacularly, if they are able
to reuse most of their previous work. The topic and the text type play an important
role in this, but it is also of great importance how confidently we are able to use
the program (Webb 2000). If we cannot use the tool at an appropriate level, the
opposite will occur: we will be slower in our work (Lagoudaki 2006).
That is why it is particularly important that if a soon-to-be translator learns the
use of a translation environment tool during translator training, they should try
to use the program as much as they can, for example, for homework of translation
classes or just some practice at home. It is also important how much we have
already worked in a specific field of expertise, as the more we work in a particular
field, the more likely it is to find something reusable (Lagoudaki 2006). The largest
increase in productivity may be achieved in the case of the already mentioned
modified (update) or improved (revision) texts.
We can also often encounter the argument that translation environment tools
make the process cost-effective for clients, as they do not have to pay the full price
for already translated text parts (O’Brien 1998). From the point of view of the
174
translator, this means less money for their work, but bear in mind: with increased
productivity, we may translate more text in shorter time, so we can take on more
work (Bowker 2005).
Translation environment tools allow for a higher level of consistency with
regards to terminology and style, because translators use the same wording
for repetitive sentences and parts and also use terms in a consistent way. This
is particularly important in the case of large projects with more translators:
a consistent text of high quality can be achieved despite more translators with
different styles working on the same task (Bowker 2005).
However, we should not blindly rely on the results coming from the translation
memory – we always have to be careful and review them with a critical eye. First,
results come from human beings, so there may be inherent mistakes. This is also
true for our own work, so it is important to review our resources (e.g. translation
memory or terminology) from time to time and correct any mistakes. By doing
so, we can avoid using an accidental typo or an incorrectly chosen term again and
again in future texts. If we skip ‘maintenance’, we make extra work for ourselves.
Second, we have to be careful when using translation memory results because
it is possible that the old match does not fit in the new context. When rushing
through a translation task, translators may be tempted to take over translation
memory results without a second thought and therefore work on the sentence level.
This may, however, impact quality in a negative way. If, for example, a translator
is working with results originating from different texts/translators and applies
matches without any modification, the translation may only be a series of sentences
put together (Bowker & Fischer 2010).
Focusing on the sentence level (i.e. translating from sentence to sentence)
is a frequently expressed argument against translation environment tools in
academic literature. That means that translators may tend to ignore the context
(Biau-Gil and Pym 2002), leave out contextual references (using repetitions
instead of anaphoric and cataphoric references) (Craciunescu et al. 2004), and
follow the sentence structure of the original text (Bowker 2005). All these may
have an impact on the readability of the text, meaning they may contribute to
a ‘translation-like’ translation product. Of course, these problems are easily
avoided if, after completing the translation task, translators read through the
whole text again (possibly after setting the text aside for a while) and modify
less fluent parts. This can be done by checking the text as a whole in the preview
section of the translation tool instead of reading from segment to segment.
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Although tempting, we must not consider our job is done after placing the very
last full stop at the end of the last segment.
As we could see, translation environment tools may speed up the translation
process and have a beneficial effect on the quality of the translation under certain
circumstances. However, we should remember that programs will not replace
translators and get the work done instead of them, that is, they can only help us
if we can use them appropriately. This includes knowing well enough how they
function so as not to rely on them without any consideration.
6. Examples of translation environment tools
In the following, I will present some of the most common translation environment
tools, including free versions that may be a good alternative to paid programs. The
description of the programs is limited to the versions for translators only. All the
below information comes from the developers’ website.
6.1. SDL Trados Studio 2014/2015
One of the best known and most widely used translation environment tools is
SDL Trados Studio, an integrated translation environment since its 2009 version.
However, its terminology tool is still in a separate program (Multiterm). Its current
version, SDL Trados Studio 2015, was released in the summer of 2015 following
the 2014 version, the latter being the first to integrate the alignment tool. The full
version of the program is called Professional, and there are two versions specifically
geared towards freelance translators. One is the so-called Starter Edition that
comes with a yearly (and annually renewable) licence and is significantly limited
(e.g. no support, no Multiterm, limited translation memory size, etc.), the other
is the so-called Freelance version offered with a perpetual licence that, while
limited in its functionality, provides more possibilities for translators (for
a detailed comparison of the three versions see http://www.sdl.com/cxc/language/
translation-productivity/trados-studio/editions.html). A 30-day trial version of the
Professional version is available for download (URL: http://www.translationzone.
com/products/sdl-trados-studio/free-trial.html).
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6.2. memoQ 2015
Another common and widely used translation environment tool is memoQ, developed
by a Hungarian software company and first released in 2006, which is again an
integrated tool where all important functions are available in a single program. Its
current version, 2015, was released in the spring of 2015. The translator pro version has
a 45-day trial version after registration (URL: https://www.memoq.com/downloads).
After the trial period, we can continue to use the program but in the significantly
limited 4free mode, in which formerly (i.e. during the trial period) created projects
cannot be opened; only one document per project can be imported; we have to create
a new translation memory and terminology database every time; there is no support;
and we cannot use the alignment function. The price of the purchased licence,
following the trial period, contains support and product updates for one year.
6.3. OmegaT
Although less common than the previous ones, OmegaT, first released in 2001, is
another tool worth mentioning. It is available for free in 30 languages, and easily
accessible even for those using operating systems other than Windows. The program
is somewhat more limited than the above mentioned ones, for example, it does
not include an alignment tool, but we can still build a terminology database, add
an ‘external’ translation memory (in TMX format), or we can even use machine
translation (the program is available at http://www.omegat.org/hu/downloads.html).
6.4. Wordfast
Wordfast first appeared in 1999, running inside Microsoft Word back then, and
was designed to offer a cheaper alternative to Trados. There are two main versions
today: Wordfast Classic as a set of macros still running in Microsoft Word (free after
registration) and Wordfast Pro, released in 2008, which is an integrated translation
environment tool for any platform. Its current version is 3.4, offering a full-featured
trial version without registration (URL: http://www.wordfast.com/store_download).
There are only two limitations in the demo version: remote translation memories are
not accessible, and local translation memories cannot store more than 500 translation
units. After the trial period, you can buy the program with a 3-year licence.
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6.5. Déjà Vu
The French Déjà Vu is also worth mentioning, having been present in the translation
business since 1993. Its current version, X3, was released in the spring of 2014.
A 30-day trial of the Professional version is available for download after registration
(URL: http://www.atril.com/node/3109/download-demo). We can continue to use
the program in the limited Free mode after the trial period, however, we cannot
create new projects, but we can open packages sent by others. This is especially
useful for those freelancers who normally work with another program. However,
if we decide to use this program for our everyday work, it is worth investing in
the professional version. The structure and the use of Déjà Vu are similar to those
already on the market, so it is relatively easy to learn.
6.6. across
The software across, widely used in German-speaking countries, is a translation

environment tool similar to the above. It has two main versions: Across Language
Server mainly for corporate clients and translation service providers. A free trial is
available after filling in a brief form (http://www.across.net/en/contact/). The other
version is Personal Edition that is free for freelance translators after registration
(http://www.my-across.net/en/support/license-key/). After registration, the
company sends our permanent licence within 30 days (we can use the trial version
for this period), and we are added to the list of across users on the webpage. This is
a full-featured version without any limitation, including all important components.
7. Cloud-based translation tools
Although the majority of translators still mostly use desktop solutions, the
so-called cloud-based solutions have also been around for the last few years and
are therefore worth mentioning. Several of the above listed developers already
offer such a solution, such as Wordfast Anywhere (http://www.freetm.com) or
memoQ WebTrans (https://www.memoq.com/memoq-webtrans-browser-based-
translation).
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In the case of cloud-based translation tools, everything previously stored on

our computer (such as the software itself, our translation memories, terminology
databases, texts, etc.) are now stored on a remote server available through
a browser or a small client (Muegge 2012).
Its main advantage is that translators do not need to fiddle around with
installing and updating the program or creating resources for translation, because
all these are available up-to-date on the server to which we can connect through
our browser (and usually after signing-up for the service). Cloud-based translation
tools offer a more cost-efficient solution compared to desktop versions, as they can
often be used on a monthly subscription basis (and there are many free versions),
and we can use them even with mobile devices. If translators participate in a larger
project, each text to be translated and all reference materials are available in an
instant, thus facilitating a more efficient collaboration (Muegge 2012).
The so-called Google Translator Toolkit (translate.google.com/toolkit) is an
important example here, as cloud-based solutions have started to become known
following its launch. Originally, it was designed with the aim of improving the
automatic translations of Google Translate (Muegge 2012). We can use the Toolkit
for uploading, organising, and translating our documents, we can also build
a translation memory and a terminology database, and we can share them with
others. Its special feature is that, by default, it fills all segments with automatic
matches (coming from Google Translate). This function can be disabled.
Compared to other cloud-based solutions, the Toolkit is a rather ‘isolated’ one,
as most of these services are designed to serve very large projects on which many
translators are working in a wide range of languages, and where texts are updated
frequently and have to become available in many languages at the same time
(especially in the case of localisation of, for example, software, documentations,
websites, etc.).
A good example is Transifex (http://www.transifex.com/) that is free to use
after registration. It is especially worth a mention as it places great emphasis on the
so-called ‘community translation’. After logging in, we can choose from a number
of different projects, and we can practise and test our knowledge in various topics.
In addition, our work is usually reviewed.
There are also paid services, such as XTM Cloud (http://www.xtmintl.com)
that offers a 30-day free trial after registration. After the trial period, we may
choose a one, three, or 12-month subscription. A similar solution is Memsource
Cloud (www.memsource.com) that offers a limited but free Personal Edition after
registration and a so-called 1+ Freelance Edition with a 30-day trial period. Both of
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them consist of all the main components and their use may be learned in no time,
if one has knowledge of any desktop translation solutions.
Of course, there are drawbacks in this case, too. First, we have to be constantly
online. This may not be too much of a problem today, but it is possible that the
connection is suddenly lost or the server slows down, and we may be unable to
work for a while. Or worse, we may also need to translate the last few sentences
again. Furthermore, many think that translations created with the use of cloud-
based solutions become public property, and thus translators no longer ‘own’
their collections in the traditional sense. However, as Muegge (2012) points out,
the majority of service providers encrypt all the data, therefore, translating ‘in
the cloud’ does not mean that each of our sentences stored there is immediately
available to anyone on the internet. This aspect is particularly important, as many
translation agencies specifically prohibit the use of such solutions, though they
may provide a great alternative to desktop versions.
8. Conclusion
After defining the basic expressions, I introduced the text types ‘recommended’
for use in translation environment tools, and I also tried to point out that these
tools may even help in not that ‘ideal’ cases. Furthermore, I discussed the main
advantages and drawbacks of these tools that require a careful approach. It must
be emphasised that the use of translation environment tools is obligatory today,
but, as translators, we are only able to see their beneficial effects, and they only help
our work if we learn to use them properly and we are aware of their limitations. It
is therefore of great importance, especially during the learning phase, to constantly
practise, and not to lose heart if we feel our work is slower at first, as the above
mentioned benefits appear only later, after working with them for a while.
In addition, I presented some of the most common programs and also some
noteworthy ones, and I briefly touched upon the new solutions as well. This
is particularly important, as tools for translators are constantly changing,
improving, expanding, and translators must be aware of these changes if they
would like to continue working with them in an efficient way.
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182
Information and Communication Technologies
in Interpreting and Machine Interpretation1
Ildikó Horváth
1. Introduction
The use of new technologies is a relatively new phenomenon in the history

of interpretation since technical devices for interpreting emerged after the
appearance of simultaneous interpretation in the second half of the 20th century.
Prior to this, interpreters had used pens and notepads as work tools. Another great
technological advance was brought about by remote interpreting, first used at the
end of the 1970s, beginning of the 1980s.
Technological advances, however, have not come to an end and nowadays
fully-automated machine interpretation is an increasingly common theme in the
interpreting profession, even though machine interpretation is still lagging behind
machine translation in this respect. One reason for this lies in the fact that there
is more demand for automatically generated written translations. Another reason
might be that the automation of interpretation must take into account a number of
real-time variables too, which do not arise during translation.
Automated interpretation has become a common topic at technological and scientific
conferences and is also a frequently discussed theme for interpreters. Moreover, it has
become more visible in the press as well (BBC, Der Spiegel, L’Express, technologyreview.
com, The Economist). In what follows, first we will discuss the history of machine
translation. Subsequently, new information and communication technologies (ICT)
and computer-assisted interpretation (CAI) used during interpreting assignments
will be examined. Finally, we will analyse how machine interpretation functions,
presenting a few consecutive and simultaneous interpreting solutions and devices.
1 An earlier version of this article was published as Horváth, I. 2014. Machine Interpretation.
Revue Internationale d’Études en Langues Modernes Appliquées. Supplément au numéro 7/2014
« Comment peut-on être traducteur/interprète? » Cluj-Napoca, le 11 Octobre 2013, 19–26.
183
2. The use of new information and communication

technologies in interpretation
New technologies are gaining ground in the interpretation market. One of the
conditions for high quality interpreting is thorough and rapid preparation for the
assignment by searching, processing and consolidating information as well as
terminology based on the content of the event (De Manuel Jerez 2003, Sandrelli &
De Manuel Perez 2007). Previously, interpreters looked for information in libraries
or journals or contacted professionals in person. Today, this is mainly done on
the internet where it is significantly easier and more efficient to carry out content
and terminology preparation using online encyclopaedias, multilingual electronic
dictionaries, terminology databases and parallel text banks.
Over the past few years, portable electronic devices (laptops, tablets, iPads,
etc.) have become indispensable working tools, facilitating the interpreter’s
performance. Such devices are used not only prior to the conference but also during
the interpreting process in order to follow the slideshows of the speeches received
in advance or acquired on the spot, or even to look up terms and expressions they
hear that are not readily available to them in the activated part of their mental
lexicon in real time.
The development of the new information and communication technologies
has resulted in the emergence of video conferencing and the more frequent use of
remote interpreting. Strictly speaking, video conferencing cannot be considered
as new technology: the earliest video conferences were held in the 1970s, when
the United Nations used this tool to communicate between such remote places
as New York, Geneva and Nairobi. Nevertheless, this initiative proved to be
unsuccessful in the long run due to poor sound and picture quality as well as
the fact that the connection was often interrupted. The new technologies which
have appeared since then have helped eliminate these problems (Manuel De
Jerez 2003), and nowadays it is not only the United Nations or the European
Union where remote interpreting is used on a regular basis, but also national
interpreting markets.
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3. Computer-assisted interpreting
Computer-assisted interpreting (CAI) is another area where new technologies are

applied. CAI differs from the above-mentioned ways of using new technologies for
interpreting as new technology here is not applied merely as an aid or a medium
of the interpretation process. Instead, it takes over a part of the interpreter’s job.
CAI has been used in well-defined communicative situations from the 1990s.
One example is phone interpretation, a form of remote interpreting, in contexts
such as insurance or medicine. When this type of interpretation is used, one of
the fundamental features of the communication situation is the fact that one of
the parties asks mostly predictable, well-defined questions that the other party
answers. Another feature is that the interpreter sits in front of their computer so
as to have access to real-time scripted conversational model texts, from which they
read and interpret the answers. Thus they only work in one direction (Kelly 2009).
Simultaneous consecutive or ‘sim con’ is another example of how new
technologies can serve to facilitate the interpreter’s task. Sim con was used for the
first time by Michele Ferrari, the European Commission’s staff interpreter. He
demonstrated it at a press conference in March 1999 in Rome. Ferrari used a digital
voice recorder to record the original speech to be interpreted in the consecutive
mode, which he played back and listened to while interpreting in the simultaneous
mode. He did not take notes but instead listened to the source language speech
twice (Ferrari 2001). John Lombardi (2003), a court interpreter in the United
States, called simultaneous consecutive Digital Recorder Assisted Consecutive
(DRAC). Another example of the sim con mode is what Camayd-Freixas (2005)
calls Digital Voice Recorder-Assisted CI. He mentions an experiment conducted at
Florida International University which “showed that using digital voice recorders
(DVRs) helped consecutive interpreters to improve their accuracy by an average of
35%, with few or no errors, regardless of the length of the statements interpreted”
(Camayd-Freixas 2005: 40).
Hamidi & Pöchhacker (2007) conducted a small-scale experimental study on
simultaneous consecutive with the involvement of three professional interpreters.
They analysed the feedback from interpreters, the evaluation given by the audience
and aspects such as fluency of interpretation, correspondence of source language
and target language speeches, prosody, self-confidence and professionalism. They
found that it “permits enhanced interpreting performance as reflected in more
fluent delivery, closer source-text correspondence, and fewer prosodic deviations”
185
(Hamidi and Pöchhacker 2007: 276). Despite these results it cannot be claimed that
since being used for the first time in 1999, simultaneous consecutive interpreting
has become widespread.
4. Machine interpretation
The first experiments to create an automatic interpreter took place at the end of the
1980s and early 1990s. However, language technology available at that time allowed
for only a very basic and limited performance of machine interpretation tools: they
were able to recognise only 200 words. Attempts to develop the machine interpreter
gained new momentum in the early 2000s, when several types of translation
software had already become available on the market (Waibel 2012). Before
analysing the operating principles of machine interpretation, it is briefly worth
presenting some of the existing solutions for computer-assisted interpretation.
4.1. Machine interpretation devices
There exist two types of devices used for machine interpretation: consecutive and
simultaneous tools. An early example of consecutive machine interpretation tools is
VERBMOBIL, conceived between 1993-2000 within the framework of a project funded
by the German Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Technology. This
is a device for assisting multilingual business communication. The system is capable of
interpreting spontaneous dialogue in English, German and Japanese (Wahlster 1993).
Another example of consecutive machine interpretation was developed by IBM
and is called Mastor S2S (speech-to-speech). It was first developed for use in the Iraq
War and has a vocabulary of 50 thousand English and 100 thousand Arabic words. It
can also handle background noise and dialects. Another example is called Phraselator
which was developed by the technology company Voxtec. This device is also frequently
used in military environments. The latest Voxtec Phraselator model functions with
70 languages (Kelly 2009). Microsoft has also created a machine interpretation tool
between English and Mandarin Chinese using its Deep Neural Networks system.
This tool is unique in that when the English-speaking presenter’s speech is translated
into Chinese the translated speech is heard in his own voice (Rashid 2012).
186
Jibbigo was developed in collaboration with the Language Technology Institute

of Carnegie Mellon University. Jibbigo now operates in 10 languages, but it will
soon offer more than 15 languages. It is a mobile device with a vocabulary of 40
thousand words and does not need an internet connection. Jibbigo has become
so successful that Apple promotes it in the United States as a downloadable
application among young people travelling abroad (Waibel 2012).
In the United States an increasing proportion of the population speaks
only limited English (Limited English Proficiency). This often leads to serious
communication problems, for example, in health care (Kelly 2009). ProLingua,
a web-based software developed by Polyglot Systems provides a solution to this
problem. ProLingua contains 7,000 frequently asked questions and expressions
typically used in medical situations, efficiently facilitating communication
between the medical staff and their patients in surgeries or at the hospital, from
admission through laboratory tests to discharge. Nevertheless, during non
routine consultations communication is facilitated with the help of a human
interpreter.
In addition to consecutive machine interpretation tools there are automated
devices used for simultaneous interpretation. Three steps are required to achieve
simultaneous machine interpretation between, for example, Hungarian and
French. First, a Hungarian speech recognition system converts the oral Hungarian
speech into its written version in Hungarian. Then a translation system converts the
written Hungarian text into written French text. The third step involves converting
this written text to spoken French. Within the framework of the EU BRIDGE
project the first two phases have been implemented in the context of university
lectures, where the German presenter’s speech is translated from German into
English using a web-based system. Students read the German speaker’s speech on
their PCs in the lecture hall with a delay of several seconds.
Skype Translator is the latest tool jointly designed by Microsoft and Skype.
This software enables simultaneous interpreting. To date, it has only been tested
from English into German and Chinese but the goal is to eliminate language
barriers between Skype users (Microsoft Research 2014).
A common feature of machine translation tools mentioned above is the fact
that they have been developed for a limited number of specific communication
situations. They are used to interpret the most frequent pre-recorded phrases,
questions between different languages in well-defined contexts such as travel,
humanitarian missions, medical care, university lectures, wars, and also where
human interpreters are not available.
187
5. Conclusion
The burning question for interpreters, trainers and laypersons is, of course, whether
machine interpreters can or will ever replace humans. Researchers (Jekat & Klein
1996) and developers themselves (Waibel 2012) argue that machine interpreters
will never replace humans. Furthermore, the goal of developing and perfecting
such devices is to provide language solutions and facilitate some level of bilingual
communication where human interpreters are physically unavailable or financially
unaffordable.
At present, technology has not yet reached the level of development required to
provide human interpreter level of service, consecutive or simultaneous. According
to Rashid (2012), the tool developed by Microsoft now has a much lower error margin
than its predecessors. Although it recognises 86-88% of informal spoken language,
it is still far from perfect. The system presented by Alex Waibel (2012) made errors
and almost broke down during its demonstration. Similarly, Olsen (2012) does not
think that there is a real danger that machines will replace human interpreters in the
booth. According to Kakaes (2012) semantic tagging, i.e. “attaching such signifiers
to words or strings of words or constructing the sense of the message by computers
is one of the most difficult problems to be solved”. Ray Kurzweil is an expert on
automating processes and functions performed by humans and is the author of
numerous inventions. However, he thinks that the full automation of the translation
(and interpretation) process will never be fully possible (Kelly & Zetzsche 2012: 231).
It would therefore appear that although new technological solutions are used in
the organisation of conferences (video conference), this does not mean that well-
qualified conference interpreters will become redundant.
It is also apparent from the examples presented above that at present machines
can replace humans only in very well-defined communicative situations and only
if everything is going according to plan. This is because machines are unable to
handle unforeseen situations, are not aware of the culture associated with given
languages and do not know how to take into account social and communication
aspects of communication during interpretation. Further problems lie in the
fact that machines cannot manage different registers, styles, individual speech
patterns, hesitation, ambiguity, fast speech. In addition, machines do not have
human intuition, cognitive flexibility and judgment, which would allow them to
exert cognitive control over the communication situation and the aforementioned
deficiencies and technical or semantic interference (Horváth 2012).
188
Up until this time, machine interpretation’s impact on the interpretation

profession cannot be felt to the extent of machine translation’s on the translation
profession: no subtasks such as text preparation for translation or post-editing that
could be carried out independently of the translation itself have evolved. And it
is likely that they will never emerge because if one day machines replace humans
there will be no need to post edit a speech as spontaneous oral communication is for
immediate use. Furthermore, interpretation preparation does not necessarily have to
be carried out by interpreters but rather by language technologists or terminologists.
Technological advances will continue and efforts towards the creation of fully
automated machine interpretation will not stop, either. We cannot, of course,
foresee the future. Based on how machine translation has impacted on the
translation market, we might, however, predict with reasonable certainty that the
interpretation market will be divided into two segments: a lower quality market
where automated minimal interpretation will be enough and available at a lower
price or even free of charge; and a higher-quality segment where professional
human interpreters will work. It might not be possible to completely prevent the
spread of machine interpretation tools, but it might be achieved that such devices
get the smallest possible share of the interpretation market. There are two factors
which play an important role in this. First, professional interpreters will bear a great
responsibility since they will have to prove their raison d’être by providing high
quality services. Second, interpreter training programs can also play a significant
role in this process by ensuring quality training and thus guaranteeing the supply
of highly qualified professional interpreters.
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PART 3:
Modern Translator and Interpreter
Training
The Modern Translator Trainer’s Profile
– Lifelong Learning Guaranteed
Réka Eszenyi
E-mail: e_reka@rocketmail.com
1. Introduction
The study on the profile of the modern translator in this volume described what
the European Union expects of a professional translator. The present study takes
the profile as a starting point when listing the competences expected from the
trainers who teach translation. Trainers in translator training should obviously
be translators in command of the service provision, language, intercultural,
information mining, thematic and technological competences. But what other
knowledge is needed in order for someone to be able to transfer their translation
experience successfully, in a motivating way, and help others develop the six basic
competences as well as functioning well in the translation market?
In 2013, the EMT Expert Group of the Directorate-General for Translation
of the European Union published their recommendations on the competences of
trainers entitled The EMT Translator Trainer Profile, Competences of the trainer in
translation. The authors are well aware of the differences between the translator
training courses in the member states and underline the importance of observing
the individual circumstances of the given institution and country. In the following
sections the elements of the model will be outlined and illustrated with concrete
examples from the practice of teaching translation.
2. The modern translator trainer’s profile
The trainer should hold a university degree and have relevant field experience
(as a translator, reviser, terminologist or proofreader). A teacher training
195
background is also desirable, not necessarily as a formal qualification, but

the trainer should at least have taken part in an additional course in training
skills. The training needs of a trainer with a language teaching background will
certainly be different from that of a professional translator, a university lecturer
or a professional working as a lawyer or engineer. Knowledge and consulting of
the literature of translation studies and other materials that support teaching
on a regular basis is also required. The authors mention that affiliation to
a professional organisation is also desirable.
Considering the facts listed above the group has created a general frame of
reference for translation trainers. Acquiring the competences described was set
as a goal for trainers. This implies that a perfect command of the five competences
is not the starting point of the model. It should be noted that higher education
institutions also play a role in acquiring the competences: they should support
their teachers in acquiring and developing these competences. The expert
group does not include the ways and methods leading to the acquisition and
strengthening of these competences in their description. Self-tuition is tailored
to the needs of the individual, it is not limited in time, everyone is free to define
how they want to educate the trainer, translator, researcher and curriculum
developer in themselves.
The translation trainer should have the following competences:
1. Field competence
2. Instructional competence
3. Organisational competence
4. Interpersonal competence
5. Assessment competence
The competences are not listed in order of importance, rather as shown in Figure 1
they complement, mutually depend on and strengthen each other.
196
The Modern Translator Trainer’s Profile – Lifelong Learning Guaranteed
Figure 1
Competences of translator teachers/trainers (EMT Expert Group 2013)
2.1. Field competence
This part of the model bears the closest resemblance to the profile of the modern
translator. The trainer should be aware of the functioning of the translation market
and have experience of the provision of such services. This service provision, in the
case of a freelance translator, consists of the following steps (see also Samuelsson-
Brown 2010).
– the translator advertises their services,
– the translator receives an assignment (offer) from a translation agency or
a direct client,
– the translator previews the source text, and after considering other factors
in providing a translation service, accepts the assignment,
– the translator translates the text to the best of their knowledge, relying on their
language, intercultural, information mining, thematic and technological
competences,
– the translator sends the target language text by the agreed deadline, to the
address given,
197
– the translator issues the invoice for the translation in accordance with the
conditions agreed on when taking the assignment,
– the translator is paid for their work, parallel to advertising their services
and looking for a new assignment.
Although all steps are of importance in the process, translator training focuses
on the step printed in italics above, which is translating the text. The practical
basis of translator training is the process of translation itself, so the students
translate texts on a regular basis, have the chance to discuss their solutions and
get regular feedback on their work from the trainer. The process of translation
entails previewing the text, planning, preparing the text for translation, quality
analysis (checking spelling and accuracy, bilingual review), handling the different
versions, archiving (making sure the last, best version is sent to the client/trainer),
and managing the terminology received and compiled.
The trainer should select texts for teaching purposes that they would be able
to translate (or already have translated) at a high professional level, especially
regarding the language and intercultural aspects of the job. The trainer should be
acquainted with other professions related to the translation market so that they
can successfully show their students what the expectations of the market are and
pinpoint the areas where the students need further development so that their work
becomes marketable. Translation classes are thus ideally the imitation of what
a professional translator does in real life.
That is why students in training should be acquainted early on with the three
key elements of translation assignments: time, price and quality. Regarding
deadlines the training in keeping them should start as early as with their home
assignments during the training. Those who are unable to stick to deadlines
should be advised to choose another profession. Setting a good example is just
as important: if the trainer is strict about the deadlines, they must not keep
putting off the correction of home assignments. Ideally, the quality expected
and the price are directly proportional and this should be expressed by the
trainer when evaluating the students’ home assignments, and penalize those
who would not get remuneration for their work for reasons of poor quality or
delay.
Besides discussing translations another useful and motivating element of the
translation classes is the translator-teacher talking about their market experience in
class, and answering the students’ questions. The trainer can invite an experienced
translator once in a while to discuss the translations together. Trainees also might
198
profit from visiting a translation agency where they can see and hear on the spot
about the activities of an agency, and learn what the expectations are. Translator
training should include professional traineeship during which students can try
out their skills at a translation agency or a company engaged in multilingual
communication, under competent supervision.
Reading the relevant literature, following the latest professional trends,
reviewing translation research and writing articles can also belong to the self-
training repertoire of translation trainers. The students’ translations can serve as
a rich resource of data in the researcher’s hand, however, in order to obtain valid
results a proper research methodology is necessary.
The section above describes the fact that the translator/entrepreneur/trainer
transfers their field knowledge to the students. The following four sections on
interpersonal, organisational, instructional and assessment competences explain
how this knowledge can be transferred.
2.2. Interpersonal competence
The essence of interpersonal competence is that the trainer has a relationship

with their students, and develops a good rapport with them making the classes
optimal from the viewpoint of learning. Good relations with colleagues are also
crucial: the translation trainer is part of a team in their institution and is capable
of cooperating with the other trainers. The trainer is aware of the ethical rules
connected to translation and teaching translation and is able to transfer these to
the students. The activities in class are relevant, interesting and have a relaxed
atmosphere, the students can ask questions. Kelly (2005) and Kiraly (2000) suggest
that translation competences can be developed in pair or group work, so the trainer
need not always organise the class frontally.
As I have mentioned in the section on field experience, students should be
trained in time management and coping with stress. There are methods and
strategies to do this, however the trainer’s own behaviour, predictability and
orderliness is the most obvious example (see LeCompte 1978 on the hidden
curriculum). Here again it is worth mentioning the usefulness of sharing one’s
own experience. If the trainer thinks it is appropriate they can tell the students
about their own stressful, unpleasant ventures related to translation and talk about
how they could tackle them, showing that a low point in one’s professional life does
not mean the end of one’s career as a translator.
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In the translation classes, when evaluating the translations it is crucial that the
students and the trainer analyse and give reasons for the decisions made during
the translation process. A glossary should be compiled for every assignment
where beside the source and target expressions the sources are also noted. This is
a good way to clarify why some solutions are not acceptable and it helps develop
the students’ information mining competence. They learn how to identify sources
of dubious credibility and analyse context before they choose their solutions.
Surprising as it may seem, all the skills listed above belong to interpersonal
competence in the model. These skills however can hardly be learnt from books
or through self-education. This makes the interpersonal dimension of teaching
pivotal. I have an abiding memory of one of my translation teachers who showed
us the revised version of his translation into his B language which was full of
comments and corrections. His honesty, openness and the fact that he did not try
to give his students the impression of being infallible still inspires me.
2.3. Organisational competence
The trainer should be aware of the students’ needs and expectations of the
programme. Having the students fill in a needs analysis questionnaire may be
useful at the beginning of the course, especially if it is the first time with the group.
Questions on the participants’ previous experience, needs, objectives, strengths
and weaknesses may be asked. The questionnaire can become part of the trainees’
translation portfolio and serve as a valuable tool for assessment and self-assessment.
Another document worth including in the portfolio is the profile of the modern
translator (see also the study on this topic in this volume). Getting to know the
competences is indeed a form of meta-knowledge, however this kind of knowledge,
beside practical skills, is also necessary in translator training.
The trainer can create an appropriate, motivating learning environment for
their students in class. The objectives of the course are clear, while the requirements,
deadlines and system of assessment are given to the students in the form of a course
description at the beginning of the course. This will serve as a reference document
throughout the course. The tasks given should be relevant and doable, in addition,
their content should target the development of translation competence. The trainer
should be aware of the whole content of the translation training programme, the
content of other courses and plan their lessons as part of a translation training
team. References to what students have learnt earlier in the course, or in other
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courses can significantly increase the efficiency of learning and help the student fit
the knowledge they gain into a larger picture.
Flexibility and the ability to change also belong to organisational competence.
The trainer should follow changes in the profession and the translation market,
know the latest trends and include these novelties in the curriculum. The assessment
of the course made by the students at the end of the semester can greatly contribute
to the trainer’s reflective, flexible teaching practice. In many of the online learning
environments used by higher education institutions anonymous assessment of
the courses is possible, however, unfortunately students do not often exploit this
possibility. This is why the trainer should hand out a questionnaire at the end of
their course and ask the students’ opinion about the course.
2.4. Instructional competence
Granted the competences described above overlap with instructional competences

from a number of aspects, it is still worthwhile making an inventory of what
a translator trainer should know. First of all, choosing the appropriate tasks
should be mentioned. The trainer should make conscious choices when selecting
the course material. The objectives and function of tasks in reaching the goals of
the course should be clear. Within the tasks, the sub-tasks should also be carefully
planned, like compiling terminology, information mining, and quality analysis.
These should help the students in carrying out the tasks in a conscious manner, call
their attention to the importance of the sub-tasks and how these lead to a higher-
quality text.
The trainer should make a plan of their course and classes beforehand, and
when planning, rely on their theoretical knowledge of translation as well. They
should make an overview of the texts to be used, their order, the time allotted to
them and what work form should be used when producing the text. Certainly the
translation class is not the sole opportunity for the students to develop their skills:
training can take a virtual form and include regular consultations.
The basis of teaching translation is that the participants of the course translate
texts and get feedback on their work, either in writing or face-to-face from their
trainer. The training can have various work forms. In the case of regular contact
hours throughout the semester, some trainers have the translations sent to them
before the class, and review the texts for the class, while others have the students
bring the translated texts to class and discuss them on the spot. If the trainer
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reviewed the student translation before the class they can talk about the general
trends in the target language texts, like how certain expressions were translated,
which sources were used, which parts of the text proved to be a challenge and
what the typical errors were. The trainer might make a mixed version of the
target language text including the most typical errors/best solutions from the
translations, have the students revise this prepared text and go over the critical
points with them.
If trainees translate the text for class and discuss it with each other they have
more autonomy in the process of translation. They can ask as many questions as they
like but they bear the ultimate responsibility for their own text. The trainer should
also check some of the translations corrected in class in order to see how far the
students are able to produce a quality translation on their own, using outside help.
Pair or group work is also possible in translation classes (Kelly 2005). During
these activities the students read and comment on each others’ translation.
Compliments and criticism from peers may have a motivating effect, as the
corrections from the trainer often project an unreachable norm for the student,
but their peers are more or less at the same stage of development in their learning
(on the advantages of learning from peers see Swain et al. 2002; Topping 2005).
The competences listed in the study on the modern translator are presumably
present in the students, although some may be at an early stage, while in other
fields their progress, or at least interest is already considerable. Taking advantage
of their skills and experience the students can also contribute to the course with
presentations, and for instance show the functioning of a CAT tool they have tried
or introduce a website they have found useful to their peers (favourites include
proz.com and iate.europa.eu).
The tips above are just examples of the activities that can make the classes
more effective and varied. The authors encourage translation trainers to follow
the literature of translation studies and teaching materials, and apply these in
their courses.
The importance of motivation is also mentioned in the description. The
acquisition and development of translation competences can be considered a high-
level, specialised form of language learning. The process model of L2 motivation
(Dörnyei & Ottó 1998) can serve as useful assistance for translation trainers. The
model represents motivation in the process of learning a second language and
distinguishes three phases of motivation: the preactional phase of making plans, the
actional phase, and postactional phase of evaluation, which includes preparation for
the next cycle. The three phases of motivation are depicted in Figure 2.
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Figure 2
The phases of motivation (Dörnyei & Ottó 1998)
Translator training courses usually give students 2-4 semesters to students to

acquire translation skills, the semesters themselves can be considered motivational
cycles. In the phase of goal setting, at the beginning of the course the trainer can
ask the students to list their goals concerning their own development in writing. In
the actional phase, during the semester the completion and evaluation of the tasks
divide the phase into smaller cycles and the goal setting and evaluation phases are
realised in smaller steps. Regularly getting back to the goals set at the beginning of
the process can make the learning process more effective. In this way the students
can see which strategies, activities and concrete assistance tools led to acceptable
and correct solutions in their translations at the micro level. The courses are
completed by both the trainer’s evaluation (more on this in the following section),
and the students’ self-assessment. This is the point where it is worth returning to
the goals set at the beginning of the course and the student can reflect on what
should be added or modified in the future. These steps can all help the translator
trainees on their journey to becoming reflective, self-critical professionals and
being able to ascertain in which areas they need further development.
2.5. Assessment competence
The trainer’s assessment competence is first needed in the selection of candidates

at the entrance exam of the translator training institution. The basic requirements
are set by the institutions. The trainers usually take part in compiling the tests and
tasks and assessing the written tasks and oral exams. The next step is assessing the
newcomer trainees’ competences as the composition and level of the group greatly
influence the way the course runs.
Assessment competence has a key role in how the students get regular feedback
on their work. Research has shown (see Robin’s study in this volume) that revisers
203
often make superfluous corrections in texts. In the case of a translation trainer,

being a competent reviser and transmitting realistic norms towards the trainees
is of paramount importance. Corrections should only be made where necessary.
At the end of each course, the trainer should give complex feedback on the
trainee’s work, which can be based on the six EMT competences. In the field of
translation service provision for instance, the trainee’s approach to deadlines can
be assessed. When assessing translations, the trainee’s strengths and weaknesses
related to the other sub-competences (language, thematic, information mining
competence) will become visible.
Technological competence was not mentioned. Although this also constitutes
translation competence, the skills related are usually taught in a separate course.
CAT tools make translations faster, more precise, and if we want to imitate real-
life conditions in the course, the solution is using CAT tools (mostly for home
assignments). This practice can help our students gain the experience needed for
using these tools effectively. Some trainers may never or hardly ever use CAT tools
in their own translation practice, and some of their students are in fact handier
with the tool. Nevertheless they can encourage the students to use them, and
reward the students who made texts using CAT tools with extra points, and have
them present their translation memory and term base. This holds especially true
for specialised translation courses like ones on economic or legal texts.
The assessment of the students’ performance should be based on several tasks,
not just one translation or a written test. In this way, a more realistic picture can
be seen of the student’s development throughout the course and a fair evaluation
is given.
The trainer’s assessment competence should include self-assessment, the
evaluation of the course and the trainer’s best practice, both at the micro (classes)
and the macro level (courses). Following the evolution of translation studies and
the market, teaching practices should continuously be updated. This refers to
teaching materials, the theoretical background of courses, the methods applied
in teaching and the contents of the competences described. Just as the student
optimally sets goals and evaluates their own work, so the trainer too should also
take these steps. Establishing a routine is useful and it backs up the trainer’s work,
however accommodating to changes is just as important. The trainers should
always be ready to critically assess their own practices.
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3. Conclusion
The previous sections outlined the competences a translation trainer should have.
The trainer should take on the following five roles during their activity: translator,
entrepreneur, reviser, coach and teacher. The trainer, besides being a translator
and mastering the six competences of the modern translator, has to possess
some other skills as well in order to transfer their knowledge successfully. After
graduating most students plan to become translators in the home or international
market, so they can benefit from the trainers’ experience as an entrepreneur and
freelance translator. As giving feedback on the students’ translations is the core of
the training process, the trainer also acts as a reviser who can assess the quality
of the translation and give the students advice on what and how to improve. The
next role the trainer is supposed to take is that of the coach who can give a young
professional bespoke advice, help them form their identity as translators and
develop their competences. The above roles are all motivated by the teacher, as all
the other competences and roles are centred around the teacher.
The diversity of these roles suggests that the expectations toward a translation
trainer are rather high. The authors of the model stress that these are not the
initial expectations but rather what the trainer should strive to achieve throughout
a career characterised by lifelong learning. Versatility is thus doubly expected from
translation trainers.
References
Dörnyei, Z. & Ottó, I. 1998. Motivation in action: A process model of L2

motivation. In: Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, Vol. 4. Thames Valley
University. 43–69.
EMT Expert Group. 2009. Competences for professional translators, experts
in multilingual and multimedia communication. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/
translation/programmes/emt/key_documents/emt_competences_translators_
en.pdf, last accessed on 25 November 2015.
EMT Expert Group. 2013. The EMT Translator Trainer Profile. Competences of
the trainer in translation. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/programmes/
205
emt/key_documents/translator_trainer_profile_en.pdf, last accessed on 25

November 2015.
Kelly, D. 2005. A Handbook for Translator Trainers: A Guide to Reflective Practice.
Kiraly, D. 2000. A Social Constructivist View to Translator Education. Empowerment
from Theory to Practice. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Mossop, B. 2007. Empirical studies of revision: what we know and need to know
in Journal of Specialised Translation, Issue 8. http://www.jostrans.org/issue08/
art_mossop.php, last accessed on 25 November 2015.
Samuelsson-Brown, G. 2010. A Practical Guide for Translators. Fifth Edition.
Multilingual Matters.
Swain, M., Brooks, L. A., Tocalli-Beller, A. 2002. Peer-peer dialogue as a means
of second language learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 22: 171–185.
LeCompte, M. 1978. Learning to Work: The Hidden Curriculum of the Classroom.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly 9(1): 22–37.
Topping, K. J. 2005. Trends in Peer Learning. Educational Psychology 25(6): 631–645.
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New Courses in the Curriculum: Language
Technology, Supervised Translation Project Work
Máté Kovács
E-mail: komate1@yahoo.fr
1. Introduction
Nowadays the constantly globalising translation industry places increasingly

onerous demands on translators. In recent decades both the diversification
of translation activity and the development of translation technology have set
a challenge for all stakeholders in the translation market, including translators.
In order to illustrate how complex these changes are, it is sufficient to analyse the
widening meaning of the term translation. Translation activity has come to stand
for translation in the strictest sense of the world, i.e. transforming a text in the
source language to the target language; localisation – adapting target language
content (written or digital) to the recipient culture; post-editing, i.e. improving the
quality of a machine-generated translation; and transcreation or adaptation, often
defined as creative recreation.
The increasingly diversified activities place high demands on translators in
terms of knowledge, flexibility and mastery of tools. When performing these
activities, the use of computer assisted translation (CAT) tools is considered
a must, these software being integrated into the translation workflow due to several
well-defined reasons. For example, ensuring terminological consistency, speeding
up the translation process, meeting tight deadlines or exploiting server-based
solutions so that several translators could work on a given project at the same
time. Consequently, the use of CAT tools is of primary importance not only for
translators taking their first steps in the market but also for those having worked
in the industry for years, if not decades.
It is also important to emphasize that freelance translators in the market are
in constant contact with their direct clients or translation agencies, therefore,
translation has increasingly become a social activity (Horváth 2013). This profession
necessitates the existence of certain skills loosely connected to translation but
207
indispensable for succeeding in the market. These are, for example, professional
business communication, cooperation with clients and agencies, flexibility, project
management and business skills (Gouadec 2007).
This study focuses on two important aspects of the highly diversified translation
activity: the use of computer assisted translation (CAT) tools and the translation
project management workflow together with their appearance as courses in
university translator training programmes and their methodology of teaching.
2. Elements of a translator’s competence
Elements of a translator’s competence or knowledge have been defined in various

ways (Campbell 1998; Kelly 2005; PACTE 2000; Schäffner & Adab 2000). Although
the wording of these competences as well as their focus can slightly differ from one
theory to another, all researchers seem to agree that translators not only have to
possess excellent language skills and cultural knowledge in order to successfully
fulfil their assignments, they also have to acquire skills and abilities to adapt to
the ever demanding requirements of the translation industry. This study does not
aim to review in detail all translation competence models but rather intends to
draw attention to two highly important elements in the long competence lists:
translation technology and translation project management.
2.1. Proposals of the European Master’s in Translation (EMT)
The European Master’s in Translation (EMT) expert group was set up by the
Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) of the European Commission in 2007.
The main task of the group was to elaborate a European reference framework for
a Master’s in Translation for all institutions throughout the European Union which
have been admitted to the network and provide university level translator training
programmes. In 2009 the group presented the minimum reference framework,
whose elements have to be acquired by students by the end of their training.
However, it is important to stress that the reference framework only defines the
types of competences, not the pedagogical and methodological approaches leading
to the acquisition of those competences, nor the resources to be used. Therefore,
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New Courses in the Curriculum
it is the training institutions’ responsibility to fill their programmes with content

taking into account the basic principles of the reference framework.
The six competences defined by the EMT expert group are the following:
translation service provision, language, intercultural competence, info mining
competence, thematic competence, technological competence (for further details
see the study entitled What makes a professional translator? The profile of the
modern translator in this volume).
Instead of describing in detail all competences, we only focus here on the two
competences that are most closely related to the two courses to be presented. The
translation service provision competence involves being aware of the social role of
the translator; knowing how to follow market requirements; how to negotiate with
clients; how to specify and calculate services offered and define stages and strategies
for the translation of a document (price quotations, deadlines, added value, quality
check, relevant standards, etc.); how to work in a team; how to self-evaluate and
take responsibility. The translation service provision competence is of central
importance as it unites all other elements of competence and is indispensable for
succeeding in the market. The technological competence refers to knowing how
to use effectively a range of CAT tools, create and manage a database and files,
translate multimedia and audio visual material and to recognising the possibilities
and limitations of machine translation.
2.2. Requirements of the Standard EN 15038:2006
In the following it is worth considering the other side of the coin. The majority
of students completing a university level translator training aim to succeed – if
they stay in the profession – as freelancers. Their clients include many translation
agencies. Some of these agencies are qualified in accordance with the standard
EN 15038:2006 (published by the European Committee for Standardisation and
adapted by various national standardisation authorities), while others are not, but
they follow the principles of this standard for the sake of quality work and employ
translators meeting precise criteria.
The standard defines a translator’s competence as the sum of the following
elements:
a) translating competence,
b) linguistic and textual competence in the source language and the target
language,
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c) research competence, information acquisition and processing,

d) cultural competence,
e) technical competence.
The technical competence includes skills and abilities necessary for the preparation
and execution of professional translations. Moreover, it also comprises technical
skills detailed in section 3.3. (Standard EN 15038:2006).
Although section 3.3. has a general wording and mentions the importance of
skills concerning the use of the necessary hardware and software tools, the latter
also include CAT tools. Biel (2011) argues that the principles of the standard should
be taken into consideration in translator training, whose aim is not to train future
translators but rather translation service providers possessing the above mentioned
competences.
As can be seen in this short review, the use of CAT tools and project management
knowledge are considered important by both the training institutions and the
translation business.
3. Growing requirements – changing needs – new courses
The constantly changing needs of the market and the increasingly growing
competence requirements have given rise to new courses in translator training.
These courses are mainly concerned with the acquisition and use of CAT tools as
well as with the translation project management workflow. In this part of the study
we aim to present through the didactic review of courses entitled Introduction to
Language Technology and Supervised Translation Project Work. These courses
feature in the curriculum of the Translation and Interpreting Master Programme
established by the Department of Translation and Interpreting of ELTE University.
In what follows I will present the methods and the knowledge we intend to transmit
to our students in order to enable them to succeed in the labour market.
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3.1. Introduction to language technology
During the second semester of their studies on the Master’s in Translation and
Interpreting programme, students attend the Introduction to Language Technology
course. First, it is important to note that the inclusion of the course in the first year
of studies is advantageous for all students. On the one hand, students specialising
in interpreting in the second year can become familiar with the basics of CAT
tools and gain their first experience in using them. This will be useful in their
translation activities as well as in preparing for their interpreting assignments (e.g.
compiling terminology lists). On the other hand, students opting for translation
specialisation can equip themselves with all the necessary knowledge that will
enable them to follow their advanced level CAT tools studies in the second year.
The primary objective of this introductory course is to familiarize students
with CAT tools, how to use them, how to accomplish translation projects in them
and how to handle various file types, translation memories and terminology
databases. The course focuses on the use of memoQ but attention is also given to
the presentation of basic functions of SDL Trados Studio. The course is conducted
on a weekly basis or as a block seminar with the possibility of online consultation.
The methodology of the course can be described as supervised individual work.
It means that after the presentation and review of one basic function students are
given exercises to immediately put their knowledge into practice. In order to solve
problems emerging during the use of software students can request assistance from
their peers and the course instructor. We also help and check students’ acquisition
of CAT tools with various hand-in activities. These activities are to be accomplished
at home, using the students’ own computer and software but it is also possible to
hold practice sessions in one of the computer rooms at the department. Hand-in
exercises mainly concern translating in the software, creating projects, translation
memories and terminology databases as well as exporting target language texts.
To conclude this part of the study it is important to note that the aim of the
Introduction to Language Technology course – besides conveying the above presented
knowledge – is to provide students with a view. Nowadays translators who are
not able to work in CAT tools used by their clients (mainly translation agencies)
are considerably disadvantaged in the labour market. Therefore, it is of utmost
importance that students get to know the basics of the use of software, benefit from its
advantages (e.g. reusing previous translations, creating terminology databases) and
are aware of certain disadvantages (e.g. ensuring coherence despite segmentation).
We hope that this course enables students to become conscious users of CAT tools.
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3.2. Supervised translation project work
As a follow-up course to the Introduction to Language Technology, students

choosing the translation specialisation attend the whole second year of their studies
the Supervised Translation Project Work seminar, which plays a special role in the
training as the number of courses is double. This course, as stated above, follows
the same view as the Introduction to Language Technology seminar and introduces
students to the use of advanced level software functions and also provides them
with further important knowledge in order to succeed in the translation market.
In the first semester this course is held and constantly supervised by the instructor
while in the second semester great significance is attached to students’ group work
and the project view.
3.2.1. Supervised translation project work I.

In the first semester the aim of this course is to present – through simulating
projects – the process and main steps of the translation project management
workflow, from creating a price quotation to sending back the translation to the
client. Classes focus on the revision of basic functions of CAT tools and on the
introduction and practice of advanced ones. Moreover, the course also aims at
developing students’ translation skills.
In the first part of the weekly course the various steps of the translation project
management workflow are discussed. Topics include: receiving a translation
request, communicating with clients, preparing a price quotation, confirming the
order, accomplishing translation and other added value services, sending back the
translation. As can be observed, the previously mentioned pieces of knowledge
are highly practical and these workflow steps are continuously present in the
everyday life of a translation agency. However, the question can arise as to why it
is important to integrate all this into the curriculum of a university level translator
training. It is worth noting that following completion of their studies, students
employed in various positions of the translation market can efficiently use the
knowledge gained. Be they freelancers, in-house translators or project managers of
a translation agency, or translation coordinators in a multinational company, they
can always tap into their university studies as a source of knowledge. Moreover,
project management and other skills (analytical ability, critical thinking, etc.) can
also be successfully used when adapted to other special areas.
The second part of the course focuses on the presentation and use of advanced
level functions of CAT tools. In connection with various steps of project
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management workflow students learn how to prepare statistics, align documents,

review and check quality. Students practise these functions not only in individual
exercises but also in translation projects.
In order to put into practice the acquired knowledge students work on
translation projects at home. These projects include translations from first foreign
language to Hungarian, from Hungarian to first foreign language and from
second foreign language to Hungarian, for the completion of which students use
a CAT tool. Texts to be translated involve articles, excerpts from a travel guide or
a study, recipes, technical documents, web pages, etc. Students work on projects
either individually or in groups and their task is to accomplish a given project, all
the way from receiving the order from the course instructor to sending back the
target text. In the case of individual projects these activities provide students with
the possibility to practise various roles (e.g. project manager, translator, reviewer)
at the same time and to observe complex workflows. In group work students
fulfil only one task and work in cooperation with their fellow students, as part of
a complex system, in order to successfully complete a project.
As can be observed, the teaching of translation project management workflow
is based on the integrated development of various skills. First of all, the course
focuses on different steps of the project management workflow and students are
introduced to how to plan these steps (meeting deadlines, guaranteeing resources,
etc.) and how to communicate professionally with clients. Secondly, students learn
how to efficiently use advanced level functions of CAT tools, special attention
being devoted to the order and logic of various processes in the software (e.g. first,
we align reference texts given by the client, then we create a terminology database,
next we analyse the text and finally we create statistics for the price quotation).
Thirdly, although students attend various translation classes, the aim of this course
is to further develop their translation skills. In the case of project work, the course
instructor evaluates the translations prepared individually or in groups, then we
discuss alternative solutions and agree on a preferred version (compare Piotrowska
2012). These evaluations contain not only general translation practices but also
software-specific aspects. Great emphasis is placed on ensuring terminological
consistency and we also talk about how to ensure target text coherence, taking into
account document segmentation.
Finally, we would like to share some further thoughts about the methodology
of the course. As can be observed in the previous course description, we highly
appreciate students’ active participation in the learning process (compare Kiraly
2000). The organisation of work processes inspires students to plan consciously
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during and beyond the course. For example, in the case of translation projects
prepared at home they have to plan the time allocated for the various workflow
steps so that they could meet deadlines. Planning and taking responsibility form an
essential part of the work and in order to confirm their importance we integrated
a reflective aspect in the course (for the self-reflection during the translation
process, see Piotrowska 2012). After each project work students are asked to reflect
on their activity with the help of a questionnaire. Questions concern planning the
workflow, attitude, final result and eventual modifications to carry out in the case
of future projects. All this helps students to assume responsibility for their work, to
be able to plan consciously their learning process and to take the first steps towards
autonomous learning (for the role of autonomous learning in interpreter training
and its results adaptable to translator training see Horváth 2005).
3.2.2. Supervised translation project work II.

This course – as its title indicates – can be considered as a continuation of that given
in the first semester. During the course students accomplish translation projects
in groups. These projects provide them with the possibility to get to know the tasks
of various participants in the translation workflow (project manager, translator,
reviewer, terminologist, etc.) and to acquire the necessary skills to successfully
fulfil a given role. Translation projects are accomplished with the help of CAT tools
and great importance is attached to the development of students’ translation skills.
The course – similarly to the first semester – focuses on the integrated
development of three skills areas but is carried out with an important difference.
The course instructor remains in the background and fulfils a helper or mentor
role (Kiraly 2000, 2005). Frontal work is not present during the course, students
work on projects in groups that enables them to put into practice as efficiently
as possible the knowledge gained in the first semester. Projects include all three
language combinations: translations are accomplished from first foreign language
to Hungarian, from Hungarian to first foreign language and from second foreign
language to Hungarian. The course instructor sends project requests to groups and
the aim is to simulate real translation workflow in which students are not required
to fulfil several roles at the same time, but they can practise the duties of a given
position from one project to another.
As far as the didactic objectives of the course are concerned they are the same
as in the previous semester but they also go into more depth. Responsibility taking
and conscious planning are given primary importance as they play an indispensable
role in the translation workflow. Students fulfilling the role of project manager are
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responsible for the accurate and precise planning and realisation of the process,
while translators, reviewers and terminologists are in charge of quality assurance
and observing the set deadlines. The group work, a partially new element compared
to the first semester, completes the methodology of the course with the addition of
valuable aspects. During group work students experience interdependence: the final
product, the translation, can only be accomplished through the cooperation of group
members; therefore, cooperative skills can also be developed. Students reviewing
each other’s translation can learn from their fellow students’ work and feedback,
while during communication with the project manager they can learn how to
formulate questions and problems to clients. Thanks to group work and cooperative
learning students can experience what will be part of their future professional
activity, i.e. even being freelancers in the market they form part of a complex system.
Lastly, it is worth mentioning that this course, based on the previously
presented didactic principles, conveys another important message to students. This
message is the so called life-long learning. It is a well-known fact that translation
and interpreting are professions that require constant self-development, inquiry
and study. During the course we call students’ attention to this way of working
with the help of our didactic tools.
4. Challenges and perspectives
The teaching of CAT tools and translation project management workflow constantly
pose serious challenges. We cannot detail them here in their entirety and give an
in-depth review but rather we focus on those aspects that are considered to be the
most important.
First of all, the development of software and the appearance of new versions,
extended functions and brand new programmes require constant inquiry and
self-study on the part of both teachers and students. It is of great importance
that students be aware of the evolution of translation technology, and following
the completion of their studies they should not cease to keep up with the latest
developments and be able to adapt to them. Moreover, the help of software
distributors to ensure students’ access to CAT tools is also indispensable. Thanks
to this, translators-to-be cannot only practise their CAT skills during courses but
also at home in order to be able to enter the market in a confident manner.
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Secondly, the activity defined by Kiraly (2005) as authentic project work is

also one of the important challenges. Its aim is not to have students working on
fictive projects but to encourage the cooperation of training institutions and the
translation business (e.g. translation agencies) so that students could deal with ‘real’
translation projects. In this case they can gain their first experience in handling real
projects and see what problems the various participants of the market encounter
during their everyday work. This way of working provides many advantages for
students in terms of motivation, responsibility taking and self-evaluation.
Thirdly, it is important to note that another possibility for cooperation between
universities and the translation profession is to ensure instructors for these courses.
As Gouadec (2007) remarks, involving colleagues in the university training who
work in the translation business can have many benefits. From the point of view of
both CAT tools and translation project management, experts working in various
positions of the industry and possessing effective didactic skills can appear as
authentic sources of motivation for students, thanks to their personal histories
and experience.
5. Conclusion
In conclusion we can confirm that the appearance of new courses, such as Language
Technology and Supervised Translation Project Work, in the translator training
programme reflects a clear view. We agree with Gouadec (2007), who asserts that
modern translator training cannot have the sole objective of training translators
for the relatively narrow market. Our aim is to train language specialists who can
successfully fulfil their role in various sectors and positions (e.g. project manager,
vendor manager, translation coordinator of multinational companies, etc.) of the
translation industry. Besides translation activity, the two previously presented
courses provide students with useful knowledge and valuable skills in order to
succeed in the above mentioned positions as well.
216
References
Biel, Ł. 2011. Training translators or translation service providers? EN 15038:2006

standard of translation services and its training implications. The Journal of
Specialised Translation 16: 61–76.
Campbell, S. 1998. Translation into the Second Language. London and New York:
Longman.
Gambier, Y. et al. 2009. Competences for professional translators, experts in
multilingual and multimedia communication. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/
translation/programmes/emt/key_documents/emt_competences_translators_
en.pdf, last accessed on 18 May 2014.
Gouadec, D. 2007. Translation as a Profession. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Horváth, I. 2005. The cognitive components of autonomous learning in interpreter
training. In: Anderson, H., Hobbs, M., Jones- Parry, J., Logan, S., and Lotovale, S.
(eds) Supporting independent learning in the 21st century. Proceedings of the
second conference of the Independent Learning Association, Auckland NZ,
9-12 September 2005. Auckland: Independent Learning Association Oceania.
http://www.independentlearning.org/proceedings-auckland-2005.html, last
accessed on 19 June 2015.
Horváth, I. 2013. A fordító- és tolmácsképzés új kihívásai [New challenges of
translator and interpreting training]. In: Klaudy, K. (ed.) Fordítás és tolmácsolás
a harmadik évezredben [Translation and interpreting in the third millennium].
Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó. 149–157.
Kelly, D. 2005. A Handbook for Translator Trainers. Manchester, UK &
Northampton MA: St. Jerome Publishing.
Kiraly, D. C. 2000. A Social Constructivist View to Translator Education.
Empowerment from Theory to Practice. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Kiraly, D. C. 2005. Project-Based Learning: A Case for Situated Translation. Meta:
Translators’ Journal 50(4). 1098–1111.
Schäffner, C. & Adab, B. (eds) Developing Translation Competence. Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
PACTE 2000. Acquiring Translation Competence: Hypotheses and Methodological
Problems of a Research Project. In: Beeby, A., Ensinger, D. & Presas, M. (eds)
Investigating Translation: Selected Papers from the 4th International Congress
on Translation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 99–106.
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Piotrowska, M. 2012. Methodological Value of Self-Reflection in Translator

Training. Student Empowerment. In: Zehlanová, J., Molnár, O. & Kubánek, M.
(eds) Teaching Translation and Interpreting Skills in the 21st Century. Proceedings
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2011. Olomouc: Palacký University. 105–115.
218
Márta Seresi
E-mail: seresi.marta@btk.elte.hu
1. Introduction
The past few decades have seen significant changes in all areas of life. Technological
developments have opened up a whole new world of opportunities which has, in
turn, led to new opportunities in human communication. These developments
have impacted our way of thinking and of course language services as well. This
means that language service provider training has to adapt to these changes and
to the new expectations students have of the training, and market players have of
language service providers. A good example of adapting to these new expectations,
but more specifically of exploiting new technological opportunities, is the
introduction of virtual classes in interpreter training.
Below I will examine briefly the most significant changes in language services
of recent years and the evolution of translator and interpreter training. Next, I will
discuss the topic of videoconference and remote interpreting in greater detail, and
examine how these developments can be incorporated into interpreter training in
the form of virtual classes as well as the challenges in implementing these concepts.
Finally, I will discuss why virtual classes cannot replace classroom-based lessons
but can complement them in a variety of ways.
219
2. The evolution of the language service provider
2.1. The role of information and communication technologies

in language services
Changes in technology impacted the professions of translation and interpreting

in different ways, with translation undergoing more significant changes (Horváth
2014). Although young labour market entrants hardly know what it is like to work
with pen and paper, as recently as a few decades ago this time-consuming working
method was the only one imaginable in the field of translation. It took a number of
days for the translator to even receive the text after having discussed the job with
the client, then to type up the first draft of the translation, send it back, receive the
corrected version, correct the original translation by hand and send it back again.
Translators tended to work alone and they did research on terminology or any
other questions either in the library or in the printed press (Kiraly 2000).
The spread of personal computers in the 1980s, however, meant that composing
and correcting texts became significantly easier with the help of word processor
software, and email programmes speeded up the process of sending translations
back to the client. Today, translators’ primary source of research is the internet. The
rise of the internet also coincided with the spread of computer-assisted translation
tools (Tripepi Winteringham 2010).
These developments speeded up the translation process significantly and even
presented new opportunities for translators to cooperate with one another. As
a result of these changes, translators are now expected to work increasingly faster
and to be able to complete larger translation tasks together in the form of a project,
through online communication (Horváth 2013a).
Interpreters experienced various changes in their profession. The first
major technological revolution in the world of interpreting was the emergence
of simultaneous interpreting, which was established as a legitimate form
of interpreting and gained prominence after the Nuremberg trials. Further
technological developments mainly improved interpreting booth equipment and
conditions and resulted in sound-proof booths, better quality microphones, faster
change times between channels and digital interpreter desks with clearly-labelled
relay keys. The spread of the internet also impacted the interpreting profession, but
mainly just the preparation phase, since interpreters have to be so quick to make
decisions when working in the booth that they would not have time to browse the
220
internet while being in the middle of an interpreting task (Tripepi Winteringham

2010). Still, laptops and tablets have made their way into the interpreting booth,
since these devices provide a more convenient and environmentally friendly way
for interpreters to review documents relevant to the interpreting task at hand as
well as making it easier to follow PowerPoint presentations projected at the event.
Another innovation was the emergence of machine interpreting, which at
this point is only useful in certain specific communication situations and only
if everything goes according to plan. It seems unlikely that machine interpreting
will ever be able to cover the needs of the entire interpreting market. Like machine
translation, it provides a cheaper but lower quality and much less reliable alternative
in specific communication situations (Horváth 2014).
2.2. Videoconference and remote interpreting
The advances made in real-time rendering in video and audio mean more and more
events are being organised without the need for participants to physically be present
at the scene. These events often also require the presence of an interpreter. In the
1970s, there were attempts made to hold professional events without participants
needing to be present, but the costs of procuring and maintaining the necessary
equipment were considered too high. Since then, however, technology has advanced
and thanks to programmes like Skype, videoconferencing has become widespread.
The literature distinguishes between two types of long-distance interpreting.
Remote interpreting (RI) is an interpreting situation where the interpreter is not
present at the meeting, and works with the help of screens and headphones without
a direct view of the meeting room or the speaker. This means that the interpreter
cannot be seen by those present at the meeting, either. RI theoretically allows for
the interpreter to take part in the meeting while being located in another country,
which allows his or her employer to reduce travel and accommodation expenses
and save the costs of the interpreter’s daily allowance. These expenses make up one
third of the money spent on freelance interpreters by international organisations.
In a number of cases, however, these are not the main reasons why a client may
choose to go with RI. If there is not enough room at the venue to set up interpreting
booths, or if organisers do not wish to install interpreting booths in an old style or
classical room or hall (where they often hold representative international meetings),
or if organisers wish to separate interpreters from the meeting’s participants for
security reasons, the interpreter booths will be set up in the same building but
221
not in the same room as the event or meeting (Mouzourakis 2006). The remote
location where the booths are set up often ends up being the hallway in front of the
entrance to the venue, a nearby room or perhaps a location only a few metres away
from the venue. In the case of remote interpreting, all of the meeting’s participants
are in the same location with the exception of the interpreter (Braun et al. 2011).
Videoconference interpreting is a form of interpreting where the interpreter
is in the same location as at least some of the meeting’s participants, while others
take part in the event with the help of videoconferencing equipment (Mouzourakis
2006). In this form of interpreting, the interpreter is seen by at least some but
maybe all of the participants and it is often used in situations of community
interpreting such as medical, legal, court, police or social interpreting. In the
cases of court or police interpreting, videoconference interpreting allows clients
to save on travel expenses, and is especially helpful in medical interpreting as it
enables immobile patients to communicate with their doctors. But this form of
interpreting is also used in areas other than social interpreting: European Union
institutions also make use of it when communicating with EU citizens through
webcasts. Videoconference interpreting is also often used in the business world
as well as facilitating communication among co-workers in military operations or
humanitarian crises (Braun et al. 2011).
It is also possible to combine videoconference interpreting and RI. In this
case the participants of the meeting themselves are in different locations and
the interpreter signs in from a third location. Whichever form of interpreting
clients may choose, all of them allow for multi-way communication, consecutive,
simultaneous interpreting, conference interpreting, bilateral interpreting or sign
interpreting (Braun et al. 2011).
So far we have discussed the advantages of RI and videoconference interpreting,
however, the interpreter community had doubts about these two new forms when
they first appeared. One of their first arguments against them was the lack of
visual information available in either form of interpreting, since the screen in
front of the interpreter only provides a narrow view of the venue. Even if there
are multiple views available for the interpreter (for example, a wider view of the
entire meeting, a close-up view of the conference chair or the speakers), it is not
the interpreter but rather the technician who gets to choose which view to display
on the screen. The inability to make eye-contact with the audience makes things
especially difficult in the case of consecutive interpreting, and it can even disrupt
the transitions between the speaker’s turn and the interpreter’s turn (Mouzourakis
2006; Braun 2007).
222
Another thing that is difficult to see through the screen is speakers’ postures,
gestures, nods of agreement or incomprehension, when actually all of these factors
not only enhance the interpreter's understanding of what is being said at the event
but also contribute to their own performance. The interpreter also often misses
projections or minor incidents that occur at the meeting. These are all things that
speakers could later refer back to, either implicitly or explicitly (Moser-Mercer 2005).
Regardless of how professionally the camera is installed, or how good the angle
of view is, a screen will never substitute a human’s live view. The human eye does
not function like a camera: instead of being passive, it has a problem-oriented
approach to finding solutions to challenges that may arise in the interpreting
process, because interpreters always face the direction where the current visual
information is coming from (Mouzourakis 2006).
In RI and videoconference interpreting, interpreters often feel that the
physical distance from the event itself impacts their performance. In situations of
consecutive interpreting they find it more difficult to interact with the audience
or to maintain seamless turn-taking between themselves and the speaker or even
to ask for clarifications (Tripepi Winteringham 2010). Because they are separated
from the event, they may even feel alienated, leading to a loss in motivation. They
feel that they tire sooner than in a ’traditional’ interpreting situation and that
their performance is poorer than it would normally be (Moser-Mercer 2003, 2005;
Mouzourakis 2006).
Gile’s Effort Model for interpreting says that an interpreter has a limited supply
of mental energy for the interpreting process, and that the interpreter divides
this supply among the various stages of the process (in the case of simultaneous
interpreting it is divided among three phases: listening and analysis, memory and
production). If the interpreter must use up more energy for a certain stage than
they normally do, it takes away more energy from the other phases (Gile 1995).
Setton’s cognitive model says the interpreter creates a mental model of the
interpreting event, consisting of the verbal information provided by the speakers
as well as the information that the interpreter gathered throughout the preparation
phase before the event; the interpreter’s general knowledge, the knowledge
gathered at the event; the sights at the event and everything the interpreter can
conclude from all of the information gathered. It is then this mental model that the
interpreter converts into their delivery (Setton 1999).
Based on all of this we can assume that the limited amount of visuals available
to the interpreter makes it more difficult to construct this model, which essentially
corresponds to the listening phase in Gile’s model. This takes away energy from
223
the delivery phase and this is why interpreters may feel more exhausted and that
their performance is poorer than usual (Moser-Mercer 2005).
It seems, however, that empirical studies do not back up the impressions of
interpreters. Surveys were carried out on the impact RI has on interpreters by
UNESCO in 1976, the UN in 1978 (Tripepi Winteringham 2010) and AIIC in 1992
(AIIC 2000). The European Parliament also carried out research at the end of 2004
on the effect RI has on interpreters, clients and the quality of interpreting. The
study compared remote simultaneous interpreting situations with traditional
simultaneous interpreting situations and it was concluded that RI only poses
a difficulty in the interpreter’s learning phase, or the time period during which
interpreters get accustomed to the new method. Once they were past this phase,
they no longer suffered from headaches, lack of sleep or digestion problems and
overall they did not display any more stress reactions than they would have in
traditional simultaneous interpreting situations. The results of the study did not
show that the monitor screen would lead to eye strain, in fact it was better for their
posture to sit up straight and look at the monitor instead of slouching forward,
trying to get a view of every corner of the venue. The scores researchers assessing
audio records and transcripts of the interpreting session gave for RI performances
were only slightly lower than the scores given for traditional interpreting situations
– although the researchers did not know which speeches were delivered in which
type of interpreting situation – but the difference in scores did not exceed the
statistical margin of error. Audience members were surveyed on satisfaction
with the delivery, satisfaction levels being no lower in the cases of RI (Roziner &
Shlesinger 2010).
3. Changes in education
Developments in information and communication technology led to access

to new tools for instructors as well: they gained access to more resources
and technological developments, bringing about new teaching and learning
methodologies. As was the case in every field, education also recognised
the opportunities provided by online communication. These opportunities
brought about the concept of online, virtual learning, also known as e-learning.
E-learning is a form of distance education in which IT plays a crucial role. The
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technical conditions of e-learning are now provided almost everywhere. Since

it eliminates travel and accommodation expenses for the student and/or the
teacher, it allows for a wider audience to take part in various training courses,
therefore it leads to equal opportunities for more people. Course materials today
can be sent almost anywhere and a virtual learning environment can be both
interesting and motivating (Dobos 2011).
Virtual education methods can be divided into two categories:
synchronous and asynchronous methods. Asynchronous classes do not require
the student and the teacher to either be in the same location or online at the same
time. This type of class offers favourable scheduling options for the student but
it also involves a lower level of communication. Asynchronous methods include
the use of e-books, interactive online materials or worksheets, e-mails, message
boards, newsletters or educational videos (Bujdosó 2011). In interpreter training,
another tool available to students is the online multilingual speech pools such
as Speechpool (http://www. speechpool.net/hu/) or the EU’s Speech Repository
(http://www.multi lingualspeeches.tv/scic/portal/index.html).
In synchronous classes, the teacher and the student are in different locations
but they have to be online at the same time. These classes are advantageous because
they are more interactive, they facilitate more personal communication, but at the
same time they are subject to time constraints. These classes also do not allow for
students to follow their own individual schedules. Synchronous methods involve
telephone consultations, videoconferencing, chatting, and webinars, seminars
and live interactive television (Bujdosó 2011). Videoconference belongs to this
category as well.
Although these new teaching methodologies meet a number of new demands,
they also have their disadvantages. Experiential learning is becoming more and
more important in education and not all types of distance learning can offer
students an opportunity for experiential learning. If one of the objectives of
the training is to teach students how to use modern technology, how to handle
distances in virtual learning environments, then experiential learning is done
in the form of learning how to handle these virtual tools. Nevertheless, it would
be wrong to underestimate the strengths of classroom learning, since it is in this
type of learning environment that students can improve group dynamics, build
relationships and learn from each other. This is why virtual classes are often not
an alternative to classroom learning, but rather complementary forms of learning.
Combining the advantages of the two methods is what is known as blended
learning (Dobos 2011).
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3.1. Changes in interpreter training
Interpreter training has been practice-oriented from the outset. Classes have
always attempted to provide an accurate simulation of real interpreting situations.
In most schools, having a small number of interpreting theory classes was intended
to get students to consciously immerse themselves in the process of interpreting,
the various problems that could arise and to encourage them to reflect on their
work. Students continuously have to make conscious efforts to understand why
they learn, what they learn and how they learn it and they also must incorporate
their peers into this learning process. They need to plan their progress in advance
and must constantly review and evaluate it. Students must reflect on the progress
of their peers the same way. In this sense, classroom work also prepares students
for the out-of-classroom effort they will need to put into their learning (Horváth
2012).
Advances in technology did not alter the basics of interpreter training. New
teaching tools were added to the already existing ones, but instead of replacing
them, the new tools complemented them. Together, the different methods led to
blended learning for students: while continuing to attend classes, students could
test themselves in virtual environments.
The main aspect of modern technology that can be of help to students is the
wide availability of new forms of communication, which also led to an increased
amount of audio material that students can use to practise interpreting. These
new communication tools allow students to create their own audio files, either
by recording their own, their peers’ or their teachers’ speeches, for instance with
their smartphones, and they also have access to enormous libraries of speeches.
As noted above, one source from where they can obtain speeches is the Speech
Repository, a library operated by the European Commission’s Directorate General
for Interpretation. These asynchronous methods have expanded the ways students
can prepare for their classes.
Synchronous methods are also suitable for helping students practise in a virtual
environment. The concept of virtual classes is an example of these methods.
A virtual class basically simulates a videoconference interpreting situation. The
E-learning Units of EU institutions organise classes like this. Since 2012, the
Department of Translation and Interpreting at ELTE University also organises
joint virtual classes with the Directorate General for Interpretation of both the
European Parliament and Commission.
226
In virtual classes, students can follow along on a screen, with native language
speeches being delivered by interpreters working in Brussels, then they can interpret
that speech simultaneously or consecutively, depending on class conditions. As
in real life situations in the case of consecutive interpreting, students have the
chance to ask the speaker for clarification if needed and they can also incorporate
nonverbal communication. Students are then given feedback on their performance
from the interpreter and the teacher.
A few years ago the question was raised whether there is a point in incorporating
into the curriculum a form of interpreting (RI) that was not even certain of
surviving due to many interpreters having a negative view of it (Braun et al. 2011).
Today, however, it is clear that not only will RI survive, it also appears to be gaining
ground, and not just in the EU and the UN. RI is also gaining ground in Hungary,
particularly in court interpreting.
Virtual classes incorporate the market reality into interpreter training and
they also meet the needs of students. Braun et al. of the University of Surrey
launched a short course on videoconference interpreting in the context of court
interpreting. The course started with an introduction to the theoretical aspects of
the different forms of interpreting and their challenges, after which students were
given a chance to try videoconference interpreting in practice.
Results of surveys assessing the course clearly indicated that students obviously
have a need for a course preparing them for working in a virtual environment,
since they are very much aware that videoconference interpreting comes with its
own unique challenges. The course focused on letting students gain experience in
this form of interpreting.
It also came to light from the surveys that it was important for all students to
get a chance to try videoconference interpreting after the theoretical introduction
to it, adding, however, that the fact that many students got a chance to at least
observe their peers as they tried it is also important (Braun et al. 2011).
If the use of videoconference equipment is incorporated into interpreter training,
students will not only get a chance to get to know how the videoconferencing
equipment functions, they will also have the opportunity to meet new people.
Another positive aspect of virtual classes is that students get to experience a wide
variety of styles, accents and native speakers, without the speakers (or their home
institutions) having to make an expensive and tiring journey to deliver their
speeches. The colleagues who contribute to virtual classes do not only contribute
with their speeches but also with their methodologies and feedback.
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Finally, it is important to note that organising virtual classes can strengthen

cooperation between partner universities and EU institutions that have an interest
in interpreter training, which can be beneficial to both the training institution and
students.
3.2. Incorporating virtual classes into interpreter training
There are certain technical conditions that have to be met in order for an
institution to organise virtual classes. This article does not examine all of those
requirements, but instead focuses on practical questions that are important from
the point of view of interpreting students and teachers. Videoconferences in which
we can include groups of students are easy to organise in this age of broadband
internet and programmes like Skype. If, however, the training institution’s
partners are EU institutions, they may insist on strictly using videoconference
equipment for security reasons. One advantage of using such equipment is that
it often comes with large screens because it is important to maintain high picture
quality throughout the videoconference. In order to ensure the best picture quality
possible, it is important to make sure that the camera is placed in the right spot,
just as it is important to pay attention to the lighting and observe which direction
natural light enters the room from. If, for example, there is a window behind the
participants, it is best to draw the curtains so that the partner on the other side
of the conference call has better visibility. In terms of sound quality, the most
important requirement is that the microphone can carry every single participant’s
voice. It is also important to attempt to remove the echo from the transmitted
audio signal (echo cancellation). If necessary, we can use the mute button on our
microphones when there is no one speaking on our side of the call.
Before using the videoconference equipment, it is worth testing it out to
make sure that the two sides can establish a connection. Furthermore, it is also
important to test seating and camera and microphone positioning to achieve
optimal picture and sound quality. If possible and if the positioning of the cameras
and microphones permit, we should try to arrange seating in the way it would be
in real life. This is especially important when simulating police interrogations or
business meetings (Braun et al. 2011).
After discussing organisational questions, let us see how best to incorporate
virtual classes into interpreter training. There is not much a point in scheduling
virtual classes at the beginning of the training course, given that it poses even
228
more challenges than traditional interpreting. Braun found that it is difficult

enough for students to decide where to sit, which way the interpreter should face
in that unknown situation (since there is no room for eye contact) and how to
make the transition between the speaker and the interpreter. Students indicated
that they felt they were too far from their communication partner and that they
were worried that a technical error may occur (Braun et al. 2011). Another study
found that another source of difficulty could be the fact that the screen attracts the
attention of too many people and that interpreters tend to focus on the screen, even
when one of their clients is sitting right next to them and when that client is the
one the interpreter should be paying the most attention to (Balogh & Hertog 2012).
A survey conducted by Seresi in 2012 found another important factor in virtual
classes: stress. Most students felt that there was more attention being directed
at them in virtual classes and 68% of them indicated higher levels of stress. The
survey also found that almost half of the students thought that the videoconference
equipment does not relay enough video or audio information (Seresi 2013). Most of
these challenges would put too much pressure on beginner interpreting students
and we can also assume that students will absorb the differences between virtual
and traditional classes a lot better if they have already gained experience in
traditional interpreting by the time they try videoconference interpreting.
We have already touched on expectations teachers and students have of
virtual classes. Now we will examine what students said they gained from this
learning method. Braun found that students felt the training had taught them
about the characteristics of videoconference interpreting and about differences
between it and traditional interpreting. They recognised some of the advantages
and challenges of the various methods of interpreting and said they could explain
these to their clients. Interestingly, when the training was over very few students
said they would take up an interpreting job that involved this method (Braun et al
2011). A 2013 survey by Seresi found that students believed having the opportunity
of working with EU interpreters and professionals was one of the most rewarding
and beneficial parts of the experience.
One key advantage of virtual classes for students is that they allow them to
experience more formal interpreting settings than the classroom, get to know more
about the expectations of EU institutions, meet many employees of EU institutions
and get to hear a variety of speaking styles.
Once again, we are shown the importance of new communication technologies
in establishing connections. It is essential to make clear, however, that virtual
classes cannot substitute traditional classes. Interpreter training sets several
229
targets, and not all of them can be accomplished solely through videoconferencing.
The students themselves are also aware of this. A survey conducted by Ábrányi
among translator students found that the majority of students need personal
contact with the instructor. They are also aware of the fact that language service
providers must possess a wide social network and they believe training institutions
provide a great opportunity to build these networks (Ábrányi 2013).
There are numerous interpreter competences that cannot be developed through
virtual classes. Students need to learn how to prepare for their speeches; how to
research a given topic, what kinds of sources to use and how to select the key pieces
of information from those sources, as well as needing to develop social learning
skills. They need to learn how to ask the right questions and how to cooperate with
each other and their instructors. They must learn how to talk to their future clients,
how to give feedback to their peers and how to set common goals (Horváth 2012).
Virtual classes either provide limited opportunities to develop these skills or they do
not provide opportunities at all. Students must therefore learn these skills in class or
over the course of their individual practice sessions.
4. Conclusion
Human communication has been fundamentally changed by modern technology,

which naturally has impacted the world of language services as well. Translation
jobs demand more and more cooperation among translators and translators must
also work increasingly faster, which they would not be able to do if it were not for
modern communication technologies. In the world of interpreting, the spread of
these new technologies led to the rise of remote interpreting and videoconference
interpreting. These new forms of interpreting are now omnipresent on the
interpreting market, and therefore must be incorporated into interpreter training
in the form of virtual classes. The use of modern communication technologies,
however, only yields the desired results in interpreter training if we are aware of
its advantages and limits and if we do not lose sight of interpreter competences
that cannot be developed solely through virtual classes. It is crucial that we do not
ignore the inherent power of classroom learning, as by combining the advantages
of virtual and traditional classes we can provide interpreter students with a blended
learning environment.
230
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232
The Role of Cooperative Learning in Translator
and Interpreter Training
Ildikó Horváth
1. Introduction
Being a successful language service provider (LSP) takes more than just being skilled
in translation and interpreting. While these skills are no doubt indispensable if one
wishes to succeed as an LSP, it is also imperative that translators and interpreters
continuously train themselves in their field. Therefore, apart from simply
developing the interlingual mediation skills of future professionals, translation
and interpreting training courses must also prepare students for lifelong learning.
In order to embrace the concept of lifelong learning, students must be taught how
to become autonomous learners and develop their autonomous learning skills in
order to succeed as LSPs (Horváth 2005, 2007a, 2007b). One of the methods of
developing autonomous learning skills is by applying the principles of cooperative
learning.
2. Cooperative learning
The use of cooperative learning techniques in the classroom can contribute greatly
to strengthening learner autonomy (Benson 2001, Bolhuis 2003, Dam 1995, Ridley
1997). The term ‘cooperative learning’ itself has a variety of definitions. According
to some of these, cooperative learning can be defined in the following ways:
– students working together in a group small enough that everyone can
participate in a collective task that has been clearly assigned (Cohen 1994);
– an overarching philosophy to change school and classroom organisation
and instructional processes (Stevens & Slavin 1995);
233
– students working together in small groups and assuming shared

responsibility for common goals; this style of learning results in positive
interdependence as one given student can only succeed if the entire group
does (Ewing & Kennedy 1995);
– a pedagogical method and organisation which accommodates social,
interactive aspects (Holloway 1992);
– classroom methods and techniques of which the six most commonly employed
are: Student Team Learning (Slavin 1983, 1989/1990); Learning Together
(Johnson & Johnson 1989); Group Investigation (Sharan & Sharan 1992);
a Structural Approach (Kagan 1992); Complex Instruction (Cohen 1986) and
Collaborative Approach (Barnes, Britton & Torbe 1986) (in Davidson 1995: 179).
Out of the approaches listed above, this article will examine cooperative learning
as a method of organising small-group work. Below, I will discuss concepts and
principles that determine the structure of classroom group work. These concepts
include negotiation, process-oriented curricula and positive interdependence.
2.1. Negotiation
Continuous negotiation is a constant series of discussions between the teacher

and classroom group members on learning agendas (Breen and Littlejohn 2000:
1). Nunan says that, besides the organisation of classroom learning agendas,
negotiation can apply to any aspect of the curriculum, for instance, needs
analysis, goal and objective setting, implementation (including methodology
and materials development) and evaluation or self-evaluation. A negotiated
curriculum is therefore comprised of traditional curriculum elements (such as
planning, implementation and evaluation). The main difference is that a negotiated
curriculum is the product of the joint efforts of the teacher and the students, as
students take part in deciding on both the content of what they learn and the
teaching methods by which they are taught that content. Another difference is
that with traditional curricula, the teaching process follows the strict order of
planning, implementation and evaluation while objectives, the teaching material
and teaching methods are determined in advance. With negotiated curricula, on
the other hand, negotiation, decision-making, planning and evaluation are done
informally and during the implementation of the curriculum. One of the most
important attributes of this learner-centred curriculum is that all decisions about
234
The Role of Cooperative Learning in Translator and Interpreter Training
it can be overruled during implementation. This type of curriculum is therefore

process-oriented because it interprets the various aspects of curriculum planning
as a series of constantly changing and alterable processes that characterize the
process of teaching and learning. Given that a negotiated curriculum is process-
oriented, it allows for “greater flow and integration between planning processes,
implementation processes and evaluation” (Nunan 1988: 20). As we can see, the
curriculum is not just a tool for planning the teaching and learning process or
determining the content to be taught, but rather an integrated system that focuses
on what happens during the implementation of the programme (Nunan 1988: 180).
The aim of process-oriented teaching is to facilitate autonomous learning and
to develop students’ ability to become autonomous learners. Bolhuis (2003: 338)
categorizes the principles of process-oriented learning into the following four
points: move gradually to student regulation of the complete learning process, focus
on knowledge-building in the domain (subject area), pay attention to emotional
aspects of learning, treat the learning process and results as social phenomena.
Advocates of a more radical version of negotiated curricula say students should
participate in the entire process of determining the learning material, teaching
methodology and evaluation. Clarke strongly opposes this stance for multiple
reasons. One of his arguments is that there are very few situations in which such
an approach could be implemented (except, for example, in the cases of private
lessons or very small groups). There are practical reasons for this. One is that
neither teachers nor students would be prepared for this form of negotiation.
Most teachers would probably be frightened of the idea of including students
in every single decision, while looking at it from the students’ perspective, only
a very specific type of student would be able to profit from such an approach.
Implementing a negotiated curriculum is also very culture-dependent. Clarke,
however, does not reject the argument that negotiation can lead to more efficient
learning and more motivated learners, especially given that students can
potentially add creative elements to the lesson. These creative elements, however,
depend greatly on factors such as learners’ level of cognitive development or the
culture in which they are implemented. In other words, Clarke does not reject the
idea of negotiation, he simply suggests that it can be incorporated into the various
elements of the curriculum. This way students will be guaranteed the opportunity
to make choices for themselves and give their opinions (Clarke 1991).
Boekaerts says that when discussing autonomy and cooperative learning, it is
essential to take into account learners’ objectives, as autonomy and students’ goal
structures cannot be studied separately. Learners aim to achieve, maintain, strengthen
235
and protect personal goals that they consider important. Self-direction, in this case,
can be defined in terms of self-generated thoughts, feelings, and actions, which
are systematically oriented toward attainment of learners’ personal goals, taking
account of the local conditions (Boekaerts 2002). This is in line with cooperative
learning in the sense that cooperative learning is also, by nature, goal-oriented,
offers differentiated learning experiences, thus providing each student a chance to
actively participate in the lesson and represent their own goals throughout the entire
learning process, from the planning stage, through implementation all the way to
the evaluation phase. Boekaerts, however, says that cooperative learning can only
be effective if students can achieve their learning objectives in a way that does not
hamper their socio-emotional goals. This is important, because, as Boekaerts points
out, the interaction pattern among students may differ depending on the subject.
Whether or not a student’s opinion is accepted by their peers during a discussion,
or whether the student is even given a chance to express themselves, depends on
whether that student is considered competent in the subject being discussed. Not
giving a student a chance to express his or her opinion may even lead to that student
responding to the situation with aggression, which will in turn have a negative
impact on the learning process (Boekaerts 2002: 600).
2.2. Positive interdependence
Another key element of a cooperative learning environment is the concept of positive

interdependence (Sapon-Shevin & Schniedewind 1992). Positive interdependence
means that students understand that they depend on one another and that they
are capable of achieving bigger goals together than on their own. Any difficulty
a particular student may have with the learning material encourages the rest of the
group to help that student so that the entire group can succeed. The success of the
group is also the success of the individual, the same way that the failure of the group
is also the failure of the individual and vice versa. Therefore, a lesson employing
cooperative learning techniques focuses mainly on assignments and projects that
require everybody’s contribution in order for them to be completed. Traditional
lessons, on the other hand, bring negative interdependence into classes, where one
student’s success leads to another one’s failure and vice versa. Interdependence brings
students to interact with one another when working on completing an assignment.
It is not enough to simply put students into groups in order to create a cooperative
learning environment. In order to establish a truly interactive, cooperative learning
236
environment, the tasks that students need to carry out in order to complete their
assignment must be correctly structured. According to Cohen, one way to achieve
this is through creating goal interdependence among students. This means that
the group is created because the students who form the group depend on each
other to achieve their collective goal. That goal is also achieved through resource
interdependence, which relies on the fact that the individual group members each
possess specific resources necessary for the group to succeed and they must therefore
use one another’s knowledge to achieve their goal. The principles of goal and resource
interdependence must be employed simultaneously in order to establish optimal
settings for active participation within the group (Cohen 1994: 12–13).
Another form of interdependence is reward interdependence, which centres
on group rewards based on individual performance. This, however, means that
each member is responsible for their own learning (Slavin 1983a in Cohen 1994).
Individual responsibility is therefore a key factor in the group’s success. As Bolhuis
states, the cooperative learning movement stresses the importance and effectiveness
of social learning. Cooperative learning gives students the opportunity to acquire
social skills that are of great importance in life, such as negotiation or cooperation.
Cooperative learning techniques also promote students’ self-esteem and enhance
their learning as they are all given a chance to participate actively in the learning
process. Students also serve one another as sources of information and by helping
each other find solutions to problems, they get a chance to reflect on and discuss
any disagreements that may arise within the group. Cooperative learning also
strengthens learners’ independence and self-regulation, together with their
experiencing the social construction and the social origin of knowledge (Bolhuis
2003: 331).
Another characteristic of a cooperative learning environment is that learners
are responsible for both their own and the group’s learning. Power within the group
is divided and students participate in the learning and decision making process as
equals. The relationship between cooperative learning and autonomous learning
can be interpreted in a variety of ways: cooperative learning can be taken as either
a precondition for or a result of learner autonomy. Regardless of how we look at
it, it is clear that the two concepts are closely linked. The teaching and learning
practices that utilise the principles of cooperative learning contribute greatly to
forming and developing students’ learner autonomy. Cooperative learning allows
teachers to organise classroom work more efficiently without completely giving up
their authority. Furthermore, it provides students with a learning environment in
which they bear greater responsibility for their own learning.
237
3. Cooperative learning in translator and interpreter

training
Continuous negotiation, process-oriented curriculum and positive interdependence

are all fundamental principles in translator and interpreter training. This means
that translator and interpreter training requires that instructors and students
constantly negotiate the organisation of the course, the learning material and the
method of evaluation. It is advantageous if the elements of negotiation are built
into the curriculum, although it is enough to implement a more ‘loose’ version
of the negotiated and process-oriented curriculum. This means that students
constantly have an opportunity to express their opinions about certain aspects of
the learning process, the learning material and content, the working methods and
the form of evaluation (albeit to a lesser extent than about the other aspects). It is
therefore preferred that students take advantage of this opportunity and teachers
take their opinions into account. As seen above, students do not have a say in
every single aspect of the training, but their opinions are listened to throughout
the course and they are taken into consideration. This constitutes Clarke’s mild
version of a process-oriented curriculum (Clarke 1991).
As noted above, Boekaerts says that cooperative learning is goal-oriented and
differentiated (Boekaerts 2002: 600). This means that modern-day translator and
interpreter training allows students to express their opinions and represent their
goals in the different phases of the learning process. One thing that makes this
easier is the fact that learning groups in translator and interpreter training are
generally homogeneous, as students are all learning the same profession, pursuing
the same qualification and also tend to fall into the same age bracket. The only
major difference among students in terms of their goals is that some of them
will prefer the written form of interlingual mediation while others will choose to
pursue the verbal form.
The implementation of the third basic principle of cooperative classroom
work, positive interdependence, is also crucial in translator and interpreter
training. Positive interdependence once again means that students are dependent
on one another in achieving their learning objectives. The principle of positive
interdependence in the case of translation and interpreting students is implemented
in the form of students’ active role in the classroom work. Students’ success
depends greatly on whether the texts they select for interpreting are suitable for the
purposes of the course. The text should suit the course in terms of linguistics and
238
should also be relevant to the topics being discussed in class. Success also depends
on how seriously students take each other’s feedback and whether the feedback
they give each other is truly useful. This shows that everybody’s input is needed in
modern-day translator and interpreter training and the input students are able to
provide depends greatly on how their peers contribute to the learning process. This
is the definition of Cohen’s resource interdependence since students must regularly
use each other’s knowledge as a resource both in terms of course work itself and
evaluation. The individuals therefore actively contribute to the success of the group,
both with their input in class and with the time they take to practise on their own.
Students must therefore rely on each other to achieve the group’s objectives (Cohen
1994: 12–13). This means that the individuals are responsible both for their own
learning and the group’s as well.
One key characteristic of cooperative learning is that this method of teaching
and learning establishes a change in role for both students and teachers. Ideally,
instructors of translation and interpreting possess a high level of teacher autonomy,
are flexible, responsible people and continuously train themselves. In terms of their
role in the classroom, their responsibility is to help students develop a specific
set of skills. In other words, they are not there as the possessor and transmitter
of academic knowledge. They are there primarily to give advice to students on how
to go about their learning and to help them organise their learning process. Power
in the classroom is therefore divided between students and the teacher but without
the teacher giving up their authority. Furthermore, as instructors of translation
and interpreting are language service providers themselves, they also serve as role
models for the students.
4. Conclusion
Modern-day translator and interpreter training must do more than simply keep
up with changes in the profession: it must also prepare students to be able to train
themselves throughout the entirety of their professional careers. To do so, students
must become self-reflective professionals who are aware of all the different aspects
of language services: the translation process itself; the various aspects that need to
be taken into account when assessing the quality of the finished target language
product; the aspects that need to be taken into account when evaluating themselves
239
or their colleagues; the different stages of providing language services and the
various players involved in providing these services. Language service providers
must also know the different professional organisations present in their field, the
ethical standards in their profession and should regularly be present on online or
other types of forums. Translators and interpreters must also be able to adapt to
their profession’s market and institutional environment. The training itself can
be of great help in steering future language service providers onto this path. The
primary source of help is the curriculum itself but practical subjects alongside the
basic translation and interpreting courses, such as supervised translation project
coursework or supervised interpreting practice, are also essential. The content of
the training is also of help as it is mostly made up of authentic and up-to-date
material. Classroom work and individual learning management are equally
important: applying the principles of cooperative learning develops autonomous
learning skills, the sense of learner responsibility as well as evaluation and self-
evaluation skills. It also helps students improve in setting clear objectives and
develop the desire for self-training and lifelong learning.
References
Benson, P. 2001. Teaching and Researching Autonomy in Language Learning.

Harlow: Longman.
Boekaerts, M. 2002. Bringing about change in the classroom: strengths and
weaknesses of the self-regulated learning approach-EARLI Presidential
Address, 2001. Learning and Instruction 12(6): 589–604.
Bolhuis, S. 2003. Towards process-oriented teaching for self-directed lifelong
learning: a multidimensional perspective. Learning and Instruction 13(3):
327–347.
Breen, M. P., Littlejohn, A. 2000. The significance of negotiation. In Breen, M. P.,
Littlejohn, A. (eds) Classroom decision-making. Negotiation and process
syllabuses in practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clarke, D. F. 1991. The Negotiated Syllabus: What is it and How is it Likely to Work?
Applied Linguistics 12(1): 13–28.
Cohen, E. G. 1994. Restructuring the Classroom: Conditions for Productive Small
Groups. Review of Educational Research 64(1): 1–35.
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Dam, L. 1995. Learner Autonomy: From Theory to Classroom Practice. Dublin:

Authentik.
Davidson, N. 1995. International perspectives on Cooperative and Collaborative
Learning: An Overview. International Journal of Educational Research 23(3):
197–200.
Ewing, J. M., Kennedy, E. M. 1995. Co-operative Learning: Some Pupil Gains in
Small Group and in Classroom Work. Education 3–13 23(3): 50–56.
Holloway, S. 1992. A Potential Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: the Ambiguity of
‘Cooperation’. Journal of Education 174(2): 80–99.
Horváth, I. 2005. The cognitive components of autonomous learning in interpreter
training. In: Anderson, H. , Hobbs, M., Jones- Parry, J., Logan, S., and Lotovale, S.
(eds’’) Supporting independent learning in the 21st century. Proceedings of the
second conference of the Independent Learning Association, Auckland NZ, 9-12
September 2005. Auckland: Independent Learning Association Oceania. http://
www.independentlearning.org/uploads/100836/HOR05034.pdf, last accessed
on 12 December 2015.
Horváth, I. 2007a. Autonomous Learning and Interpreter Training. In: Muráth, J.
& Oláh–Hubai, Á. (szerk.). Interdisciplinary Aspects of Translation and
Interpreting. 23–25 June 2005. Conference Proceedings. Vienna: Praesens Verlag.
537–548.
Horváth, I. 2007b. Autonomous learning: what makes it work in postgraduate
interpreter training? Across Languages and Cultures 8(1): 103–122.
Nunan, D. 1988. The Learner-Centred Curriculum. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Ridley, J. 1997. Learner Autonomy 6: Developing Learners’ Thinking Skills. Dublin:
Authentik.
Sapon-Shevin, M., Schniedewind, N. 1992. If cooperative learning is the answer,
what are the questions? Journal of Education 174(2): 11–37.
Stevens, R. J., Slavin, R. E. 1995. The Cooperative Elementary School: Effects on
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241
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New Paths in Interpreter Training: Virtual Classes

Chapter · January 2016

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Ildikó Horváth (ed.)

horvath_themoderntranslator_borito.indd 1 2016.03.16. 11:47:38

THE MODERN TRANSLATOR AND INTERPRETER

© Editor, Authors, 2016

ISBN 978 963 284 750 4

Executive Publisher: t he Dean of the Faculty of Humanities of

PART 1: THE MODERN TRANSLATOR’S PROFILE.............................................. 15

2. Roles of the project manager on the translation market.................... 80

Volunteer Translation and Interpreting............................................................. 139

PART 2: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

6. Examples of translation environment tools........................................ 176

PART 3: MODERN TRANSLATOR AND INTERPRETER TRAINING........... 193

New Courses in the Curriculum: Language Technology, Supervised

competences is comparable to the Common European Framework of Reference

2. The EMT translator profile

The expert group defined the following six competences:

2.1. Translation service provision

2.2. Language competence

The description of the model contains a detailed description of language

2.3. Intercultural competence

The intercultural element of the model consists of a sociolinguistic and textual

2.4. Information mining competence

It may sound surprising, but in spite of the wealth of information available on

2.5. Technological competence/handiness with tools

2.6. Thematic competence

Students participating in translator training courses are often advised to specialise:

The translator is a technician although many translators consider this role

Austermühl, F. 2014. Electronic Tools for Translators. Translation Practices

Translators usually aim at working as in-house translators at a large company,

translators juggle the roles of accountants, IT professionals, debt collectors and

2. Quality and service

Within a few years their attitude towards information technology has

The Project Management Institute defines a standard framework for handling

5. The translation project

Includes activities like responding to the request; understanding the RFQ;

for the project; assessing resource needs, such as dictionaries to be purchased. In

Project preparation is a crucial step as it has a major impact on how smoothly

Additionally, it is time for a follow-up with the client. It is necessary to get

According to Norman Shapiro translation is “an attempt to produce a text so

6.1. Objective and subjective criteria of quality

6.2. LQA (Language Quality Assurance) as quality control method

It is obvious from the above described that we continuously need to communicate

It is important to stress that good and effective communication between all

8. The client: translation agency or direct client

Agencies are responsible for several activities in addition to translation. They

9. Planning and time management

Activity Number of days Duration (hours)

At the beginning the development of a project oriented approach will require

As a result the translator will become a versatile and flexible professional

House, J. 1998. Quality of Translation. In: Baker, M. (ed.) Routledge Enyclopedia of

In translation studies, proponents of Venuti’s (1995) ideas often discuss the

2. What makes a reviser?

In addition to the skills described above, revisers need a thorough knowledge

4. The fundamental principles of revision

theory about translations2, these fundamental principles can be summarised

2 “Translation theory tends to be normative, to instruct translators on the optimal solution;

Executive Publisher: t he Dean of the Faculty of Humanities of