Guest speakers Autumn Term

After a successful visit from Dr ZoË Pettit, University of Greenwich, who spoke about ‘Audiovisual Translation and Multilingual Films: A South African Perspective’, Imperial College’s Translation Unit continues its guest speakers programme.

For the Autumn term the Translation Unit is happy to welcome

Prof. Anthony Briggs, Birmingham University and Visiting Fellow at Bristol University, UK. He will talk about From Syllable to Sentence: The Shifting Challenge of Literary Translation on 30 October 2012

Dr Carol O'Sullivan, University of Portsmouth, UK. Her topic on 13 November 2012 covers Access All Areas? Localization and the Textual Problems of Verbal Visual Codes

Prof. Raquel Merino, Universidad del País Vasco, Vitoria, Spain. The talk on 27 November 2012 will cover Translation, Literature and Audiovisual Media: The Case of Censored Musicals in Franco's Spain

Seminars are free and open to everyone.
Venue: Huxley Building, South Kensington Campus, Lecture Theatre 144 (easiest access via Queen’s Gate)

Time: 4-5pm

More information can be obtained via the Translation Unit website.

Visiting Translator from DGT

Imperial College London's Translation Unit is happy to accommodate for three weeks Marcin Kotwicki from the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation (EC's DGT). Marcin is visiting us as part of the VTS programme, the Visiting Translator Scheme. 

Marcin joins us for several classes, sitting in as an observer. He will also hold several sessions especially for the Translation Unit 201213 students. These will cover: an introduction on the DGT, a more in-depth focus on the tools the many translators in the DGT use in their everyday translation work and a more in-depth look into recruitment procedures.

You can find more information about the DGT on http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/programmes/index_en.htm

And more on the VTS on http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/programmes/visiting/index_en.htm
 
Imperial College's Translation Unit is also part of EMT, the European Master's in Translation (EMT), http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/programmes/emt/index_en.htm
 
Members of staff of the Translation Unit also sit on the LIND-Web board, http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/programmes/languageindustry/index_en.htm
 

Translation Technology courses

This week the schedule for Saturday courses in Translation Technology by Imperial College's Translation Unit were made available.

The courses are run in the Translation Lab, Room S309, Level 3, Sherfield Building.South Kensington Campus.

To register in one of the courses, please fill in the form at www.surveymonkey.com/s/TranslationTechnologyCourses

To pay for your course, please use one of the links below:
Standard fee: £115
Student fee: £65
Imperial College staff member fee: £65

Autumn Term 2012

Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing: Soledad Zárate
Saturday, 17 November 2012
10:30 - 16:30

Introduction to Audio Description: Josélia Neves
Saturday, 24 November 2012
10:30 - 16:30

Introduction toSubtitling: Adriana Tortoriello
Saturday, 08 Dec 2012
10:30 - 16:30

Spring Term 2013

Introduction to Déjà Vu: Mark Shuttleworth
Saturday, 19 January 2013
10:30 - 16:30

Introduction to Desktop Publishing for Translators: Ana Luiza Iaria
Saturday, 26 January 2013
10:30 - 16:30

Advanced Subtitling: Adriana Tortoriello
Saturday, 09 February 2013
10:30 - 16:30

Audio Description in Museums: Josélia Neves
Saturday, 23 February 2013
10:30 - 16:30

Introduction to Dubbing: Frederic Chaume
Saturday, 2 March 2013
10:30 - 16:30

Project Management for Translators: Lindsay Bywood
Saturday, 23 March 2013
10:30 - 16:30

Summer Term 2013

Introduction to SDL Trados Studio 2011: Rocío Baños
Saturday, 13 April 2013
10:30 - 16:30

Interpreting and Technology: Óscar Jiménez Serrano
Saturday, 27 April 2013
10:30 - 16:30

Term Extraction and Terminology Management: Bettina Bajaj
Saturday, 11 May 2013
10:30 - 16:30

Language Industry survey

LIND-Web, the Language Industry Web platform of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation is continuing its search for data on developments in the European language industry.

Therefore it organised a survey. This is for language service providers operating wholly or partially within the EU, which includes companies, freelancers, associations and other bodies in the field of the language industry.

It should not take more than 5 minutes to complete the questionnaire (once started the window of completing the survey is half an hour).

Should you be in need of preliminary findings, please go to Nino Platteel's Statistical Criteria for Establishing an Identity for the Language Industry.

LIND-Web was the outcome of a Study on the Size of the Language Industry, a study conducted on behalf of the DGT by LTC's Adriane Rinsche and Nadia Portera-Zanotti.

Dr. Jorge Diaz-Cintas and Christophe Declercq, two members of Imperial College London's Translation Group, are members of the LIND-Web Board. Other members include people from the DGT itself, representatives from LionBridge, FIT, EUNIC, the EUATC and GALA.

You can follow LIND-Web on Twitter. The entire first LIND-Web Platform Forum, 'Share, Cooperate, Grow' is available online still. Perhaps one of the most important outcomes of the Forum was the recommendation to offer free software to universities (around 8:12).

Saturday course in Advanced Subtitling

Translation Group at Imperial College London

Saturday 26^th May 2012

Advanced Subtitling

There are still places available for the Advanced Subtitling

workshop being held by the Translation Group at Imperial College on the 26th May 2012.

This is open to professionals as well as students.

Course Content
From the European Parliament to Walt Disney, from film dialogue to song: a hands-on workshop on interlingual subtitling.

The course will start with a brief review of the main theoretical and practical issues concerning interlingual subtitling, as well as of the main features of the subtitling software in use (WinCAPS), as a reminder to those who participated in the previous workshop and an introduction to those who did not. This will be followed by a more hands-on workshop during which the participants will have the opportunity to work with a number of different audiovisual texts. Some of the time will be devoted to working on the English texts, practising segmentation, condensation and other relevant techniques, while some of the time will be devoted to their translation into the target language of choice. Depending on the language pairs chosen by the participants, some material might be provided in other languages for translation into English.

Some time will be left at the end for questions. A list of useful websites and other sources of information will be given to all the participants.

Course Trainer

Adriana Tortoriello

Fees
£110
£60 (students concession)

Including tea/coffee & buffet lunch

To apply for a place please email Naomi Anderson-Eyles n.andersoneyles@imperial.ac.uk

Naomi Anderson-Eyles

MSc Translation Administrator

Imperial College
Humanities Department

Level 3 Sherfield Building, Room S312C

South Kensington Campus

London

SW7 2AZ

Tel: +44(0)207 594 8833

n.andersoneyles@imperial.ac.uk

www.imperial.ac.uk/translation

John Hutchins at Imperial College on 6 June 2012

Imperial College's Translation Group and the ITI London Regional Group are pleased to announce that John Hutchins will give a talk entitled 'Machine translation systems and applications: past and present'.

Wednesday, 6 June 2012, 2-4pm

Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ

Huxley Building, Lecture Theatre 144

Nearest tube: South Kensington or Gloucester Road

John Hutchins is the author of books such as Machine translation: past, present, future (Chichester: Ellis Horwood, 1986) and An Introduction to Machine Translation (with Harold Somers) (London: Academic Press, 1992), President (since 1995) of the European Association for Machine Translation, as well as former President (1999-2001) of the International Association for Machine Translation, 

The talk is free for MSc Trans students and LRG members, and £10 for non-LRG members. 

To book your place, please email Daniela Ford (dford@softrans-ltd.com) by Monday, 28 May 2012.

Term Extraction and Terminology Management Workshop

Saturday 5^th May

Term Extraction and Terminology Management Workshop

There are still places available for the Term Extraction and Terminology Management workshop being held by the Translation Group at Imperial College on the 5th May. This is open to professionals as well as students.

Course Content
The first part of the course deal with term extraction and its basic concepts. In a hands-on session, participants will be able to work and experiment with the term extraction software.

In order to provide a seamless transition from term extraction to glossary/dictionary building and management, the second part of the course will show participants how to use Lingo, a user-friendly and efficient program dedicated to creating and maintaining monolingual and multilingual terminologies. Participants will learn how glossaries/dictionaries are made, modified, searched, and managed. Lingo’s import (*.tmx and *.txt files) and export capabilities (*.tmx, *.txt and *.rtf files) will also be looked at. Following this, participants will have the opportunity to explore and practise the various features of Lingo.

Course Trainer
Dr Bettina Bajaj
Part-time lecturer at Imperial College London teaching Lexicography, Terminology, Introduction to Language Engineering, and Term Extraction.

Fees
£110
£60 (students concession)

To apply for a place please email Naomi Anderson-Eyles n.andersoneyles@imperal.ac.uk

Language Industry Web Platform

The Directorate-General for Translation (http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/index_en.htm) invites you to the 1st LIND-Web Forum: "Share, cooperate, grow", 24.5.2012 in Brussels.

Join the Forum and celebrate the LIND-Web Platform (www.ec.europa.eu/language-industry), an EU initiative to promote the language industry and to gain data on its different sub-sectors (translation, interpretation, tools, training, etc).

There will be plenaries and workshops; for detailed information please check out the conference site:
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/programmes/languageindustry/platform/forum_en.htm

You can also register there!

We are expecting a large but focused crowd and a good mix of industry organisations, companies, universities and policy-makers to tackle the challanges and opportunities of the language industry.

Intensive Summer Course in Audiovisual Translation

Translation Group at Imperial College London

July 2012

Intensive Summer Course

in Audiovisual Translation

There are still places available for the Intensive Summer Course in Audiovisual Translation being held by the Translation Group at Imperial College in July 2012. This is open to professionals as well as students. 

Course Content: These intensive courses provide a theoretical framework for translators and researchers in the area of AVT as well as hands-on training with audiovisual material taken from different authentic contexts.

Languages Offered: French, German, Italian, Polish, and Spanish.

Application deadline: 25^th May 2012

For more information, visit http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/humanities/translationgroup/summertranslationcourses

To apply for a place, email Soledad Zarate s.zarate08@imperial.ac.uk 

SDL's iMT at Imperial's MScTrans, open seminar

Next week Wednesday sees an open seminar of Imperial College London's Translation Technology module.
SDL's iMT team will open up their view on machine translation, its use, purpose and future.

Intelligent Machine Translation
Wednesday 8 February 2012
12.30-2.30pm + questions 2.30-3pm
Huxley 144


(easiest entrance via Queen's Gate, opposite Queen's Gate Terrace)

Translating the Wonderful - 6 December

No single universe is as diverse and intriguing as the world of children's literature and yet so many visions pass us by because so little is translated into English.

The European Commission Representation in the UK, the National Centre for Researchin Children's Literature of Roehampton University and the Translation Group of ImperialCollege London cordially invite you to:

'TRANSLATING THE WONDERFUL'
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION

6 DECEMBER 2011
3:00pm-8:00pm

Europe House
32 Smith Square
London SW1P 3EU

On Tuesday 6 December Europe House will host an event on translating children’s literature into English. It will take the format of workshop sessions, where students working from various languages into English will translate samples from classic children’s literature or literature closely related to the classics in style and theme, followed by a panel discussion and evening reception.

The idea is to carry out translations of extracts from selected texts and to discuss the various possible approaches to the translation of children’s literature and in particular the differences and similarities in translation strategies across languages. Each workshop will be coordinated by a leading translator of the respective language pair, with the findings of each workshop presented to the other participants in a concluding panel discussion.

The languages covered in the workshops will be Danish, Dutch, French and German.

-      The Danish workshop (Hans Christian Andersen) will be led by Dr. Kirsten Malmkjaer and is sponsored by the Danish Embassy in London.

-      The Dutch workshop (Annie MG Schmidt) will be led by David Colmer and is sponsored by the Dutch Embassy in London and the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

-      The French workshop (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) will be led by Ros Schwartz and Sarah Ardizonne, and is sponsored by the French Institute in London.

-      The German workshop (E.T.A. Hoffmann) will be led by Anthea Bell and is sponsored by the Goethe Institute in London.

-      Flanders House London will also take part in the event.

There are currently still places available for the workshops from Danish and Dutch.

The workshops will be preceded by an opening introduction by Dr. Gillian Lathey (the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature) and concluded by an open cross-panel discussion, which will aim to draw conclusions regarding strategies for translating children’s literature from across Europe into English. This will be followed by a reception offered by the European Commission Representation in the UK.

Programme

3.00pm         Registration

3.30pm         Introduction by Dr. Gillian Lathey

3.45pm         Workshops

4.45pm         Group discussion

5.30pm         Tea and coffee

6.00pm         Panel discussion and conclusions

7.00pm         Reception

 

Entrance to this event is free but places are limited. To reserve a place please e-mail Tom Barbanneau at: t.barbanneau@imperial.ac.uk (specify for which part you register: workshop+panel&reception OR panel&reception).

Location:

European Commission Representation UK
Europe House
32 Smith Square
London SW1P 3EU

(nearest Tube station: Westminster, 5-minute walk)

Sponsors of the ‘Translating the Wonderful’ event:

European Commission Representation in the UK, London

National Centre for Research in Children's Literature, Roehampton University

Translation Group, Imperial College London

Goethe Institut, London

Institut Français, London

Embassy of Denmark, London

Flanders House, London

Dutch Foundation for Literature, London

Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, London

Charles Gittins, DGT

This week sees the visit of Charles Gittins at Imperial College London's Translation Group. Charles Gittins works as a translator into English and translation and quality manager at the Directorate General for Translation in Brussels.

You can follow Charles on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Charles-DGT/340112167195?sk=info.

Today he spoke for half the group of students about translation at DGT, the English section and how issues experienced there also go for other target language. He spoke very enthusiastically about his workplace, and about Brussels too.

Tomorrow, Thursday 17 November he will repeat this, 12-1pm at Huxley Lecture Theatre 144. This event is open to all.

Thursday 17^th November at 12.00 – 13.00, in Huxley Lecture Theatre 144.

Bots aren't wordsmiths

 "A New York City translation tech venture, Smartling, today released a host of new features and services to help users translate their websites, mobile, and other digital content into many languages, quickly, affordably, and accurately.

Despite attempts to automate and manage translation by companies that predated Smartling--from Google Translate to AIT's Projetex--"content localization" has remained a challenge for businesses large to small for a number of reasons.

Translating, say, an English website into Chinese sounds pretty straightforward--just hire a Mandarin speaker with a good knowledge of English, right? But it's generally far more of a challenge, explained Jack Welde, CEO of Smartling, which is backed by U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock, First Round Capital, and IDG Ventures.

For example, business owners have to know if text on a site they want to translate is encoded in something called UTF-8. If not, the site can't render Chinese characters and will need a code rewrite. Also, companies need to ask "Where am I going to store all my multilingual content? Do I have a database for that?" Welde said.

Smartling has been automating the code-crunching process and helping companies find translators--whether robots, pros or volunteers--for about two years. Until recently, the company served large enterprise clients, providing them with dedicated sales staff, tech support, and other hand-holding perks. These were typically beyond the needs and budget of most small businesses and non-profits, however."

Read more on http://bit.ly/qri7aR

Visiting speakers at MScTrans - autumn term

The following visiting speakers have been confirmed for the autumn term. This term all events take place in 303A/B in Sherfield building, 4-5pm. More information on our relevant webpage.

19 Octuber 2011
Dr Lucia Specia, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Estimating Machine Translation Post-Editing Effort

2 November 2011
more information soon

16 November 2011
Dr Noa Talaván, Universidad Nacional de Education a Distancia, Madrid, Spain
The Use of the Mixed Method Approach in Translation Research: Subtitling and Foreign Language Education

30 November 2011
Dr Anabel Borja, Universitat Jaume I, Spain
Multilingual Communication in Judicial Settings: A Case for Action Research

Evening classes at Imperial's Humanities

Every year the Humanities department at Imperial College organises evening classes that are open to everyone. You can find the flyer underneath. The 20 week evening courses (6-8pm) not only cover many languages at many levels (FRE, GER, SPA, ITA, RUS, ARA, JAP, CN-MAN…) but also include courses on Film Appreciation, Creative Writing, Opera and Music Technology...

Autumn term starts next week. You can enrol online. http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/humanities/eveningclasses