Evaluating Sight Translation: A Corpus-based Approach Wallace Chen, PhD Assistant Professor Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation, and Language Education (GSTILE) Monterey Institute of International Studies Monterey, California, USA wallace.chen@miis.edu
Outline Sight Translation Current assessment approach Corpus-based assessment approach Data Applications & findings Implications & conclusions 28 July 2010 UCCTS 2010
Sight Translation an integral part of 1st-year translation courses skim a text and verbally translate at the same time Skills required analytical skills cohesion / transition vocabulary time management summarizing skills pressure / stress management 28 July 2010 UCCTS 2010
Current assessment approach assess performance based on verbal output length of text: less than 1,000 words assessment criteria: meaning (accuracy), completeness, naturalness, backtracking, pauses, time management, grammar, pronunciation, numbers, terminology, register, cohesion/coherence, sentence structure…… Class review and introspection 28 July 2010 UCCTS 2010
Corpus-based assessment approach Corpus: a systematic collection of texts on computer for purposes of linguistic research quantitative analysis in support of qualitative introspection reference (parallel) texts for improving translation quality data retrieval for the analysis of translation behaviors 28 July 2010 UCCTS 2010
Data Reference Corpus (RC): 28,000 words Subjects: rainforest conservation, computing, telecommunications Translation Learners’ Corpus (TLC) - 2 sight translation exams (1 with reference official translation) - 32 students - 64 transcripts of sight translation into English Corpus of Comment Tags (CCT) - 10 texts with comment tags RC 28 July 2010 UCCTS 2010
Three corpora: applications and findings (I) Reference Corpus (RC) - collocation - terminology - idiomatic expressions - confirmation of intuition - translation equivalent - target language patterns - new expressions #some examples 28 July 2010 UCCTS 2010
Three corpora: applications and findings (II) Translation Learners’ Corpus (TLC) - compare translation behaviors among students - compare between student translation and reference translation - time management: students finishing earlier have a tendency to score higher - lengthy translations suggest lexical overuse (39 vs. 59 for and) 28 July 2010 UCCTS 2010
Three corpora: applications and findings (III) Corpus of Comment Tags (CCT) - fewer tags mean higher scores - fast translators receive fewer tags - repeated tags suggest common textual difficulties - comment tags reveal room for improvement for individual translators 28 July 2010 UCCTS 2010
Implications & conclusions Supplement current approaches to assessment Identify and visualize common issues Understand translation patterns and suggest room for being flexible Learn from examples Corpus construction for research and teaching purposes, e.g. text selection 28 July 2010 UCCTS 2010