1. 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

2. Outline Sight Translation Current assessment approach
Corpus-based assessment approach
Data
Applications & findings
Implications & conclusions
28 July 2010
UCCTS 2010

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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