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Terminology
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Building a Legal TM and Glossary from
an English-Malay Parallel Corpus
This article is, in fact, a brief report of a research project currently being carried out at the School of Languages, Literacies and Translation of Universiti Sains Malaysia. The main objective of this project is to build a Translation Memory of legal texts and a Glossary of legal terminology. Legal texts and documents have one thing in common: repetition...
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Uncontrolled Terminology and MT: The
Importance of Making Good Comparisons
Feeding Machine Translation
(MT) dictionaries with uncontrolled terminology is never a good
thing. When this is done, MT engines consistently produce translations
containing the same unwanted or wrong terminology over and over
again. Post-editing these terminology errors tends to be time-consuming
and expensive, which defeats the purpose of using MT...
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Effective Terminology Management Using
Computers
Over a century after the
birth of Eugen Wüster, the founder of modern terminology science
(Kingscott, 1998: 15), the amount of terminology with which language
professionals have to deal has mushroomed. We are now living in
an age of specialization and globalization. Sciences are increasingly
branching out into new fields of study, bringing about more terminology.
Markets have been internationalized and businesses are expanding
all over the world…
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the full article…
Terminology
Terminology is the study
of terms and their use. Terms are words and compound words that
are used in specific contexts. Not to be confused with "terms" in
colloquial usages, the shortened form of technical terms (or terms
of art) which are defined within a discipline or specialty field…
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Of Translation Jobs and Glossaries
A glossary is fine as such,
provided it deals with technical terms only. It can be a great help
in conveying the client’s preferred choices or internal trade language,
but this requires that whoever is creating the glossary is sufficiently
skilled in linguistics as well as the technical theme at hand to
be able to sift out what belongs in a glossary and what does not…
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the full article…
The Encyclopedia Britannica 2009
The Encyclopedia Britannica
2009 (established in 1768), both in its Ultimate (now also called
"Student and Home") and Deluxe versions, builds on the success of
its completely revamped previous editions in 2006-8…
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the full article…
Spanglish: To Ser or Not to Be? That
is la cuestión!
This is a modest attempt
to illustrate what is really pasando en many communities of the
USA, Latin America (and Spain!) now en la actualidad. What follows
is a combinación—a true melting pot—de Spanglish y jerga popular
as it takes place in multi-lingual places like Miami and other communities.
A definition of Spanglish will not be attempted here, since it is
a process, a dynamic force, a developing trend…
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the full article…
Microsoft's Encarta and MS Student
2008
While Microsoft Encarta
Premium 2006 marked Microsoft's commitment to the Web - Microsoft
Encarta Premium 2007 marks its commitments to its own technology.
The new Encarta relies on Microsoft's powerful, flexible, scalable,
and adaptable .Net Framework 2.0. There is a price to pay, of course…
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the full article…
Простонародні та рідковживані українські слова
- Demotic and rare Ukrainian words
анічичирк
бабак
баблятися
бадилля
байрак…
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the full article…
The Encyclopedia Britannica 2008
The Encyclopedia Britannica
2008 (established in 1768), both Ultimate and Deluxe, builds on
the success of its completely revamped previous editions in 2006
and 2007. The rate of innovation in the last two versions was impressive
and welcome. It continues apace in this rendition with Britannica
Biographies (Great Minds), Classical Music…
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the full article…
Glossary Mining - Part 7: Brush Up
Your English
As indicated in the title,
the English language is the topic of this final installment in the
series on resources available on the Web for translation purposes.
It is hoped that the information will prove equally valuable both
for translators working into English (i.e., their mother tongue)
and for those translating from English into another language. Although
writing usage and vocabulary are primarily emphasized, a number
of other aspects often come into play during the translation process…
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the full article…
Glossary Mining - Part 6: Science from
A to Z
This installment provides
a compendium of various Internet resources dealing with scientific
subjects – from anthropology to zoology. The focus is on terminology
and reference materials for the “pure” sciences, as opposed to the
“applied” sciences such as mechanical engineering or metallurgical
processes. The list begins with several resources of a general nature
and continues in alphabetical order by subject…
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Glossary Mining - Part 5: Getting Down
to Business
As indicated in the title,
this installment will focus on Internet resources in various business-related
subjects: accounting, advertising and marketing, banking and financial,
economics, investments, real estate, shipping, and taxes. Although
there are undoubtedly many resources in all major languages, these
Web sites primarily involve English and Spanish. I’ll start with
a few sites that deal with general business topics…
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Glossary Mining - Part 4: Making It
Legal
The first three installments
in this series have emphasized Web sites of a technical nature,
with an occasional oddity thrown in for good measure. This time
the focus is entirely on Web sites for legal terminology and related
resources. Although my own languages are Spanish and English, I
have also found a number of Web sites for French, German and Portuguese.
However, I’ll start with a survey of monolingual English sites…
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Glossary Mining - Part 3: Digging for
Buried Treasure
The first two installments
of this series primarily dealt with finding monolingual, bilingual
and multilingual glossaries in a wide variety of specialized subject
areas, some of them mundane and others of a more esoteric nature.
Virtually all of them were easy to locate in the glossary mine because
they were the equivalent of visible veins of ore and in a few cases
the mother lode…
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the full article…
Glossary Mining – Down Tunnel No. 2
In the first installment
on this topic, I focused primarily on a simple way to use Google
(or just about any other search engine) to unearth a variety of
specialized glossaries, ranging in nature from the potentially useful
to the downright ridiculous. However, that exercise only went partway
down the mine shaft, so I turned my attention to excavating a little
deeper…
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the full article…
Glossary Mining – Part 1
While preparing material
for several online courses in translation that I have taught or
will be teaching for New York University, I usually surf the Internet
extensively for appropriate monolingual (both English and Spanish)
and bilingual glossaries, primarily related to the legal and technical
fields…
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the full article…
Translating on Good Terms
At a recent conference in
Montreal I felt vindicated to hear that I am not alone in my notion
of the ideal use of terminology tools among translators. Lynne Bowkers,
who teaches translation technology at the University of Ottawa,
gave a talk on the discrepancy between the terminology components
that many translation environment tools (aka CAT tools) offer and
their actual and/or ideal use by translators…
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the full article…
Dealing with Abbreviations In Translation
Acronyms, initialisms or
simply abbreviations may seem insignificant in the field of lexicography,
yet they are a problem for translators, and could easily derail
a smooth translation or interpretation. This article analyzes the
formulation of English acronyms and their reformulation into French;
it highlights the challenges they pose to the translator and how
those challenges can be surmounted…
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the full article…
Wikipedia vs. Britannica - Interview
with Tom Panelas
Tom Panelas is the Encyclopedia
Britannica's Director of Corporate Communications
Q. Is the Wikipedia an encyclopedia in any sense
of the word?
A. I don't think it's crucial that everyone agree
on whether Wikipedia is or is not an encyclopedia…
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the full article…
The Encyclopedia Britannica 2007 Opens
to the Web
The Encyclopedia Britannica
2007 (established in 1768) is again a completely revamped product.
The rate of innovation in the last two editions is impressive and
welcome. Its interface is intuitive and uncluttered and it is great
fun to use. For instance, it offers a date-based daily selection
of relevant information and highly edifying interactive tours of
articles and attendant media. The search box is persistent - no
need to click on the toolbar's "search" button every time you want
to find something in this vast storehouse of knowledge. Moreover,
the user can save search results onto handy "Virtual Notecards"…
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the full article…
The
Six Sins of the Wikipedia
It
is a question of time before the Wikipedia self-destructs and implodes.
It poses such low barriers to entry (anyone can edit any number
of its articles) that it is already attracting masses of teenagers
as "contributors" and "editors", not to mention the less savory
flotsam and jetsam of cyber-life…
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the full article…
Translation Problem Areas
There are a lot of questions
still left up in the air in relation to how something should be
translated, especially when it comes to translating into English.
“Should it be in US English or UK English (or International English)?”
is a question I constantly have to ask my clients. With the help
of the following graphs and tables I hope to shed some light on
the darker, less accessible areas of English grammar. Let’s hope
it comes in handy…
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the full article…
Laughs and Nightmares in Oilfield Translation
The
entries in this article were taken from my own dictionary released
in 2001. The publication was carefully compiled over nearly 20 years
of work in the translation business. Although the dictionary contains
a good number of terms, it does not constitute a complete list of
words and unique expressions that an observer is likely to hear
during a visit to an oilfield. Rather, it is intended to serve as
a basic reference for understanding the most common terms and is
designed merely to assist those who are not familiar with the terminology
used in the area of oil and gas…
The Tricky Terminology of the Oil and Gas Industry
Brazil
is one of the world’s leaders in the development of deep water
drilling technology. It is not rocket science but it comes quite
close. The translation of oil industry documents can often be pretty
dull fare. Those of us who do a lot of work in the field can testify
to that. But every once in a while we are privileged to have a close
look at Brazil’s deep water drilling technology. Take it from
us, it is impressive. If you sit back a bit and let your imagination
roam, you can come up with some pretty incredible images…
Introduction
to SAE J1930: Bridging the Disconnect Between the Engineering, Authoring
and Translation Communities
Have
you ever wondered how companies develop names for the parts in your
vehicle? How do you know if your translation for "engine coolant
temperature sensor" is really correct? And what is DMPI an abbreviation
for? Or MAF? And finally, do translators need to know the compound
term for the HEMI acronym…
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the full article…
Pour une méthodologie du développement de la terminologie
du terrorisme
There is no doubt that terrorism has continued to attract the attention
of scholars, researchers, politicians, etc., and has become a subject
of endless debates and daily exchange of ideas. However, research
has proved that terminologists are yet to show interest in developing
its terminology even though the daily activities, exchanges, etc.,
that mark the perpetration and also the fight against terrorism
lead to lexical creativity. In my doctoral research, I have undertaken
to build up an up to date terminology for the subject field of terrorism.
In this article, I present some of the questions, methodology and
criteria for constitution and exploitation of the corpus for the
development of the terminology…
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the full article…
Terminology: Getting Down to Business
Kara Warburton, Chair of the LISA Terminology SIG and Terminologist
at IBM, issues a call to action to all of us who claim that we’re
committed to terminology. We are waffling, while other stakeholders
in knowledge management are moving ahead without us in developing
and applying standards to which we may have to adhere. It’s time
to act, and the LISA Terminology SIG shows us how…
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the full article…
The Terms of Business: Saving Money Through Terminology Management
According to Kara Warburton, chair of LISA’s Terminology SIG, most
companies are still unaware of the need to invest in terminology
development and active management of terminological resources. Recent
work by the Terminology SIG has helped demonstrate that investment
in terminology management and development can deliver a tangible
return on investment, not just intangible benefits such as improved
quality or customer satisfaction. In this article Warburton outlines
the activities of the Terminology SIG, including a new survey on
terminology practices, and looks at changes in attitude in the GILT
industry that may presage a brighter future for awareness of the
importance of terminology …
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the full article…
Why CMSs "Bug" Me
I imagine that most readers of the Globalization Insider know the
story of the term “bug” in computer programming: it is a staple
of high-tech etymologies. The story goes that the Mark-II, one of
the first modern electronic computers, was having problems, and
that Grace Hopper, one of the machine’s maintenance engineers found
that a moth had flown too close to circuitry and had shorted out
two components …
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An Open Letter on Glossaries
This letter is intended as a query on a topic of interest to many
translators. No claims or statements of any sort are being advanced—rather
it is an attempt to articulate my own sense of puzzlement in public.
May I therefore request your patient compassion as well as any corrections
you may care to make …
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the full article…
New Terminologies: Peaceful Immigrants or Invading Hordes? A Review
of Three New Books
All three of these books are concerned with a crucial problem of
translation: precisely how do we handle a vast technical vocabulary
unexpectedly imported into a language not necessarily prepared to
deal with it? This question applies most urgently to the integration
of computer terminology into many of the world's languages …
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Lexicon and Terminology: Of Mesopotamia, cattle and interest (en
anglais)
Pecuniary and impecunious (English), and pécuniaire,
pécune and pécule (French) are just
a few of the terms relating to money that can be traced back to
a period when livestock was the standard currency. This is hardly
surprising since financial activities, i.e. lending, borrowing and
managing wealth, are thought to have originated among the pastoral
societies of the Near East …
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Computer Collocations and Computer Metaphors
This article examinesfrom a linguistic point of viewthe translation
of some computer collocations which I consider typical, and analyze
them in order to provide suitable translations in the TL (in this
case, Romanian), because they generally play an important role in
distinguishing meaning. This happens with computer terminology as
well, in the sense that, when we are asked to give an account of
the meaning of a term used in computing, say, blind, we instantly
try to contextualize it in its most recurrent collocations, say,
blind search, blind copy, blind key…
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It is that time of the year again… for the Annual Report
So here are some tips for creating a good Annual Report with the
most frequently used French and Dutch terms given in parentheses.
There are nine distinct sections in most Annual Reports. A good
report will usually contain all nine…
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the full article…
Politically Correct (PC)
Political correctness--political and otherwise--covers not only
fact and grammar, but sensitivity to race, sex, religion, age, ability
and alternate lifestyles. And although it seems to have started
as a largely American phenomenon, it seems to be spreading rapidly
around the world…
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the full article…
Better vocabulary
How to keep your sanity with "lay" and "lie"
Is it correct to say "lay down that pistol", why can't we with equal
justification say "lay down for a nap"?
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the full article…
Abbreviations in English
Abbreviations (abbr.) are one of the most annoying things about
language. If a non-native English speaker comes across the abbreviation
a.k.a. in a text, then he/she will find it hard to guess that it
means "also known as" without referring to a dictionary.
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the full article…
Adjectives:
when nice is not so nice
When using a language that
is not your own, however well you know it, there is almost always
a tendency to fall back on certain words that you like, or that
spring most readily to mind and to use these repeatedly with impunity.
This is particularly so where adjectives are concerned…
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Customer or client?
In Dutch there's one word, "klant". In French there's
one word, "client". In Spanish there's one word, "cliente".
So how is it that in English we have the possibility of choosing
between two words, and does our choice have any importance? Are
the two words - customer and client - interchangeable?
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Navigating through Treacherous Waters:
The Translation of Geographical Names
As it has been brilliantly
stated by Vernica Albin, translating the names of geographical entities
is like navigating in treacherous waters. Even with the most advanced
information systemssuch as satellite positioning (GPS) and up-to-date
mapsif the skipper does not have experience, a shipwreck is not
only probable, but likely. This has also been my experience when
translating the names of cities, states, provinces, countries and
other geographical terms from and into Spanish, English, and French…
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Heading for Trouble
The subject line exclaimed
"H-E-E-E-E-L-P URGENT!!!!" in loud caps and stammering
e's. The body of the message began with a desperate (and I translate
from the Portuguese) Guys, I got this job and cannot make head or
tail of the meaningless legal blah-blah-blah. I have all my dictionaries
and glossaries around me and I cannot find the translations. For
God's sake, can anyone tell where I can find a good Portuguese-English
legal dictionary or a site with a good glossary? I have the following
doubts: how do you say… and the usual diatribe against the
general uselessness of dictionaries in general and Portuguese dictionaries
in particular…
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The Very Mind of English? Activate
Your Mind, Socrates Style
Longman Publishers
may well pride themselvesand let us admit, rightly soof the fact
that it was they who published the very first dictionary as we know
it in modern English: that of Dr. Johnson in 1755. Having committed
such an innovative act in the 18th century, Longman are now bound
by their own exquisite tradition of "harmless drudgery"
to surprise us by rejuvenating that indispensable companion to any
literate personthe dictionary… And rejuvenate they do…
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