Corpora: FastTrack to Translation: New Dates September 17-20

Mon Jun 10 12:03:38 UTC 2002

Please find enclosed the information about Birmingham's second
'FastTrack to Translation' course, with the new dates September 17-20.
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Expert Training Package
FastTrack to Translation

*** NEW DATES: September 17-20 ***

Extracting Translation Equivalents from Parallel Corpora

The Birmingham Centre for Corpus Linguistics (CCL) is pleased to
announce its 4-day Expert Training Package “FastTrack to Translation -
Extracting Translation Equivalents from Parallel Corpora”, September
17-20, 2002. This package, aimed at professionals in translation and
other multilingual areas, builds on the success and experience of the
first one which took place in September last year.

Our expert training package uses parallel texts (original texts with
their translations) to help translators find suitable translation
equivalents. We present cutting edge research in the use of parallel
corpora for detecting translation equivalents. Methods are introduced,
using both monolingual and multilingual corpora, for exploring units of
meaning in texts. These units of meaning are often larger and more
complex than the simple word. Most units of translations are compounds,
collocations or even phrases. As for single words, most of them are
ambiguous. The participants will be shown methods on how the context can
be used to disambiguate words by investigating their contextual
profiles. The expert training package will also focus on retrieving the
translation equivalents and learning how the corpus data can help us
produce translated texts that display the ‘naturalness’ of the target
language.

One application of the translation units is to create new translation
databases which, for the first time, enable their users to translate
correctly into a foreign language of which they have only limited
command. Implemented into translation platforms, the databases will
facilitate translations more than customary translation memories. The
results and problems from current research will be presented and
discussed. The corpus approach is also relevant for terminology. A large
proportion of terminological material in new texts is neither
standardised nor even recorded in a termbank. Parallel texts taken from
the Internet are often the only source for finding translation
equivalents.

The expert training package will demonstrate how existing software can
be adapted and combined for the extraction of translation units and
their equivalents. Parallel corpora are available for a number of
European languages paired with English and other European languages.
There is also a Chinese-English parallel corpus. The participants will
also be invited to use monolingual corpora, such as the Bank of English,
during the hands-on sessions. The issues presented include segmentation,
lemmatisation, POS-tagging, sentence alignment, lexical alignment, and
the detection of units of meaning. We will demonstrate how context
profiles can be used to select the proper translation equivalents. We
will propose various suggestions to integrate corpus findings in
bilingual dictionaries, in multilingual termbanks and in databases of
translation equivalents.

Our expert training package includes lectures which focus on theoretical
approaches, instructions in the methodology and practice of multilingual
corpus linguistics, and software presentations. Experience gained from
our last course has encouraged us to shift the emphasis to supervised
hands-on sessions which take place in a modern computer lab.
Participants are invited to address specific topics and time will be set
aside in the timetable for those who want to take the opportunity to
present their own work.

We also put an emphasis on the social side of our packages. Every
evening, the participants are invited to explore the culinary diversity
our city has to offer. We will be feasting at restaurants in the
vicinity, visiting venues varying from a traditional carvery to
Birmingham’s home-grown Indian Balti cuisine (vegetarian options
available);

Staff teaching this expert training package include: Professor John
Sinclair (The Tuscan Word Centre, Italy), Professor Michael Barlow (Rice
University, US), Professor Wolfgang Teubert (CCL, Birmingham), Dr
Pernilla Danielsson (CCL, Birmingham), Dr Maeve Olahan (UMIST), Joerg
Tiedeman (Uppsala); members of CCL and of Collins Dictionary Division,
Glasgow. More staff to be announced. The expert training package is
organised in conjunction with the Concerted Action TELRI (Trans-European
Language Resources Infrastructure) and with the Tuscan Word Centre.

Audience: The expert training package is targeted at professionals in
language industry, for example dictionary publishing, multilingual
language technology, and translation services. Minimum number of
participants: 8, maximum number: 15

Date and duration: The expert training package begins at 9.30 on Tuesday
September 17 and finishes at 22.00 on Friday September 20, 2002.

Fee: Participation per person: GBP 950 including coffee breaks, lunches
and dinners. Reduction in fee to GBP 850 for early registration before
May 13.

Accommodation: Participants are requested to make their own
reservations. We recommend Lucas House (University Guest House situated
5 minutes walk from the course venue) for accommodation (cost per
person, per night, single occupancy: GBP 51.97). Tel no: +44 (0)121 625
33 83 Fax no: +44 (0)121 414 6339

Preliminary Schedule:

Tuesday
Place: CETADL, University of Birmingham

 09.30 - 10.00: Programme presentation
 10.00 - 11.00: lecture (1): Corpus linguistics and lexicography
 11.00 - 11.20: coffee break
 11.20 - 12.20: resources and tools (1): Methods in monolingual
concordancing
 12.20 - 13.00: hands-on session (1) Using WordSmith with exercises
 13.00 - 14.30: lunch
 14.30 - 15.30: lecture (2): Corpus linguistics and semantics
 15.30 - 16.00: coffee break
 16.00 - 16.45: resources and tools (2) Monolingual concordances 2
 16.45 - 17.45: hands-on session (2) Using MonoConc with exercises
 20.00 -  : drinks/dinner

Wednesday

 09.30 - 10.00: announcements/discussion
 10.00 - 11.00: lecture (3):  Translation and the corpus
 11.00 - 11.30: coffee break
 11.30 - 12.00: resources and tools (3): Working with parallel
concordancer (ParaConc)
12.00 - 13.00: hands-on session (3): Using ParaConc with exercises
 13.00 - 14.30: lunch
 14.30 - 15.30: lecture (4): How to extract units of meaning from
corpora
 15.30 - 16.30: resources and tools (4): Working with translation
memories
 16.30 - 17.00: coffee break
 17.00 - 17.30: hands-on session (4): Using Translation Software
 17.30 - 18.30: participants’ presentations
 19.45 - 21.00: drinks/dinner

Thursday

 09.30 - 10.00: announcements/discussion
 10.00 - 11.00: lecture (5): Three approaches to translation
 11.00 - 11.30: coffee break
 11.30 - 12.00: resources and tools (5): Working with databases
 12.00 - 13.00: hands-on session (5) Using translation databases
 13.00 - 14.30: lunch
 14.30 - 15.30: lecture (6): Corpus linguistics and terminology
 15.30 - 16.30: resources and tools (6) Term extraction and
terminological databases
 16.30 - 17.00: coffee break
 17.00 - 17.30: Hands-on session (6)
 17.30 - 18.30: participants’ presentations
 19.45 - 21.00: drinks/dinner

Friday

 09.30-10.00: announcements/discussion
 10.00 - 11.00: lecture (8): The unit of meaning in translation
 11.00 - 11.30: coffee break
 11.30 - 12.00: resources and tools (7) Linguistically annotated
corpora: tagging and lemmatising
 12.00 - 13.00: hands-on session (6): Working with taggers and
lemmatiser
 13.00 - 14.30: lunch
 14.30 - 15.30: lecture (9): Parallel corpora and bilingual lexicography

 15.30 - 16.30: Individual tutoring
 16.30 - 17.00: coffee break
 17.00 - 18.30: final discussion / conclusion
 20.00 - 22.00: farewell dinner

REGISTRATION FORM
FastTrack To Translation, June 11-14 2002

Please complete this registration and payment form, and return it by
mail or fax to Louise Matty, Centre for Corpus Linguistics, Department
of English, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT,
England (fax number + 44 121 414 6053 / email address
MattyLRI at hhs.bham.ac.uk).

Please complete all details in block capitals

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Fee: Participation per person: GBP 950 including coffee breaks, lunches
and dinners. Reduction in fee to GBP 850 for early registration before
May 13.

Accommodation: Participants are requested to make their own
reservations. We recommend Lucas House (University Guest House situated
5 minutes walk from the course venue) for accommodation (cost per
person, per night, single occupancy: GBP 51.97). Tel no: +44 (0)121 625
33 83 Fax no: +44 (0)121 414 6339

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drawn on a sterling bank account. The checks should be sent by mail to
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