[Corpora-List] FYI: Expert Training Course: Fasttrack to Translation

[andrius at ccl.bham.ac.uk]

Expert Training Package

FASTTRACK TO TRANSLATION

http://www.telri.de/fasttrack

*** 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), Jörg
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.

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:

Contact: mattylri at hhs.bham.ac.uk


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