Syllabus and curriculum design From LETRAC to Bologna Belinda Maia University of Porto

LETRAC Language Engineering for Translator Curricula (LE4-8324) funded by the European Commission, DG XIII, within the Telematics Application Programme of the Fourth Framework January March 1999

Consortium –IAI (co-ordinator) –Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken (DE) –Universität Mainz (DE) –Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (ES) –Universidade do Porto (PT) –Ionian University, Corfu (GR) –Aarhus Business School (DK) –2 advisory partners CIUTI Translation Service of the EC

Tasks of LETRAC To investigate –What the market needed –How professional translators worked with IT –What IT educational institutions were teaching To propose –An ideal curriculum of IT To evaluate feasibility of curriculum

Results Market expected more IT from translators Professional translators using IT were earning well BUT they were largely self-educating in IT Educational institutions were teaching very little IT The proposed curriculum >>>>

Module A Introduction to Computer Science 30 hours (obligatory) Hardware – from the screen to braille boards and voice recognition equipment Software – from ASCII to Text generation and Text-to-speech synthesis

Module B Unit 1 - DTP for Translators Desk Top Publishing (DTP) 20 hours (obligatory) DTP programmes – e.g. Framemaker, Pagemaker, QuarkXpress, Ventura Publisher –Graphical programs – e.g. Corel Draw, Photoshop, Paint, Paintbrush etc. –Presentation software like Powerpoint and/or Visio (Note: pre-requisite – basic word-processing!)

Module B Unit 2 - IT for Translators 20 hours (obligatory) Telecommunications, Technical Basis – 2 hours – 4 hours Dialogue Systems – 2 hours Internet - Technicalities – 4 hours Internet – Contents – 4 hours Internet – Resources for Translators – 4 hours

Module B Unit 3 – Advanced Skills 20 hours (optional) Advanced HTML Advanced Web design Advanced DTP Introduction to computer science programming, e.g. PROLOG for NLP, C, C++, AWK, Perl. Operating systems: Advanced DOS/Windows, MacOS. LINUX/UNIX

Module C Language engineering – Unit 1 General aspects and tools – sub-units: 30 hours (obligatory) –Word processing and checkers –Controlled language –Project and document management –Terminology systems

Module C Language engineering – Unit 2 Translation-specific aspects and tools 30 hours (obligatory) Sub-units: –Translation memories –Machine translation systems

Module C Language engineering – Unit 3 Language formalisation 30 hours (optional) Sub-units –Structural and functional approaches –Grammars and parsers –Unification-based approaches to grammar

Module C Language engineering – Unit 4 Machine Translation 20 hours (optional) Sub-units –Historical overview –Basic concepts –Evaluation –Unification-based MT systems –EU-MT and NLP projects

Module C Language engineering – Unit 5 Corpus linguistics and low-level analysis 20 hours (optional) Sub-units –Corpus design and organisation –Corpus annotation –Low-level parsing –Information extraction from corpora

Module C Language engineering – Unit 6 Case studies 20 hours (optional) Sub-units –Project, document and terminology management –Controlled language in industrial environments –Complete Localisation project

Well……..! It is easy to criticize with hindsight This was in – not 2005 The leaders were language engineers A lot has happened since then What we recommend today will also be out-of-date in 6 years’ time

Objectives of Language Engineers To speed up and facilitate all forms of language processing  To economize on language services To use language for information retrieval and knowledge engineering  To help Google

But… Objectives of: Educators of future Translators and Language Services Providers –To provide education for future professionals Translators and Language Services Providers –To get and keep jobs!

Today.. Both hardware and software - more user-friendly Students (and most teachers?) are able to use: –Windows –Microsoft Office: Word, Power Point, – –Internet But –Excel (?), Front Page (??) Access (???) –Other DTP Programmes (???) –Even OCR (??)

So… How do we teach / learn about technology? What computer skills should be pre- requisites for a university student? What do we include in the general curriculum? Which aspects are specializations?

And Bologna? The ‘Bologna process’ = the European initiative to create more uniformity among university systems in order to allow for greater mobility of teachers and students and greater flexibility in the creation of new courses.

‘3+2 or 4+1’ 3 years’ basic university education + 2 years’ specialization OR 4 years’ basic university education + 1 year’s specialization

Group work Evaluate the kinds of technology undergraduates should be taught about / to use in a –3+2 system? –4+1 system? Which technologies should be taught as specializations?