Translator's Workbench: Tools and Terminology for Translation and Text Processing

ISBN-13: 9783540576457 / Angielski / Miękka / 1995 / 183 str.

Marianne Kugler; Khurshid Ahmad; Gregor Thurmair

Opis

The Translator's Workbench Project was a European Community sponsored research and development project which dealt with issues in multi-lingual communication and docu mentation. This book presents an integrated toolset as a solution to problems in translation and docu mentation. Professional translators and teachers of translation were involved in the proc ess of software development, starting with a detailed study of the user requirements and ending with several evaluation-and-improvement cycles of the resulting toolset. English, German, Greek, and Spanish are addressed in the contributions, however, some of the techniques are inherently language-independent and can thus be extended to cover other languages as well. Translation can be viewed broadly as the execution of three cognitive processes, and this book has been structured along these lines: First, the translation pre-process, understanding the target language text at a lexico semantic level on the one hand, and making sense of the source language document on the other hand. The tools for the pre-translation process include access to electronic networks, conversion of documents from one format to another, creation of terminol ogy data banks and access to existing data banks, and terminology dictionaries. Second, the translation process, rendering sentences in the source language into equiva lent target sentences. The translation process refers to the potential of conventional machine translation systems, like METAL, and of the statistically oriented translation memory."

Spis treści

I. Introduction — Multilingual Documentation and Communication.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Key Players.- 3. The Cognitive Basis of Translation.- 4. User Participation in Software Development.- 4.1 User Requirements Study.- 4.2 Software Testing and Evaluation — Integrating the User into the Software Development Process.- 5. TWB in the Documentation Context.- 5.1 The Context of Translation Tools.- 5.2 Text Control.- 5.3 Translation Preparation Tools.- 5.4 Translation Tools.- 5.5 Post-Translation Tools.- 6. Market Trends for Text Processing Tools.- II. Translation Pre-Processes — The “Input” Resources.- 7. Document access — Networks and Converters.- 7.1 The Use of Standards for Access from TWB to External Resources.- 7.2 Remote Access to the METAL Machine Translation System.- 7.3 Word Processor ODA Converters.- 7.4 Access to a Remote Term Bank: EURODICAUTOM.- 8. General Language Resources: Lexica.- 8.1 The Compilation Approach for Reusable Lexical Resources.- 8.2 The Dictionary of Commerce, Finance, and Law (HFR-Dictionary).- 9. Special Language Resources: Termbank, Cardbox.- 9.1 The TWB Termbank.- 9.2 The Cardbox.- 10. Creating Terminology Resources.- 10.1 Background.- 10.2 The Systematic Elicitation of Terms: A Life-Cycle Model.- 10.3 The Life-Cycle Model of Term Elicitation: Outline of Computing Resources.- 10.4 Term Bank Record Format.- 10.5 Monitoring the Life-Cycle Phases.- 10.6 Corpus-Based Approach.- 10.7 Language-Specific Issues: Progress and Problems.- 10.8 Conclusions.- 10.9 Appendix.- III. Translation Processes — Tools and Techniques.- 11. Currently Available Systems: METAL.- 11.1 System Architecture.- 11.2 The Translation Environment.- 11.3 The Translation Kernel.- 11.4 METAL and TWB.- 12. Translation Memory.- 12.1 Introduction.- 12.2 State of the Art.- 12.3 The TWB Approach.- 12.4 A Brief Description of the Implemented System.- 12.5 Evaluation of the Translation Memory — First Results After Training Spanish-German, Spanish-English, German-English.- 12.6 Future Outlook.- 12.7 Annex A: Growth of the Databases.- 12.8 Annex B: An Example of Training.- 13. Extended Termbank Information.- 13.1 Unilingual and Language-Pair Specific Information.- 13.2 Types of Terminological Information.- 13.3 Transfer Comments.- 13.4 Encyclopaedia.- IV. Translation Post-Processes — The ‘Output’ Resources.- 14. Proof-Reading Documentation — Introduction.- 15. Word- and Context-Based Spell Checkers.- 15.1 Spanish Spell Corrector.- 15.2 Extended Spelling Correction for German.- 16. Grammar and Style Checkers.- 16.1 German Grammar Checker: Efficient Grammar Checking with an ATN-Parser.- 16.2 Spanish Grammar Checker.- 16.3 Verification of Controlled Grammars.- 17. Automatic Syntax Checking.- 17.1 Introduction.- 17.2 A Word-Oriented Approach to Syntax.- 17.3 Syntax Description by Equation and Unification.- 17.4 Parsing Based on the Slot and Filler Principle.- 17.5 Parallelism as a Guideline for the System’s Architecture.- 17.6 Error Detection and Correction Without any Additional Resources.- 18. Greek Language Tools.- 18.1 Introduction.- 18.2 Background.- 18.3 Greek Language Tools.- 18.4 Lexicon Development.- 18.5 Statistical Information.- 18.6 Exploitation.- V. Towards Operationality — A European Translator’s Workbench.- 19. Integrating Translation Resources and Tools.- 19.1 Translation Assistant Editor — Multilingual Text Processing with Personal Computers.- 19.2 The UNIX Integration Procedure.- 20. Software Testing and User Reaction.- 20.1 Software Quality — The User Point of View.- 20.2 Results of Tests and Evaluation.- 20.3 Concluding Remarks.- 21. Products.- 21.1 Tangible Products: SNI.- 21.2 Products Planned by TA.- References.- Index of Authors.