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Translation alignment

Monica Berti edited this page Mar 31, 2018 · 28 revisions

Sunoikisis Digital Classics Spring/Summer 2018

Session 1. Translation alignment

Thursday January 25, 2018, 16h00-17h15 Greenwich Mean Time

Convenors: Maryam Foradi, Tariq Yousef (Leipzig), Saman Rezaie (Tehran), Gabriel Bodard (Institute of Classical Studies)

YouTube link: (first part) https://youtu.be/pc7BQ0T6wMw ; (second part) https://youtu.be/-jMAh2ANmwc

Slides

Description

  1. Translation: history, definition and theories
  2. Computer-aided translation: presenting software, translation memories and its application for translators
  3. Machine translation and word alignment
  4. Presenting Ugarit
  5. Presenting Perseids
  6. Using translation alignment in research and language pedagogy
  7. Translating Hafez
  8. Presenting Hafez dynamic lexicon and exercise

Seminar readings

Other resources

Essay title

With reference to a particular ancient/modern language pair, discuss the value of digital translation alignment for (a) pedagogy and language learning, and (b) literary or linguistic analysis of texts.

Exercise

exercise 1
  • Take a passage of Greek or Latin (5-10 lines) and align it to the English (or other modern) translation using the Perseids or Ugarit text alignment tool. Think about the problems with alignment discussed in this session, including granularity, untranslated words and glosses, differences in grammar, and report on how useful this process was in analysing the nature, intent, and accuracy of the translation.
exercise 2 (optional)
  • Use this link to find the aligned English translation of Hafez and the Latin translation of the same poem. Align the Persian and Latin translation with the help of English alignment. Think about the meaning and part-of-speeches and compare the source and target text. What is the used translation strategy? Name the Persian grammatical features you have observed by doing this exercise. You can find the PDF file of the Latin translation here.

It may help with this exercise if you already have some familiarity with:

  1. Persian language and Early New Persian language
  2. Hafez
  3. Sufism
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