Translation Studies and Translation Technology

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the relationship between Translation Studies and translation technology. We begin by discussing translation theory and describing the professional and academic groups who are involved in translation. In addition, the schema of the applied branch of Translation Studies proposed by John S. Holmes (1988/2000) is explored to show the areas of Translation Studies that have direct relevance to natural-language processing applications. A description of several stages in the translation process follows, involving pre- and post-editing tasks. We also consider the idea of a ‘controlled language’, frequently used to author texts as input for machine translation systems. The semiotic classification of translation models introduced by Roman Jakobson (1959/2000) is used to illustrate a different perspective on the translation process, involving editing tasks and controlled language.