Best Practices in Translation Technology - summer school in Lisbon (July 2019)

UPDATE: The course registration deadline is Sunday, June 23rd!
 
Once again this year, I'll be team teaching a course with David Hardisty and Marco Neves (in English, open to all, with enrollment limited) at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (the New University in Lisbon, Portugal) on topics for best practice applying technology for more efficient and effective translation processes.

Click the graphic above to go to the Portuguese information page!

Details for costs (about €150 for those not enrolled at the university) are available here in English; the course instructors will assist those who cannot read Portuguese registration pages to register and handle other details as needed.

This year's topics include:

– Good translation workflows. 
– Using voice recognition in translation. 
– Using machine translation in a humane, intelligent way. 
– Using checklists to improve communication in translation. 
– Using glossaries, bilingual texts and other references in multiplatform environments. 
– Good practices for using terminology and reference texts in the target language. 
– Planning and creating lists for "autotranslatables" and the basics of "regular expressions" for filters.

There are some unannounced extras, but those will remain secret for now :-) And as time permits, individual challenges of course participants can also be addressed by the experts leading the course.

This is about as good as it gets for training costs; the university tuition is ridiculously low, and the 25 hours of instruction during the week of 15 to 20 July cost less than most half-day workshops while delivering far more. If it were up to me, I would probably increase the cost ten-fold, but that's because I'm a practical business person who understands commercial value, not a university administrator :-)

The course requires a basic knowledge of memoQ in advance, but much of the material goes well beyond that CAT tool. As always, integrated work with other environments, such as SDL Trados Studio and Wordfast is taught and emphasized.

The complete cost information (in Portuguese) is here: http://fcsh.unl.pt/formacao-ao-longo-da-vida/escola-de-verao/inscricoes

The direct registration page in Portuguese (where you will need to mark "Boas Práticas de Tecnologia para Tradução/Best Practices in Translation Technology" at the bottom) is here: http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/formacao-ao-longo-da-vida/escola-de-verao/inscricoes/escola-de-verao

We hope you can join us!

Ferramentas de Tradução - CAT Tools Day at Universidade Nova de Lisboa

The Faculty of Sciences and Humanities held its first "CAT Tools Day" on June 16, 2018 with a diverse program intended to provide a lusophone overview of current best practices in the technologies to support professional translation work. The event offered standard presentation and demonstrations in a university auditorium with parallel software introduction workshops for groups of up to 18 persons in an instructional computer lab in another building.

The day began with morning sessions covering SDL Trados Studio and various aspects of speech recognition.

Dr.  Helena Moniz explains aspects of speech analysis.

I found the presentation by Dr. Helena Moniz from the University of Lisbon faculty to be particularly interesting for its discussion of the many different voice models and how these are applied to speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis. David Hardisty of FCSH at Universidade Nova also gave a good overview of the state of speech recognition for practical translation work, including his unobtrusive methods for utilizing machine pseudo-translation capabilities in dictated translations.

Parallel introductory workshops for software tools included memoQ 8, SDL Trados Studio 2017 and ABBYY FineReader - two sessions for each.

Attendees learned about ABBYY FineReader, SDL Trados Studio and memoQ in the translation computer lab

The ABBYY FineReader session I attended gave a good overview in Portuguese of basics and good practice, including a discussion of how to avoid common mistakes when converting scanned documents in a number of languages.

The afternoon featured several short, practical presentations by students, discussions by me regarding the upcoming integrated voice input solution for memoQ and the preparation of PDF files for reference, translation, print deadline emergencies and customer relations.

Rúben Mata discusses Discord

The final session of the day was a "tools clinic" - an open Q&A about any aspect of translation technology and workflow challenges. This was a good opportunity to reinforce and elaborate on the many useful concepts and practical approaches shown throughout the day and to share ideas on how to adapt and thrive as a professional in the language services sector today.

Hosts David Hardisty and Marco Neves of FCSH plan to make this an annual event to exchange knowledge on technology and best practices in translation and editing work in discussions between practicing professionals and academics in the lusophone community. So watch for announcements of the next event in 2019!

Some of the topics of this year's conference will be explored in greater depth in three 25-hour courses offered in Portuguese and English this summer at Universidade Nova in Lisbon. On July 9th there will be a thorough course on memoQ Basics and workflows, followed by a Best Practices course on July 19th, covering memoQ and many other aspects of professional work. On September 3rd the university will offer a course on project management skills for language services, including the memoQ Server, project management business tools, file preparation and more. It is apparently also possible to get inexpensive housing at the university to attend these courses, which is quite a good thing given the rapidly rising cost of accommodation in Lisbon. Details on the housing option will be posted on this blog when I can find them.

Introduction to memoQ in Lisbon / Introdução ao memoQ em Lisboa

From July 6th to the 11th, the summer school of the New University in Lisbon will offer a week-long introductory course for memoQ 2015, which includes:

• The functional modules of the memoQ translation environment and how these work together;
• Common workflows for translation and editing tasks;
• Making use of legacy translations and data from other environments;
• Collaboration with users of other translation environments (SDL Trados Studio, OmegaT, etc.);
• Tips for problem-solving and added value for translation customers.

The course will be taught by me an Professor David Hardisty, with whom I have spent most of this year so far exploring innovative speech recognition and editing workflows, which will also be an important part of this course. It's a pleasure to work with David, because not only does he have a strong commitment to the success of his students, but he has a marvelous talent for taking my concepts and recasting them in a way that work really, really well for undergraduate and graduate students at all levels.

The course is open to anyone (limited enrollment, 16 persons I think) and offers 24 hours of instruction in the week. It will be taught in English with summaries in Portuguese.

A description of the course in English and Portuguese is here. I am not responsible for the errors in the English. Registration information (Portuguese only, alas) is on this page. Attendees who don't read Portuguese but manage to figure out how to register nonetheless will receive a special reward during the course.

During the week, the course is offered in the evenings, leaving the days free for work or local tourism. It is recommended that translators make a pilgrimage to the monastery named after the patron saint of translation in Belém. Miracles have occurred there, carpel-tunnel syndrome has been healed and dead text has even come to life, but not even the intervention of St. Jerome can save a machine pseudo-translation. You might learn that trick from us, however. Or not.

On August 3rd a course on project management with memoQ will be offered on a similar plan.