Scientific and Technical
Translation in English: Week 7
Dr. Ron Martinez

General course outline
• Week 1: Introduction to translation and CAPA
• Week 2: Research article structure, common discourse problems
• Week 3: Hands-on introduction to electronic tools
• Week 4: Translation of research articles (1st assignment on e-folio)
• Week 5: Disciplinary specificity; glossary building (e-folio)
• Week 6: Review of 1st assignment, feedback from Writing V
• Week 7: Midterm assessment (in-class)
• Week 8: New teams, new “live” assignments
• Week 9: Assignments continued
• Week 10: Feedback from Writing V
• Week 11: Completion of final translations
• Week 12: Group presentations
• Week 13: Group presentations
• Week 14: Final exam (in-class)
• Week 15: Final polishing of e-Portfolios

General course outline
• Week 1: Introduction to translation and CAPA
• Week 2: Research article structure, common discourse problems
• Week 3: Hands-on introduction to electronic tools
• Week 4: Translation of research articles (1st assignment on e-folio)
• Week 5: Team translation of 1st assignment
• Week 6: Review of 1st assignment, Disciplinary specificity , glossary building
• Week 7: Glossary building, 1st assignment finalization, Midterm prep
• Week 8: Midterm assessment (in-class)
• Week 9: New teams, new “live” assignments - Feedback from Writing V
• Week 10: Assignments continued
• Week 11: Feedback from Writing V
• Week 12: Completion of final translations
• Week 13: Group presentations
• Week 14: Final exam (in-class)
• Week 15: Final polishing of e-Portfolios

Spy on each other!

New on the website:
• Article about Google neural machine
translation
• Journal article corpus resource
• Video (just for fun)

Bilingual Glossaries: Now on SmartCAT
• Start ‘Method’ glossary in class: Google
spreadsheet
• For homework: try to add 3 new terms to that
spreadsheet (can be from any research
article).
• Also for homework: start building the
‘Connectives’ glossary (link on class website)
• Today you will learn how to keep adding terms
within SmartCAT.

SmartCAT project with glossary
activated

HOMEWORK 1: E-Portfolio (blog)
1. In Word, write BRIEF summary of the first 4
weeks of this course (max. 4 sentences).
2. + “one of my favorite things about this class
so far has been...” / “What I hope to be able
to learn/do by the end of this class is...”
3. Transfer to your blog (Ron will provide
tutorial)
4. (TODAY) Insert your translated segments

Responses from the authors

Finalize your segments in SmartCAT
1. Download the Google Doc. (You can delete the
left and right columns – leave the middle.)
2. Use the response from the article authors
(online) to refine your segments. Make sure
that you and your classmate(s) agree on the
final version.
3. Add new terms to glossary when you find useful
lexical items.
4. Insert the finalized segments into SmartCAT. (Be
sure to “confirm” segments when done.)

Your segments
• APPLE: 1-39
• BANANA: 40-71
• KIWI: 72-242
• AVOCADO: 243-323
• LEMON: 324-348

What now?
• Put this first translation on your blogs:
segments and commentary (homework).
• Ron will send finished translation to the
authors.
• And pass the baton! (Writing V)

Using a corpus in STT: ad hoc corpora

Talk about your experience!
• Build an ad hoc bilingual corpus of at least 10 research
articles (5 in English, 5 in Portuguese) on the subject
of...
• coffee beans...
• or elevators...
• or emoji...
• or yogurt...
• or something (specific!) of your choice.
• Produce a word frequency list for each language. Be
sure to save it and have access to it for next class.

Your first glossary:
1. With your partner, discuss the lists you
created.
2. How can they be used? Are they useful?
3. Any problems or shortcomings that you
noticed in the lists?
4. How can you identify which terms are
specialized?

AntConc: More advanced exploration
• In this activity, you will
– use the “word list” feature to generate
concordances and look at co-text;
– use the “n-gram” tool with customized settings to
identify terms that may be useful/important;
– use the “collocates” tool in various ways (including
using “Mutual Information” vs “T-Score” statistics)
to find useful combinations of terms;
– save your outputs to create a specialized glossary
of between 5-15 items on your blog.

Assessment
• e-Portfolio (50%)
• Midterm (10%)
• Group presentation (10%)
• Final (15%)
• Participation (15%)

Midterm (April 27th)
• You will be required to demonstrate translation skills as
covered so far in class.
• You will translate a short document in SmartCAT.
• You will need to show you can post-edit in 3-column format.
• You will also use “Steps Recorder” to record all other
resources you use in order to arrive at your translation.
• You will provide a brief report of the entire translation
experience.
• You will need to show you can create an ad hoc corpus, and
conduct basic analyses of that corpus using AntConc,
including looking for important terms.
• What matters most is showing you can use a range of
resources we have used in this class.

General course outline
• Week 5: Team translation of 1st assignment
• Week 6: Review of 1st assignment, Disciplinary specificity , glossary building
• Week 7: Glossary building, 1st assignment finalization, Midterm prep
• Week 8: Midterm assessment (in-class)
• Week 9: Midterm feedback, New teams, new “live” assignments - Feedback from
Writing V
• Week 10: Assignments continued + new techniques (using corpora for “Keyness”,
using Translation Memories)
• Week 11: Feedback from Writing V, using SketchEngine
• Week 12: Completion of final translations
• Week 13: Group presentations
• Week 14: Final exam (in-class)
• Week 15: Final polishing of e-Portfolios

Combine the txt corpus files:
• File > Open Command Prompt
• “Type *.txt > Combined.txt”