Wikiversity:Translator's Handbook

Institute for Multilingual Studies

Translator's Handbook

Interlingual Training Manual

This handbook is part of a learning path for Wikiversity participants who wish to become certified translators while helping to produce Wikiversity_translations.

Introduction
Essay: Why learn to translate?

Winning Essay goes here

The Interlingual Beta Club would like an enlightening and inspirational introduction to The Translator's Handbook. See certified translator for details.

Translating in groups
Some say translating is an art, some say it is a science. Here at the Translation Department, we think it's a matter of interpretation (pun intended).

For us it's a simple matter of getting the job done. Translating Wikiversity is a daunting task. No matter how or where you start, you're still at the tip of the iceberg. This version of the handbook is written in the English Language. German and Chinese versions are just right over there, but All Languages need to be taken into account. Impossible? You should never feel alone in this work. In the context of translating, participation is everything!

Reading:
 * Wikiversity translations/Recruiting translators

Learning Families
Wikiversity, using a method similar to, but more efficient than Multilingual coordination at Wikipedia must come up with its own approach to Foreign Language Learning (and teaching). Here we have a unique opportunity to collaborate between and among Wikiversity versions and Betas, and have a bit of fun doing it. The Interlingual Beta Club is made up of native speakers and writers from many languages and backgrounds. The imperative of collaboration between Schools, Divisions and Departments expedite the process in several ways:
 * 1) Media Studies can pair with Computer Science to design an audio interface for Computer assisted translation
 * 2) Audio Engineering can be used to record well-known public-domain literary works that have already been translated into numerous languages to present comparitive samples of the same texts across languages.
 * 3) Linguistic elements can be programmed into AI components to tweak the performance of machine translation systems.
 * 4) Brainstorm!!!

Schools: Media Studies | Linguistics | Computer Science | Language and Literature

Language Families
NEXT: Languages

Explore:
 * Languages and Language families
 * Category: Wikiversity translations
 * Wikibooks:Languages bookshelf

Linguistics
School:Linguistics - Portal:Linguistics

Lexicography
Many keywords on the various Wikipedias have links in the left sidebar to other language articles with the same name, but translated to the other language. Tables like this one can be made to tabulate these keywords:

Translation Lexicons and Dictionaries:
 * Rosetta Project
 * Eurodicautom European Terminology Database
 * Logos Dictionary
 * LookWAYup Dictionary
 * Majstro
 * Word Reference
 * Your Dictionaries English version of diccionarios.com
 * German dictionary and translation tool

This chapter of the Translator's Handbook may someday contain an expansive lexicon.

Machine Translation
Machine translation is a sub-field of Computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another. At its basic level, MT performs simple substitution of atomic words in one natural language for words in another.

The Schools of Computer Science and Linguistics might someday meet at Computational linguistics to develop machine translation software for use at Wikiversity.
 * Altavista translation - "Babel fish"
 * Apertium - Free software machine translation toolkit.

Computer-assisted Translation
Computer-assisted translation, Computer-aided translation, or CAT is a form of translation wherein a human translator translates texts using computer software designed to support and facilitate the translation process.

See Computer-assisted translation

The Schools of Computer Science and Linguistics might someday meet at Computational linguistics to develop computer-assisted translation software for use at Wikiversity.

Appendix

 * Topic:Translation
 * Le Ton beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter. A book about translation.

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