Theses supervised by Prof. Dr. Işın Öner
28 theses · İstanbul 29 MayIs University, Doğuş University
Becoming a medical translator: Who are the experts?
As time goes by, more and more health tourists from different countries over the world have come to Turkey to get more affordable health care or receive better medical treatment. As the number of medical tourists has been increasing in the recent years with marketing activities by the medical tourism sector, the demand for medical translation is also gradually increasing. Meanwhile, it is the reality today that time pressure exists in every aspect of business world. Hence, in order to compete with the time needed to provide adequate translation services to the increasingly globalized business as medical tourism, translation industry demands the competent translators who can meet the needs of the translation sector. In this regard, at one side there is the increased demand for the speed in the delivery of translations and on the other side, as incompetently done medical translations can have an adverse effect on people's lives, most of the time, there is the requirement for quality in translation. Therefore, there is an issue to consider: who are the experts in writing good-quality medical translations within set time and cost: physicians? translators with/without medical background? physicians with translation background? or translators, specializing in medical translations? The aim of this thesis is to go a step further in this perspective of thinking and find out the answers of the following questions: "what does it take to become a medical translator and who are the experts?".
(Non-)/conformity in translation: Who (non-)/conforms to what, when, how and why?
With the paradigm shift that happened in translation in the '70s, many of the concepts in translation studies have been modified or altogether replaced. One of the concepts that has been introduced to the field is the concept of (non-)conformity. (Non-)Conformity, along with the other concepts, brought about new perspectives to the field and helped improve the field. Additionally, academics suggested that these concepts be used in translator training, and gradually academics and trainers around the world implemented the concepts in their courses. However, the theories and concepts have been criticized from different angles by different scholars. Although the critiques touch upon certain valid points, they don't offer any implications as to how the theories and the concepts should be further modified. This dissertation analyzes the translation theories in terms of (non-)conformity, presents the criticism directed towards those theories, and in light of certain case studies, questions the validity of both the theories and the criticism. As a result, the dissertation offers certain suggestions into how the concept may be applied to translator training.
A descriptive approach to (im)possibility of poetry translation: A case study on pseudotranslation
Whether poetry translation is possible or not has been debated for centuries, and the poetry translation has been mostly seen as problematic. When the relevant literature is reviewed it has been observed that source oriented and prescriptive approach in translation theories towards the translation phenomena is at the roof of this problem, and the theories in translation has not found a solution to this problem. However, the changes that took place in the history of the translation in 1970s within the new paradigm are discussed as a turning point for approaching the translation phenomena. The changes that took place in translation reveal that it is possible to overcome the problems that are seen as underlying reasons for the impossibility of poetry translation. Studies on pseudotranslation as an outcome notion of the changes that occurred within the framework of the new paradigm shed light on the scope of descriptive translation studies. Therefore, in the case study part of the thesis, Kabareden Emekli Bir ''Kızkardeş'' that is offered as a translation of a poetry book, despite being an indigenous work, is analyzed in the light of descriptive translation studies. As a result, this thesis demonstrates that the non-existence of the corresponding source text, which is seen as the starting point of the untranslatability of poetry, cannot prevent descriptive studies; therefore, the problem of untranslatability in poetry can be overcome in the light of descriptive studies.
A study on customized neural machine translation exemplified by IB MYP Summative Assessment criteria
Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is a recent research area in translation industry. Various studies are being conducted on the use of NMT in different fields of study. One of these fields is education. Education is an expanding area with high volumes of data. In this context, the International Baccalaureate (IB) is one of the internationally accepted educational programmes. Great volumes of translation needs are required to be met continuously in the IB programme. Therefore, customized NMT technology is used to provide a solution to high and constant translation needs of the IB in this thesis. The results obtained from the customized NMT system are compared with those of Statistical Machine Translation (SMT). The findings are analyzed within the scope of Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) and BLEU Score metric system. Finally, a conclusion is drawn in line with the comparisons and analyses.
Extending the boundaries in descriptive translation analysis: A text mining approach
The notion of 'translational norms' was introduced by Gideon Toury in the late 1970s within Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). The aim was to describe and explain translations to make generalizations regarding translational behavior. Toury deems examination of everything "untenable" due to human limitation. In this thesis, I argue that text mining can facilitate exhaustive analysis on 'operational norms.' Text mining is the automated analysis of text data to extract and discover new information. For the purpose of this research, a customized tool was designed by a software developer. In order to test the effectiveness of the software versus human effort, the corpus of a master's thesis was taken as a reference point to compare the results. The corpus underwent a preparation stage for achieving optimal results. After processing the corpus, operational norms were extracted to be interpreted. Consequently, the study provides results that cannot be obtained by sole human effort and enables researchers to gain further insights about the analyzed translations. This research therefore has a potential for making notable contribution to DTS. Further efforts are needed to improve the tool and verify its viability for different text types to ensure such contribution.
A study on operationalizing applied English translation programs in Turkey: An examination in terms of competencies, sector and academy
In Turkey, translator education has become an area of frequent research since the foundation of the 'Translation and Interpreting' and 'Translation Studies' departments, which provide undergraduate education. In addition, Applied English Translation programs that provide associate degree education are also included in translator training. On the other hand, the Vocational Qualifications Authority has determined the profession of "Translator" as Level 6 and this level indicates the undergraduate level. This leads to some problematic issues concerning theory and practice at the workplace. Employment of students who graduate from this program is at the forefront of these problems. In addition, it has been determined that holding a bachelor's degree is a main requirement in terms of having a position as a translator at governmental institutions such as Ministry of Foreign Affairs etc. The aim of this study is to examine the employment opportunities of the students of Applied English Translation programs and to determine the positions and sectors where the students can be employed. Thus, by increasing the functionality of the program, it will be possible to train semi-skilled staff who can speak languages for different sectors. The research was designed as a qualitative study and different data sources were included in the research in accordance with the purpose of the study. The first of these is the internship reports of the students. As a result of the analysis of internship reports, it was determined that the students completed their internships in many different sectors (tourism, industrial services, transportation, logistics, health, education, etc.) and used their foreign language skills effectively in this process. It supports the idea that students can be employed not only in the field of translation services, but also in different fields. The second data source of the research is the job advertisements offered by job advert web sites. In the process of examining the employment opportunities of the students of the Applied English Translation programs, Turkey's leading employment websites were included in the scope of the research. To analyze the adverts in a convenient way, semi-skilled worker positions that require English skills were included and analyzed. As a result of the analysis, the potential positions for the graduates of Applied English Translation programs have been found out. Findings from students' internship reports and job adverts showed that graduates of the Applied English Translator program may have different options for employment opportunities. In order to examine this situation in a more detailed way, semi-structured interviews were conducted with two different groups. These are managers from different sectors and human resources specialists. The result of the interviews supports the findings from internship reports and data from job search engines. For instance, semi-skilled staff who can speak foreign languages are needed in different sectors; the the managers from various sectors stated that the students of Applied English Translatiom programs can be employed more easily and effectively with some additional skills they will acquire. To discuss the current situation of Applied English Translation programs and to analyze future directions regarding the curriculum of the program, faculty members were invited to a focus group interview. The interview was held both in person and online and a report was prepared. Analyzing the data of the focus group interview, the problems related to the effectiveness of the program and possible suggestions for them were clarified. When the data from different sources are analyzed, it has been concluded that students of Applied English Translation programs have more employment opportunities as semi-skilled workers in different sectors. However, in its current curriculum design, it can be said that Applied English Translation programs do not provide basic skills in addition to foreign language skills in different sectors. This is also evident from the aims of the program and the syllabus. This issue brings the necessity of reorganizing the program, namely a curriculum evaluation process. It is suggested that the implementation of a modular program, content based course design and double major/minor programs are suitable for students who want to work in the sector and students who want to continue their undergraduate programs. As a result, the functionality of the program will be increased by taking the needs of students with different educational and professional goals into account.
Translation-oriented terminography in the face of intercultural concept variation
The present thesis focuses on the asymmetries between the specialized concept fields adopted by linguistic communities from different cultures using different languages or language variants. These asymmetries create variation between the concepts referred to by specialized communities in different cultural (and commonly geographical) environments and manifest themselves as practical problems of mainly two kinds: terminological gaps and seeming identicalness of similar concepts commonly named "non-equivalence" and "quasi-equivalence" respectively in the specialized discourse of terminology and terminography. The phenomenon of intercultural concept variation and the potential practical intercultural communication problems it creates especially in the context of translation has been much less widely discussed in the context of specialized translation than it has been in the context of general and literary translation, and even much more scarcely in the context of terminology. This is quite natural because since the outset of terminology as a discipline in its own right, the raison d'etre of terminology and the rationalé of terminology work has largely been considered to be unifying concepts and concept systems by eliminating intercultural differences pertaining to them rather than managing these differences; mainly due to the influence of what is known as the General Theory of Terminology and its practical significance for accurate specialized communication both within and across different language communities. Despite the emergence of more recent and more descriptively oriented strands of the discipline of terminology such as the socioterminological (Gaudin 1993), communicative (Cabré 1999, 2003), sociocognitive (Temmerman 1997, 2000) and frame-based (Faber et al. 2005) approaches, the dominant terminographical models are still based on data organization structures whose design largely reflects the traditional normative approach aiming at eliminating all kinds of conceptual variation. Narrowing down its scope to non-normative, translation-oriented terminography in conventional translation environments characterized by mostly ad hoc terminology work, limitations with respect to time and resources, and the use of Translation Environment Tools (TEnT), the present thesis focuses on the terminographical models to be used in this type of situations where intercultural concept variation is not eliminated for practical or socio-political reasons. To observe the landscape, current established terminographical models and practices are examined both through industry best practices laid out by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and through common, established termbanks. These observations demonstrate partial incompatibility between these data organization schemes designed mainly for systematic work towards normative purposes and translation-oriented terminography characterized by ad hoc, largely descriptive terminology work. Attempts to cope with the problems that arise due to this incompatibility have also been observed and critically evaluated. Drawing from these observations and critical evaluations, terminographical suggestions with respect to data entry and organization are developed. Taking into consideration the practical limitations of conventional, smaller-scale working environments where the use of existing ready-made terminographical infrastructures is crucial, these suggestions are developed on one of the most widely adopted terminographical infrastructures in the language services industry (TBX). Moreover, because ready-made solutions are critical for the described usage context, the suggestions are formulated in the form of a supplementary modification to the data category selection of TBX-Basic, a terminological markup language providing a ready-made data category selection and data structure designed to be and commonly recognized as one of the most language industry relevant interchange format.
The effect of error annotation on post-editing effort and post-edited product: An experimental study on machine-translated subtitles of educational content
The aim is to examine the effect of error annotation on post-editing effort and post-edited product. The research also aims to remark the importance of quality evaluation, especially of error annotation which I argue it is an efficient way to learn how to work with machine translation. Regarding these aims, a neural-based machine translation model in the domain of psychology was trained. Afterwards, an experimental study is conducted with translation students by dividing them into two groups as control and treatment group. Control group post-edited the machine-translated subtitles of an educational content in psychology, treatment group conducted a quality evaluation before the task of post-editing the same subtitles. Their temporal and technical effort were compared to post-edited products. The study intends to contribute to the machine translation studies and to raise awareness in the use of machine translation in subtitling of educational content.
A study on the impact of translators' intercultural competence on customer-perceived quality
The objective that culture may be included in the translation process was introduced with the 'cultural turn' in translation studies, highlighting the notion of "translation as intercultural communication". Knowledge of culturally specific textual and discourse conventions and applying this knowledge in the process of translation is the essence of intercultural competence. The identification of translation competence of EMT Competence Framework integrates intercultural competence with the essential skills of a translator by its approach emphasizing that a translator knows how to "translate and mediate in specific intercultural contexts". Researching the concrete results of Intercultural competence with interdisciplinary approaches is significant to highlight the role of the translator in perception of products and services. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the impact and outcomes of the translator's intercultural competence in the means of customer-perceived quality. Among the people living in Turkey who do not speak Turkish, 26 individuals who were determined by convenience sampling method were interviewed. The data collected through the face-to-face interviews revealed that the intercultural competence of a translator significantly affects the customer-perceived quality, and in the lack of intercultural competence, the consumer has negative impressions and avoids purchasing products or services.
Translation with digital data: Advertisement translation in the algorithmic age
This study aims to find answers to the questions of how communication, advertisement and advertisement translations have been transformed as an intertwined whole with the technological developments in the digital age. It will explore ways in which this transformation has affected the translation processes and the products of digital texts, and the possible consequences of this transformation for translation studies (TS) and the translation profession. In this regard, the transformation of communication, advertising and translation from past to present is explained by considering the historical, social and technological foundations of this transformation. In the study, today's technologies and how they are used in practice are discussed in the context of communication, advertising and translation with typical examples; a theoretical discussion on current digital advertisement writing and translation practices is made, and how artificial intelligence and algorithms in the infrastructure of the process are explained in the context of advertising content. In addition, there are important inferences and suggestions on translator training such as how such innovations will be reflected in translator training, what awaits the translators of the future and what should be done to prepare them in accordance with the expectations of the sector.
The use of machine translation in high-stakes texts: A case study on guidelines for natural disasters
The rapidly evolving artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies have led to growing concern among translators regarding potential job displacement. In response to this concern, this study evaluates the performance of DeepL Translator and Google Translate in translating Turkish guidelines for natural disasters into English, and explores whether raw machine translation output can be used in such high-stakes contexts. Additionally, it investigates the effectiveness of pre-editing operations in correcting errors in machine translation outputs. Using the MQM (Multidimensional Quality Metrics) framework, a comprehensive analysis was conducted on the raw outputs of both machine translation systems. Then, pre-editing strategies were developed for each error. Findings reveal that while both systems produced fewer errors than expected, errors of "major" and "critical" severity levels were present in machine translation outputs, underscoring the unpredictable nature of black-box neural machine translation systems. Pre-editing was found to be effective in addressing a significant portion of errors, with the exception of errors in terminology category. In conclusion, this study emphasizes the indispensable role of human translators in the translation process, despite the advanced capabilities of current machine translation systems.
Learning to learn: Translators' post-editing patterns and priming
This study aims to measure the priming effect in the evaluation of two neural machine translation outputs. To this end, an empirical experimental setup based on task-based learning was designed. In the first part, theoretical studies on translation competences were examined in detail and the degree to the theoretical work on competences matched the labor market expectations is emphasized. In the second part, quality assessments, which are the textual projections of these competences, are analyzed. In the third part, professional and domain experience affecting the quality assessment process, different expectations in light and full post-editing processes and competences specified by international standards are examined. The fourth part explains the priming effect observed in the context of MT quality evaluation, post-editing and L2 learning behavior. The fifth part explains experimental setup including a pre-experiment questionnaire and the statistical results of the quality evaluation experiment. The results indicate that several hypotheses are confirmed. However, statistical verification of the two hypotheses requires further data. The experimental results show that the priming effect was partially observed. Significant differences were found between the experienced group and the less experienced group in the quality evaluation process. Based on these results, it is stated that future studies can be conducted on other hypotheses that can shed light on theoretical studies on competencies
From prompts to precision: A comparative experimental study of translation quality outputs with focus on role-based (Persona) prompting for medical texts
With the advancements in artificial intelligence-driven machine translation activities, designing prompts for large language models for translation task is an area that recently has gained interest in translation literature. The effectiveness of assigning personas into prompts, however, is a subject that needs further research in medical/pharmaceutical texts domain. In response to this gap, this study aims to evaluate the impact of offering role-based (persona) prompts to large language models. By doing so, the research assesses the quality of translation outputs of role-prompted large language models against 3 different source texts with pharmaceutical content, while comparing these outputs to zero-shot prompted models alongside the outputs from long-rooted conventional neural machine translation system: Google Translate. While evaluating automated metric scores such as BLEU (Bilingual Evaluation Understudy) and COMET (Crosslingual Optimized Metric for Evaluation of Translation) from the machine translation outputs, I performed TQE (Translation Quality Evaluation) analysis through a customized TQE error-typology tool, motivated and inspired by MQM (Multidimensional Quality Metrics) framework. Therefore, this study tries to discover how effective role-based prompts are in medical/pharmaceutical domain translation with both a quantitative and also a qualitative approach, as I believe that such a hybrid approach is essential for a solid oversight of quality. Lastly, the study will include discussions over the widely-discussed concepts of machine translation ethics, translator competence, and human-machine collaboration.
A descriptive analysis of the Turkish Translation (2021) of the Guideline 'Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (2020)' from a terminological perspective
This study conducts a descriptive content analysis of the Turkish translation (CoE, 2021b) of the educational guideline Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (CoE, 2020). The research adopts Toury's (2012) translation norms as its theoretical framework and Vinay and Darbelnet's (1995) translation procedures as its methodological tool. Aiming to uncover the guiding norms behind the relevant translation, the macro-level analysis explores the translational background and (in)tolerance for linguistic mediation, while the micro-level analysis addresses the parenthetical and terminological treatments. At the macro-level, the translation policy was driven by an implicit political motivation to harmonise the national implementation of language education with European standards under the patronage (Lefevere, 2017) of the Turkish Ministry of National Education. There was neither a practical need nor an institutional motive for linguistic mediation; however, textual mediation was tolerated to legitimise terminological preferences. At the micro-level, parenthetical interventions were employed for conceptual clarifications, anaphoric references, and terminological explanations. Literal translation (n=103) and calque (n=70) emerged as the dominant procedures. Out of 100 corpus terms, 36 exhibited polyonymous behaviours through one-to-many, many-to-one, and/or paratextual inconsistencies. Overall, the research results reflect a strong inclination for source-oriented strategies (direct [n=194] versus oblique and supplementary [n=93]), positioning the Turkish CEFR (CoE, 2021b) towards the adequacy direction.
Translating fictional identities: The case of to Kill a Mockingbird
It is a consensus among sociolinguists that one's linguistic choices represent his or her race, gender, social class, background, attitudes, and above all, character attributes. In other words, one's individual use of language, made up of his/her idiosyncratic syntactical and lexical choices, denotes his/her "identity". Similarly, fictional characters perform their identities by means of language, and thus, the best way to explore fictional characters' identities is to analyze their dialogues. Within the context of translated literature, reflection of these identities in the target text depends on the linguistic choices of the translator. This adds to the translation problems faced in literary translation, most of which have been addressed so far. A great number of literary translations, especially classics, have been analyzed, compared, and evaluated to see if and how successfully the target text could maintain the source text effect in terms of style, narrative technique, and literary devices. In this study, the dialogues of the characters in five Turkish translations, by five different translators, of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, translated into Turkish as Bülbülü Öldürmek, are analyzed to find out if there are any linguistic shifts in the dialogues of the characters, and how these shifts affect the way readers perceive the identities of the characters. In other words, the purpose of this study is to see if the linguistic behaviors of the characters in five different translations titled Bülbülü Öldürmek represent the same identities as those in To Kill a Mockingbird do. Considering the distinct linguistic behaviors of the characters and the incompatibility between the source language and the target language, the analysis is expected to yield informative results on the (re)creation of fictional characters in literary translation, and the effect of translators' decisions on the formation of fictional characters.
The use of machine translation in high-stakes texts: A case study on guidelines for natural disasters
The rapidly evolving artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies have led to growing concern among translators regarding potential job displacement. In response to this concern, this study evaluates the performance of DeepL Translator and Google Translate in translating Turkish guidelines for natural disasters into English, and explores whether raw machine translation output can be used in such high-stakes contexts. Additionally, it investigates the effectiveness of pre-editing operations in correcting errors in machine translation outputs. Using the MQM (Multidimensional Quality Metrics) framework, a comprehensive analysis was conducted on the raw outputs of both machine translation systems. Then, pre-editing strategies were developed for each error. Findings reveal that while both systems produced fewer errors than expected, errors of "major" and "critical" severity levels were present in machine translation outputs, underscoring the unpredictable nature of black-box neural machine translation systems. Pre-editing was found to be effective in addressing a significant portion of errors, with the exception of errors in terminology category. In conclusion, this study emphasizes the indispensable role of human translators in the translation process, despite the advanced capabilities of current machine translation systems.
Translation with digital data: Advertisement translation in the algorithmic age
This study aims to find answers to the questions of how communication, advertisement and advertisement translations have been transformed as an intertwined whole with the technological developments in the digital age. It will explore ways in which this transformation has affected the translation processes and the products of digital texts, and the possible consequences of this transformation for translation studies (TS) and the translation profession. In this regard, the transformation of communication, advertising and translation from past to present is explained by considering the historical, social and technological foundations of this transformation. In the study, today's technologies and how they are used in practice are discussed in the context of communication, advertising and translation with typical examples; a theoretical discussion on current digital advertisement writing and translation practices is made, and how artificial intelligence and algorithms in the infrastructure of the process are explained in the context of advertising content. In addition, there are important inferences and suggestions on translator training such as how such innovations will be reflected in translator training, what awaits the translators of the future and what should be done to prepare them in accordance with the expectations of the sector.
The effect of error annotation on post-editing effort and post-edited product: An experimental study on machine-translated subtitles of educational content
The aim is to examine the effect of error annotation on post-editing effort and post-edited product. The research also aims to remark the importance of quality evaluation, especially of error annotation which I argue it is an efficient way to learn how to work with machine translation. Regarding these aims, a neural-based machine translation model in the domain of psychology was trained. Afterwards, an experimental study is conducted with translation students by dividing them into two groups as control and treatment group. Control group post-edited the machine-translated subtitles of an educational content in psychology, treatment group conducted a quality evaluation before the task of post-editing the same subtitles. Their temporal and technical effort were compared to post-edited products. The study intends to contribute to the machine translation studies and to raise awareness in the use of machine translation in subtitling of educational content.
A study on customized neural machine translation exemplified by IB MYP Summative Assessment criteria
Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is a recent research area in translation industry. Various studies are being conducted on the use of NMT in different fields of study. One of these fields is education. Education is an expanding area with high volumes of data. In this context, the International Baccalaureate (IB) is one of the internationally accepted educational programmes. Great volumes of translation needs are required to be met continuously in the IB programme. Therefore, customized NMT technology is used to provide a solution to high and constant translation needs of the IB in this thesis. The results obtained from the customized NMT system are compared with those of Statistical Machine Translation (SMT). The findings are analyzed within the scope of Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) and BLEU Score metric system. Finally, a conclusion is drawn in line with the comparisons and analyses.
Translation-oriented terminography in the face of intercultural concept variation
The present thesis focuses on the asymmetries between the specialized concept fields adopted by linguistic communities from different cultures using different languages or language variants. These asymmetries create variation between the concepts referred to by specialized communities in different cultural (and commonly geographical) environments and manifest themselves as practical problems of mainly two kinds: terminological gaps and seeming identicalness of similar concepts commonly named "non-equivalence" and "quasi-equivalence" respectively in the specialized discourse of terminology and terminography. The phenomenon of intercultural concept variation and the potential practical intercultural communication problems it creates especially in the context of translation has been much less widely discussed in the context of specialized translation than it has been in the context of general and literary translation, and even much more scarcely in the context of terminology. This is quite natural because since the outset of terminology as a discipline in its own right, the raison d'etre of terminology and the rationalé of terminology work has largely been considered to be unifying concepts and concept systems by eliminating intercultural differences pertaining to them rather than managing these differences; mainly due to the influence of what is known as the General Theory of Terminology and its practical significance for accurate specialized communication both within and across different language communities. Despite the emergence of more recent and more descriptively oriented strands of the discipline of terminology such as the socioterminological (Gaudin 1993), communicative (Cabré 1999, 2003), sociocognitive (Temmerman 1997, 2000) and frame-based (Faber et al. 2005) approaches, the dominant terminographical models are still based on data organization structures whose design largely reflects the traditional normative approach aiming at eliminating all kinds of conceptual variation. Narrowing down its scope to non-normative, translation-oriented terminography in conventional translation environments characterized by mostly ad hoc terminology work, limitations with respect to time and resources, and the use of Translation Environment Tools (TEnT), the present thesis focuses on the terminographical models to be used in this type of situations where intercultural concept variation is not eliminated for practical or socio-political reasons. To observe the landscape, current established terminographical models and practices are examined both through industry best practices laid out by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and through common, established termbanks. These observations demonstrate partial incompatibility between these data organization schemes designed mainly for systematic work towards normative purposes and translation-oriented terminography characterized by ad hoc, largely descriptive terminology work. Attempts to cope with the problems that arise due to this incompatibility have also been observed and critically evaluated. Drawing from these observations and critical evaluations, terminographical suggestions with respect to data entry and organization are developed. Taking into consideration the practical limitations of conventional, smaller-scale working environments where the use of existing ready-made terminographical infrastructures is crucial, these suggestions are developed on one of the most widely adopted terminographical infrastructures in the language services industry (TBX). Moreover, because ready-made solutions are critical for the described usage context, the suggestions are formulated in the form of a supplementary modification to the data category selection of TBX-Basic, a terminological markup language providing a ready-made data category selection and data structure designed to be and commonly recognized as one of the most language industry relevant interchange format.
A study on operationalizing applied English translation programs in Turkey: An examination in terms of competencies, sector and academy
In Turkey, translator education has become an area of frequent research since the foundation of the 'Translation and Interpreting' and 'Translation Studies' departments, which provide undergraduate education. In addition, Applied English Translation programs that provide associate degree education are also included in translator training. On the other hand, the Vocational Qualifications Authority has determined the profession of "Translator" as Level 6 and this level indicates the undergraduate level. This leads to some problematic issues concerning theory and practice at the workplace. Employment of students who graduate from this program is at the forefront of these problems. In addition, it has been determined that holding a bachelor's degree is a main requirement in terms of having a position as a translator at governmental institutions such as Ministry of Foreign Affairs etc. The aim of this study is to examine the employment opportunities of the students of Applied English Translation programs and to determine the positions and sectors where the students can be employed. Thus, by increasing the functionality of the program, it will be possible to train semi-skilled staff who can speak languages for different sectors. The research was designed as a qualitative study and different data sources were included in the research in accordance with the purpose of the study. The first of these is the internship reports of the students. As a result of the analysis of internship reports, it was determined that the students completed their internships in many different sectors (tourism, industrial services, transportation, logistics, health, education, etc.) and used their foreign language skills effectively in this process. It supports the idea that students can be employed not only in the field of translation services, but also in different fields. The second data source of the research is the job advertisements offered by job advert web sites. In the process of examining the employment opportunities of the students of the Applied English Translation programs, Turkey's leading employment websites were included in the scope of the research. To analyze the adverts in a convenient way, semi-skilled worker positions that require English skills were included and analyzed. As a result of the analysis, the potential positions for the graduates of Applied English Translation programs have been found out. Findings from students' internship reports and job adverts showed that graduates of the Applied English Translator program may have different options for employment opportunities. In order to examine this situation in a more detailed way, semi-structured interviews were conducted with two different groups. These are managers from different sectors and human resources specialists. The result of the interviews supports the findings from internship reports and data from job search engines. For instance, semi-skilled staff who can speak foreign languages are needed in different sectors; the the managers from various sectors stated that the students of Applied English Translatiom programs can be employed more easily and effectively with some additional skills they will acquire. To discuss the current situation of Applied English Translation programs and to analyze future directions regarding the curriculum of the program, faculty members were invited to a focus group interview. The interview was held both in person and online and a report was prepared. Analyzing the data of the focus group interview, the problems related to the effectiveness of the program and possible suggestions for them were clarified. When the data from different sources are analyzed, it has been concluded that students of Applied English Translation programs have more employment opportunities as semi-skilled workers in different sectors. However, in its current curriculum design, it can be said that Applied English Translation programs do not provide basic skills in addition to foreign language skills in different sectors. This is also evident from the aims of the program and the syllabus. This issue brings the necessity of reorganizing the program, namely a curriculum evaluation process. It is suggested that the implementation of a modular program, content based course design and double major/minor programs are suitable for students who want to work in the sector and students who want to continue their undergraduate programs. As a result, the functionality of the program will be increased by taking the needs of students with different educational and professional goals into account.
Extending the boundaries in descriptive translation analysis: A text mining approach
The notion of 'translational norms' was introduced by Gideon Toury in the late 1970s within Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). The aim was to describe and explain translations to make generalizations regarding translational behavior. Toury deems examination of everything "untenable" due to human limitation. In this thesis, I argue that text mining can facilitate exhaustive analysis on 'operational norms.' Text mining is the automated analysis of text data to extract and discover new information. For the purpose of this research, a customized tool was designed by a software developer. In order to test the effectiveness of the software versus human effort, the corpus of a master's thesis was taken as a reference point to compare the results. The corpus underwent a preparation stage for achieving optimal results. After processing the corpus, operational norms were extracted to be interpreted. Consequently, the study provides results that cannot be obtained by sole human effort and enables researchers to gain further insights about the analyzed translations. This research therefore has a potential for making notable contribution to DTS. Further efforts are needed to improve the tool and verify its viability for different text types to ensure such contribution.
A descriptive approach to (im)possibility of poetry translation: A case study on pseudotranslation
Whether poetry translation is possible or not has been debated for centuries, and the poetry translation has been mostly seen as problematic. When the relevant literature is reviewed it has been observed that source oriented and prescriptive approach in translation theories towards the translation phenomena is at the roof of this problem, and the theories in translation has not found a solution to this problem. However, the changes that took place in the history of the translation in 1970s within the new paradigm are discussed as a turning point for approaching the translation phenomena. The changes that took place in translation reveal that it is possible to overcome the problems that are seen as underlying reasons for the impossibility of poetry translation. Studies on pseudotranslation as an outcome notion of the changes that occurred within the framework of the new paradigm shed light on the scope of descriptive translation studies. Therefore, in the case study part of the thesis, Kabareden Emekli Bir ''Kızkardeş'' that is offered as a translation of a poetry book, despite being an indigenous work, is analyzed in the light of descriptive translation studies. As a result, this thesis demonstrates that the non-existence of the corresponding source text, which is seen as the starting point of the untranslatability of poetry, cannot prevent descriptive studies; therefore, the problem of untranslatability in poetry can be overcome in the light of descriptive studies.
Customizing a banking and finance focused NMT System: An empirical study measuring the effect of controlled language
The industry of translation is developing day by day with technological innovations. These technological innovations make processes easier for the stakeholders of translation service who form the link of the translation service chain, including translators, editors, project managers and people who need translation services. Neural machine translation (NMT) is one of the most up-to-date innovations in the translation industry and NMT has become one of the milestones reshaping the translation industry. The task of NMT system development is mostly left to computer engineers and software experts. Translators often avoid attempts to improve these systems. The first aim of this study is to create an NMT system for banking and finance texts by using the advantage of today's technologies as a translator. In the second part of the study, it has been investigated whether the Controlled Language rules, which have been very popular in recent years, are effective in improving the quality of translations made in NMT system.