Objective:
To provide students with real-world experience of professional translation.
Introduction:
Dr Jeremy Evas was appointed to create a new module (on themes including language technology, machine translation, computer assisted translation, software localisation, natural language processing etc.) within the School of Welsh at Cardiff University. Dr Evas, was keen for the module to contain real-world experience for students, and so a partnership with a local business was established, with students working real-time, on professional translation projects.
Activity:
Bristol based company Sponsorcraft LTD, who manage crown funding platform 'Hubbub' (https://hubbub.net) partnered the School of Welsh at Cardiff University, and provided a brief to students.
They desired for their own website to be multi-lingual, and so, using the Google Translator Toolkit (a web application designed to allow translators to edit the translations that Google Translate automatically generates) students worked to produce professional quality translations.
The students worked in groups, operating as if they were a real translation company. Within each group, students were assigned with different roles including, a chief executive, a project leader and a terminologist. These students companies, than competed against each other in real time, to get translations finished to a high standard.
Impact:
Initially, the quality of translations produced was poor. However, quickly over time, by learning within their groups, and in virtue of the competitive atmosphere, the quality of translations improved, with a very high quality being achieved before the end of the project.
Sponsorcraft LTD reporting being very happy with the quality of work they received as a result of the project.
Learner outcome:
The examples of curriculum development for enterprise related outcomes were originally outlined by Neil Coles at the International Enterprise Educators Conference under the heading 'From Archaeology to Zoology; an A-Z of enterprise in the curriculum'. For his work in contextualising enterprise for any subject, Neil won the 2013 National Enterprise Educator Award.
References:
- Cardiff University Enterprise | Be Enterprising | Make Things Happen. 2015. [ONLINE] Available at: http://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/cuenterprise/ . [Accessed 04 August 2015].
- Cardiff University School of Welsh. 2015. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/welsh/. [Accessed 04 August 2015].
- Hubbub - crowdfunding for education and social good. 2015. [ONLINE] Available at: https://hubbub.net/. [Accessed 04 August 2015].
Author:
Dr Jeremy Evas, School of Welsh, Cardiff University
Neil Coles, Senior Enterprise Learning Officer, Cardiff University