AJ69043 Translation on the Internet

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2009
Extent and Intensity
0/2/0. 2 credit(s) (plus 3 credits for an exam). Recommended Type of Completion: zk (examination). Other types of completion: z (credit).
Teacher(s)
Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.
Department of English and American Studies – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Tomáš Hanzálek
Timetable
Mon 15:00–16:35 G21
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.

The capacity limit for the course is 15 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/15, only registered: 0/15
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
After completing the course, the students will
- know the internet environment and its functions in the global and multilingual world, including its basic social, economical, technological, and legal aspects
- have acquired practical skills in some online activities (searching, wiki editing)
- understand the specifics of translating (and text production in general) under the conditions of collective authorship (often non-professional), and public licence
- be able to apply to internet translation the theoretical concepts from more traditional types of translation
The course responds to the fact that in real life, not all text are produced by professionals. It looks into the relations between professional and non-professional translation (including their legal and social spects) and compares the situation in translated texts with that found with original texts. Various types of translation on the internet are discussed and compared to translation intended for publication in print.
Syllabus
  • Week 1-3:
  • Professional and non-professional production of translated texts: economical, legal, organizational and social aspects (open-source, wiki etc.; virtual communities of authors and their relation to commercial production; professional distributed projects; localization, internationalization). Case studies of selected projects and their output.
  • Week 4-5:
  • Wikipedia - learning to work in a wiki environment: tools and rules of the community. Introduction to students' own production. Analyses of selected discussions of wikipedians and of selected transalted articles and their development. Implications of open collective production for the outcome; limitations, sustainability, synergy of the project. Similar projects. Assigning topics/articles for independent work during the rest of the course.
  • Week 6:
  • Translation/localization of web pages, both amateur and professional. Language and style on the internet: local vs. global pages, private vs. institutional pages. Frequency and imfluence of translated texts in different language environments. English vs. non_English web pages: does internet support marginalization of procution in other languages?
  • Week 7:
  • Literary and non-literary translation on the internet: pirate tranlsations, community projects (book translations, film subtitling). Challanges to the notion of authorship and copyright - trends in the era of electronic texts and lossless copying. The role of translation in routine information exchange and in creation of alternative views of reality.
  • Week 8:
  • Wiki editing session
  • Week 9:
  • Localization of software and technical devices: brief introduction to the basic concepts, trends and tools. A brief overview of automatic translators, their characteristics and limitations.
  • Week 10:
  • Metatexts on translation - the internet as a translation-reflecting environment. Relation of this production to scholarly/printed writings. producted jako prostředí reflektující překlad, vztah této tranlsation theory and criticism. Czech on the internet: discussion of previous topics from this point of view, the state and self-reflection of the Czech language on the internet.
  • Week 11-12:
  • Final peer-editing of the individual wiki translations produced during the course. Focus: factual correctness, coherence, style.
  • Week 13:
  • Concluding unfinished topics, final discussion.
Literature
  • Giles, Jim: Special Report: Internet encyclopaedias go head to head. Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005).
  • Dimova, R: New media, persuasion and interactivity: Towards a research agenda. International Conference on Technology: Between Enthusiasm and Resistance, 10-11 May 2005, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/teer2005/abstract/dimova.
  • http://www.aetherometry.com/antiwikipedia/awp_index.html
  • Living Internet: http://www.livinginternet.com/
Teaching methods
In-class activities:
  • Discussions of produced translations
  • Discussions of specifics of internet publishing
    Home assignments:
  • Individual translations on the internet (Czech Wikipedia, web pages localisation)
  • Analyses of various text types published on the Internet
    • Assessment methods
    Seminar taking place in a computer classroom, with the possibility of practical on-line work. Depending on the individual topics, students are assigned statistical and critical searches, translation comparisons etc. They also practically contribute to Wikipedia.
    Assessment is based on students' work in the course and on a final translation (witten at home).
    Language of instruction
    English
    Further Comments
    The course is taught annually.
    The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2008, Autumn 2010, Autumn 2011, Autumn 2012, Autumn 2013, Autumn 2014, Autumn 2015, Autumn 2016, Autumn 2017, Autumn 2018, Autumn 2019.
    • Enrolment Statistics (Autumn 2009, recent)
    • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/autumn2009/AJ69043