Relating Production Units and Alignment Units in Translation Activity Data

Michael Carl, Arnt Lykke Jakobsen

2010

Abstract

The definition and characterisation of Translation Units (TUs) in human translation is controversial and has been described in many different ways. This paper looks at TUs from a translation process perspective: we investigate the sequences of keystrokes which have been typed during translation production and re-define TUs in terms of text production units (PUs). We correlate those units with translation equivalences in the translation product, so-called alignment units (AUs) and compare the translation performance of student and professional translators on a small translation task of 160 words from English into Danish. In contrast to what has frequently been assumed, our data reveals that TUs are rather coarse, as compared to the notion of ‘translation atoms’, comprising several AUs, and they are particularly coarse for professional translators.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Carl M. and Lykke Jakobsen A. (2010). Relating Production Units and Alignment Units in Translation Activity Data . In Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Natural Language Processing and Cognitive Science - Volume 1: NLPCS, (ICEIS 2010) ISBN 978-989-8425-13-3, pages 37-46. DOI: 10.5220/0003024400370046


in Bibtex Style

@conference{nlpcs10,
author={Michael Carl and Arnt Lykke Jakobsen},
title={Relating Production Units and Alignment Units in Translation Activity Data},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Natural Language Processing and Cognitive Science - Volume 1: NLPCS, (ICEIS 2010)},
year={2010},
pages={37-46},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0003024400370046},
isbn={978-989-8425-13-3},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Natural Language Processing and Cognitive Science - Volume 1: NLPCS, (ICEIS 2010)
TI - Relating Production Units and Alignment Units in Translation Activity Data
SN - 978-989-8425-13-3
AU - Carl M.
AU - Lykke Jakobsen A.
PY - 2010
SP - 37
EP - 46
DO - 10.5220/0003024400370046