1. Translation Challenges:From Training to ProfessionHammamet, Tunisia, 28-29 November Abou Nawas Hotel www.freewebs.com/hsalhi

2. Small parallel corpora in an English Arabictranslation classroom: No need to reinvent the wheel in the era of GlobalizationHammouda Ben Ammar Salhi Institut Suprieur des Langues Appliques et dInformatique de Nabeul (ISLAIN) [email_address] www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 3. TheCry!: Where are you my teacher?

Experience in Africa (UPU)

The Academic and Professional Gap (APG)

Where are you my teacher?

Alternative teachers: the Internet and technology and much motivation and work

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 4. Aims

To show how corpora are of immediate and critical importance in the English - Arabic classroom without the use of too much technology

To illustrate how acollaborative approachis urgently needed

to show how to bridge the Academic and Professional Gap (APG) in Translator Training in Tunisia

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 5. Presentation structure

Tracking the new requirements and changes in the current translation market

To report on an experiment conducted at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sousse

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 6. Translation and Technology:Thenew frontier

Advantages brought about by technology

• • Translation memory systems

• • Terminology databases

• • Electronic corpora

• • Concordancers and Alignment tools

• New changes and requirements in the profession

Advantages of corpora

Virtual Meeting Collaboration (VMC): a Powerful Collaboration Tool

• • www.Translatorscafe.com

• • www.Proz.com

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 7. The professional translator workstation : Massive Online Collaboration (MOC) are changing the rules of the game

Online Proofreading, Editing, Reviewing and Revising Services

e.g. Didawi (2005:54-61)

• Violations of sexual integrity

Before revision:

After revision:

• Military armed cars arrived at his home with over 50 men

Before revision: 50

After revision :50( ) ( )

Online consultation of Experts:

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 8. State of the translation classroom in Tunisia

A typical case

The Academic and Professional Gap (APG) in Translator Training in Tunisia

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 9. The Experiment

When it all started?

Motivating Students

How theCollaborativeApproachwas implemented?

Creation ofsmall glossaries of translated words phrases , technicl terms

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 10. Results of the experiment

Quantitative Results

Qualitative Results

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 11. Grading Translation exams 1

• Coordination Meetings

• • A meeting before courses start

• • A second meeting before the exam

• • A final meeting after the exam

• Grading

• • Understanding:(x)5 points out deducted

• • Language:(L)4 points out a total of 100 points

• • Wording, expressions, and structures: (-) mark 1 point

• • Omission:(O) punished by 5 points deduction

• • Good translations:(+)worth 3 points

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 12. Grading Translation exams 2

• Provisional Score PS= Total of positive points Total of negative points

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 13. Quantitative Results 1

Mean Marks =

• • 2005/6: (with 501 as a total number of students) 8.11 out of 20

• • 2007/8: (with 439 as a total number of students) 8.82 out of 20

Absent students =

• • 2005/6: out of the 501 students, 09 did not sit for the exam and got zero

• • 2007/8: out of the 439 students, 28 did not sit for the exam and got zero

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 14. Quantitative Results 2 www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 15.

Motivation

Getting rid of the bte noire misconception about translation

Clear willingness to attend translation classes

Qualitative Results www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 16. Limitations of the experiment

Marks are not always a good indicator of the competence and skills of a student,

Technology is not heavily used

a good number of students are still lazy

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 17. Conclusions

In this presentation, I tried to report an experiment conducted in a Tunisian context on how better to prepare translation students to the translation market after tracking the main changes and requirements of this market.

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 18. Recommendations for students

Translation students must have a minimum of formal training in computer science

Students must take the initiative to access online virtual forums, such as that of translatorscafe.com and encourages creating their own forums,

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 19. Recommendations for teachers

Teachers must be aware that students need less education and more training.

Coursesmust respond to changing conditions in the world of professional translation.

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi 20. Final Message

Technologyand collaboration areenoughto reduce the pitch of the APG cry and save us from reinventing the wheel.

But alone they are not enough to make students into good and professional translators

www.freewebs.com/hsalhi