Translation and Technology, Kulak Kortrijk Campus

The research group (RG) Translation and Technology is an interdisciplinary research group, which investigates specific issues related to the translation of specialized texts, the evaluation of (specialized) translations and translation technology from different perspectives. At the same time  the RG Translation and Technology will provide methodological support to projects from other RG's, both for translation and interpreting research. In addition, the RG Translation and Technology will further develop its own methodological expertise by working closely with other RG's, both within the KU Leuven and internationally.

Objectives

The RG Translation and Technology aims to: stimulate research into the various aspects of specialized translation (in particular legal and medical texts), translation evaluation and translation technology, with particular attention to:

• translation of legal and medical / scientific texts;
• translation in health communication;
• translation evaluation;
• terminological research, including the legal and medical field;
• translation technology;
• corpus linguistics and parallel corpora;
• concept modeling and development of ontologies;
• register variation in Language for Specific Purposes (LSP).

In concrete terms, the focus of the RG Translation and Technology can be defined as follows:

• the evaluation of the efficiency and quality of translation processes, translation products and translation tools, using procedures that allow: (a) to evaluate the impact of translation technology on translators and the translation process; (b) assess the quality of translations, translators and translation processes in an objective and standardized manner; and (c) maximize utilization of (parallel) corpora for the optimization of the translation process and for determining the functional equivalence of legal texts from different legal systems;

• the testing and enrichment of various evaluation procedures to and with corpus-based data, which provides significant added value, including applications such as term extraction, relevance of translation suggestions and semi-automatic selection of quality test items.

The research can be both qualitative and quantitative.

De OG Vertaling en Technologie is een interdisciplinaire OG die de vertaalproblematiek rond gespecialiseerde teksten, vertaalevaluatie en vertaaltechnologie vanuit verschillende invalshoeken bestudeert. De OG Vertaling en Technologie zal tegelijkertijd methodologische ondersteuning bieden aan projecten uit andere OG’s, zowel voor vertaal- als tolkwetenschappelijk onderzoek. Daarnaast zal de OG Vertaling en Technologie haar eigen methodologische expertise verder uitbouwen door nauw samen te werken met andere OG’s, zowel binnen de KU Leuven als internationaal.