Designed for translators and other professional linguists, this work attempts to clarify, explain and exemplify the impact that computers have had and are having on their profession. The book concerns machine translation, computer-aided translation and the future of translation and the computer.

This volume argues for an innovative interdisciplinary approach to the analysis and translation of literary style, based on a mutually supportive combination of traditional close reading and ‘distant’ reading, involving corpus-linguistic analysis and text-visualisation. The book contextualizes this approach within the broader story of the development of computer-assisted translation -- including machine translation and the use of CAT tools -- and elucidates the ways in which the approach can lead to better informed translations than those based on close reading alone. This study represents the first systematic attempt to use corpus linguistics and text-visualisation in the process of translating individual literary texts, as opposed to comparing and analysing already published originals and their translations. Using the case study of his translation into English of Uruguayan author Mario Benedetti’s 1965 novel Gracías por el Fuego, Youdale showcases how a close and distant reading approach (CDR) enhances the translator’s ability to detect and measure a variety of stylistic features, ranging from sentence length and structure to lexical richness and repetition, both in the source text and in their own draft translation, thus assisting them with the task of revision. The book reflects on the benefits and limitations of a CDR approach, its scalability and broader applicability in translation studies and related disciplines, making this key reading for translators, postgraduate students and scholars in the fields of literary translation, corpus linguistics, corpus stylistics and narratology.

This volume is about computers and translation. It is not, however, a Computer Science book, nor does it have much to say about Translation Theory. Rather it is a book for translators and other professional linguists (technical writers, bilingual secretaries, language teachers even), which aims at clarifying, explaining and exemplifying the impact that computers have had and are having on their profession. It is about Machine Translation (MT), but it is also about Computer-Aided (or -Assisted) Translation (CAT), computer-based resources for translators, the past, present and future of translation and the computer. The editor and main contributor, Harold Somers, is Professor of Language Engineering at UMIST (Manchester). With over 25 years’ experience in the field both as a researcher and educator, Somers is editor of one of the field’s premier journals, and has written extensively on the subject, including the field’s most widely quoted textbook on MT, now out of print and somewhat out of date. The current volume aims to provide an accessible yet not overwhelmingly technical book aimed primarily at translators and other users of CAT software.

Researchers have been attempting to develop systems that would emulate the human translation process for some forty years. What is it about human language that makes this such a daunting challenge? While other software packages have achieved rapid and lasting success, machine translation has failed to penetrate the worldwide market to any appreciable extent. Does this merely reflect a reluctance to adopt it, or does it signal a more fundamental and intractable problem? Computers in Translation is a comprehensive guide to the practical issues surrounding machine translation and computer-based translation tools. Translators, system designers, system operators and researchers present the facts about machine translation: its history, its successes, its limitations and its potential. Three chapters deal with actual machine translation applications, discussing installations including the METEO system, used in Canada to translate weather forecasts and weather reports,and the system used in the Foreign Technology Division of the US Air Force.

Lynne Bowker introduces the world of technology to the world of translation in this unique book, the first of its kind. Bowker reveals the role of technology in translation and how to use this ever-developing tool. Published in English.

The goal of the book is to show how computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools may affect trainee translators and to what degree. As the main issues in the CAT-based classroom come to light, the author discusses how to negate them in order to prepare students to enter the professional market.