Investigating The Use Of The Internet In A Translation Class At Allameh Tabataba'I University, Iran
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Date
2011-12
Authors
Vaezian, Helia
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
There is no doubt that the Internet is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century which has had a tremendous impact on our everyday lives. It not only has eased the access of information, but has also provided a new mode of communication across the globe. This valuable source of information has also a lot to offer translators. The present qualitative study aimed at elaborating on the implications and applications of the Internet as a big virtual corpus and as a resource to get texts for inclusion in DIY corpora, in the context of translation of political texts from English into Persian. It further set out to elaborate on the use of Google Translator Toolkit in the same context. Last but not least, the present study sought to determine the students‘ attitude towards having an Internet-based translation class. The experiment lasted for one academic semester and the subjects were 22 senior undergraduate English translation students passing the course translation of political texts at the Department of Translation Studies of Allameh Tabataba‘i University, Tehran, Iran. The observation done by the researcher (as the teacher of the course), the students‘ class discussions along with their answers to the questionnaires and finally the unstructured informal interviews conducted with the students during the semester formed the basis for the data collected in the present research. The findings proved that that the Web can be useful both as a virtual corpus and as a resource to get texts for inclusion in DIY
disposable corpora in the context under question. Moreover, despite the rather poor quality of Google translations, Google Transators Toolkit proved useful in our collaborative translation class. Last but not least, the students demonstrated a positive attitude toward their Internet-based collaborative class experience.
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Keywords
The use of the internet in a translation class , at Allameh Tabataba'I University, Iran