In the global research community, English has become the main language of scholarly publishing in many disciplines. At the same time, online machine translation systems have become increasingly easy to access and use. Is this a researcher's match made in heaven, or the road to publication perdition?
Here Lynne Bowker and Jairo Buitrago Ciro introduce the concept of machine translation literacy, a new kind of literacy for scholars and librarians in the digital age. For scholars, they explain how machine translation works, how it is (or could be) used for scholarly communication, and how both native and non-native English-speakers can write in a translation-friendly way in order to harness its potential. Native English speakers can continue to write in English, but expand the global reach of their research by making it easier for their peers around the world to access and understand their works, while non-native English speakers can write in their mother tongues, but leverage machine translation technology to help them produce draft publications in English. For academic librarians, the authors provide a framework for supporting researchers in all disciplines as they grapple with producing translation-friendly texts and using machine translation for scholarly communication-a form of support that will only become more important as campuses become increasingly international and as universities continue to strive to excel on the global stage.
Machine Translation and Global Research is a must-read for scientists, researchers, students, and librarians eager to maximize the global reach and impact of any form of scholarly work.
Author(s): Lynne Bowker, Jairo Buitrago Ciro
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Ltd
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 128
Machine Translation and Global Research: Towards Improved Machine Translation Literacy in the Scholarly Community......Page 4
Copyright Page......Page 5
Contents......Page 8
List of Tables......Page 12
About the Authors......Page 14
Why this book?......Page 16
Who is this book for?......Page 17
Chapter 1 sets the scene by providing an overview of the state of scholarly communication and the evolution of English as the international language of research dissemination. Here, you will learn about the traditional model of scientific publishing as we......Page 21
What is scholarly communication?......Page 22
From a scientific boom to a scientific literature boom......Page 23
The rise of English(es) as the international
language of scientific communication......Page 24
Scholarly publishing......Page 26
English for research publication purposes......Page 28
Translation of scientific research......Page 29
Convenience editing and translation in a gig economy......Page 33
Publishing strategies and their pros and cons: A summary......Page 35
Parlez-vous le français-robot? The limits of machine translation for knowledge dissemination......Page 37
From post-editing to self-post-editing: A promising way forward?......Page 40
A helping hand when searching for information?......Page 42
A “good-enough” solution? The potential of machine
translation for information assimilation......Page 44
An emerging need: Machine translation literacy......Page 47
Key points from this chapter......Page 50
To find out more about …......Page 51
A brief history of machine translation......Page 52
Just follow the rules! Rule-based machine translation......Page 54
With friends like statistics, who needs linguistics?
Corpus-based approaches to machine translation......Page 57
What’s next? The rise of neural machine translation......Page 59
Word category ambiguity......Page 61
Structural ambiguity......Page 62
Anaphora, idioms, and so on!......Page 63
Change the input, change the output: Machine
translation and controlled languages......Page 64
Key points from this chapter......Page 68
To find out more about …......Page 69
Collective action for the common good......Page 70
Academic writing style: Set in stone or open to change?......Page 75
What is the purpose of translation-friendly writing?......Page 77
Ten guidelines for translation-friendly writing......Page 78
2. Use the active voice rather than the passive voice......Page 79
4. Use relative pronouns such as “that” and “which”......Page 80
6. Use nouns instead of personal pronouns......Page 81
7. Use terminology consistently......Page 82
9. Avoid abbreviated forms......Page 83
10. Avoid idiomatic expressions, humor, and cultural references......Page 84
Abstracts......Page 86
Transforming an abstract into a translation-friendly
text: An extended example......Page 87
Some notes on post-editing......Page 91
Key points from this chapter......Page 92
To find out more about …......Page 93
Just because we can use machine translation, does
that mean that we should?......Page 94
To translate, or not to translate?......Page 95
Looking beyond the machine......Page 97
Privacy concerns......Page 99
Key points from this chapter......Page 100
To find out more about …......Page 101
Machine translation literacy: A working definition......Page 102
A preliminary framework for machine translation
literacy instruction......Page 103
Module 1. Why think about machine translation in the
context of scholarly communication?......Page 104
Module 3. Translation-friendly writing and editing......Page 105
Module 4. Self-post-editing machine translation output......Page 106
Who will deliver the instruction?......Page 107
Key points from this chapter......Page 108
Concluding remarks......Page 110
References......Page 112
Index......Page 120
