Thursday 29 November 2012




Languages and Translation Departments:

E-learning , online learning and integrating technology in the teaching and learning process.

This is a great move and initiative from King Khalid University. Similar initiatives were taken by King saud University (Wiki Project for enhancing Arabic content in the Internet).Good to hear this.

The same project (WIKI project)was supported by Qatar Foundations in Doha. Shame that Arabic is amongst one of the six UN languages and -yet- its content is so poor in the Internet. My next project is to open an Arabic blog whereby the contents on translation and interpreting news, practise and research will be published in Arabic. Another solution, is to create a multilingual knowledge base online . Coming up soon...!!!


I am quite aware of the efficiency of using WIKIS in training students on revision skills using a collaborative approach (project based collaborative approach- Kiraly (2000) . I hope you may have some ideas about this or ways to clarify this in a better way. Did some of you have used these tools before in teaching?. I can see the Wikis' educational potential in nurturing and developing crucial competencies that are badly needed in translation practise : working in groups , in networks (at international and local levels), coordination skills ( who is doing what, training on meeting deadlines through working online , coping with last minute changes). 

The Wiki platform in the case of Arabic could serve two things :

1- Training translators on major skills badly needed in the real world of translation (revision, collaboration)
2- Filling up a gap : empowering the Arabic Language content on the Internet (Imagine how many times we translators need assistance from google search  in fixing terminological or phraseological issues and we find how poor are the online resources in Arabic). However, when I work on a technical translation from French or Spanish into English, researching documents (parallel corpus data, for instance)  or terminology becomes easier ....

Fouad

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