Teach the Teachers 2016

Latin Translation Alignment

Address of this presentation: croala.ffzg.unizg.hr/sunoikisis/jovanovic-latinalignment.html

Neven Jovanović / neven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr

University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Classical Philology

The Plan

What is alignment?

Why use it in teaching Latin?

Pro et contra

Approaches to aligning translations

Analog and digital, networked and in the classroom

Digital tools and workflows

Conclusion?

What is alignment?

A strategy in automated (reusable, machine-supported, mostly technical) translation.

What is alignment?

Text and translation in parallel.

Why use alignment in teaching Latin?

nam et statura fuit humili et corpore exiguo et claudus altero pede.

Был он мал ростом, тщедушен и хром на одну ногу

mert alacson szerü, és sánta vala.

Albowiem był niskiego wzrostu, drobnej budowy i utykał na jedną nogę.

ού μόνον μικρός το ανάστημα, αλλά και ισχνός, και χωλός τον έτερον των ποδών.

Why use alignment in teaching Latin?

Encourage closer reading.

Think about the relationship of translation to text.

Master strategies for approaching language-specific structures (lexical and syntactical).

Understand nuances of style both in source and target language.

Work together.

Why use digital tools for alignment in teaching Latin?

Work together.

Review and revise.

Produce measurable and corrigible work.

Produce material that will be useful to others.

Contribute to "translation memory" of Latin.

Pro et (mostly) contra

How much text? Which text?

Where are the rules for alignment?

Where are the rules for alignment for the language I need?

What if translation won't align?

What if we discover our translation is wrong?

How do we grade it?

Suggestions

Start with sentences

Start analog, proceed to digital

Make rules together with class, document it

Start with a literal translation, but explore also freer ones

Put students in roles of translators, aligners, reviewers

Non multa, sed multum

There is always another round!

When you build a course
around problems,
they become
advantages

A course plan

Goals

• Introduce students to alignment as a technique of mastering the languages
• Motivate students to produce and compare translations
• Encourage students to think about translation through formulating rules for alignment
• Introduce students to working in a digital environment
• Enlarge the corpus of aligned sentences and texts

A course plan

Objectives

• Students will work on n sentences / texts in the Perseids text aligning environment
• Students will prepare n translations to be aligned with the original
• Students will produce n aligned sentences
• Students will review n of their peer's alignments
• Students' alignments will be reviewed and corrected as necessary
• The work of each student and the whole class will be exported from Perseids and gathered in a collection

Let's try it out

Use Perseids to align a sentence.

All together now!

Dubrovnik, 21 June 2014.