TecCOMFrame: Building bridges between technical communication and translation studies through a prototype specialisation curriculum

Background During the early stages in the development of new technologies, technical researchers publish their findings in journals, conference proceedings, technical reports, and other documents. Such documents are written for other researchers and rarely find their way into the hands of practitioners. Until basic research is presented in a form that is accessible to practitioners, new technologies are not adopted and widely used. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center whose primary business is technology transfer, the dissemination of new technology leading to widespread use. For the past several months, I have been working on a project team at the SEI that is writing a handbook. We believe that handbooks can help bridge the gap between research and practice by making research accessible to practitioners. The handbook we are working on will be the primary instrument for the transfer of a technology which is proving to be useful in designing and analyzing real-time computing systems. The new technology, known as rate monotonic analysis (RMA), is a collection of quantitative methods and algorithms that allow engineers to understand, analyze, and predict the behavior of real-time systems. As a technical communicator, my role on this team is to edit the work of the two principal authors and to apply the principles of effective document design to the handbook. If the handbook and other transfer activities are successful, RMA will become part of the routine practice of realtime systems practitioners. In this paper, I discuss the production of the RMA Handbook from the point of view of the technical communicator. To be an effective member of aproject team, the technical communicator must demonstrate to other project members the skills that he or she can bring to the team. In the following pages, I will suggest the role that a technical communicator can play in each stage of handbook production: planning, drafting the document, testing, and revising. I argue for a collaborative approach to handbook production in which technical communicators play a key role. Planning Planning includes setting goals, analyzing the audience, and setting milestones.

In recent decades, the convergence of technical and professional communication (TPC) with translation studies (TS) has underscored the necessity for collaboration across disciplinary borders. However, challenges remain, particularly in translating specialized texts deeply connected to local cultures. This paper investigates a virtual exchange (VE) project focused on translating multilingual menus, which pose unique challenges due to their embeddedness in local cultures. The study explores translators' strategies in dealing with culture-specific items (CSIs) and their collaboration with TPC writers representing the target audience. The methodology section outlines the case study's participants and dataset, while the results shed light on effective strategies and collaborative approaches in translating menus within a VE context. A key takeaway is that technical translation requires not only a deep understanding of the terminology and concepts of a specific field, but also a commitment to working with TPC writers and target audiences to transform source texts into usable and persuasive target texts – an approach that VE environments can uniquely support through authentic, cross-cultural collaboration.

A project in writing-across-the curriculum was launched within a nationally ranked baccalaureate degree program in accountancy at a Boston area college. The project team, which comprised faculty from accountancy and technical communication, attempted to integrate technical communication skills, principally writing, into an accounting information systems course. To improve student writing in this way, the team had to determine what kinds of writing activities would successfully introduce accounting students to the discourse of their profession, and had to select, from all the communication skills that might be taught, only those that should be taught to complement the specialized content of the accounting information systems course. The team's collaborative process produced three critical planning decisions that greatly simplified the integration: 1) establishing Joseph Juran's TQM notion of fitness-for-use for evaluating the quality of student communications; 2) selecting only those forms of communication used in the profession's discourse community in assignments; and 3) teaching only those communication skills that support and enrich the principal technical skills taught in the accounting course. This strategy demonstrates that communication skills can be integrated within a technical course so as to enhance the students' understanding of technical content while improving the students' proficiency in written communication.

This article reports on a qualitative study of strategies and competencies used by technical communication and translation students to address challenges inherent in global virtual team collaboration. The study involved students from three universities collaborating in virtual teams to write and translate instructional documents. Qualitative content analysis of students’ reflective blogs and team transcripts was used to examine their experiences while collaborating. Students faced challenges related to communication, leadership, and technology, and developed various strategies to address those challenges. Although the students did not face cultural challenges, they reported increased awareness of cultural issues. Students also reported that the project helped them better understand the workplace and define career goals.

Multimedia-assisted teaching results in eliminating traditional training barriers, facilitating cognition process and upgrading learning outcomes. This study attempted to examine the effects of implementing multimedia on teaching technical translation model and on the technical text translation ability of Iranian translation studies students. To fulfill the purpose of the study, a total of forty-six learners were selected out of fifty-seven participants in a higher education center in Tehran based on their scores in Preliminary English Test (PET) and were divided randomly in the experimental and control groups. Prior to the treatment, a technical text translation questionnaire was devised and then validated by three assistant professors of engineering fields and three assistant professors of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at the university. This questionnaire was administered as a pretest to both groups. Control and experimental groups were trained for five successive weeks using identical course books but with a different lesson plan that allowed employing multimedia for experimental group only. The devised and approved questionnaire was administered as posttest to both groups at the end of the instruction. A multivariate ANOVA was run to compare the two groups’ means on the PET, pretest and posttest. The results showed the rejection of all null hypotheses of the study and revealed that multimedia significantly improved technical text translation ability of the learners.

Today, the transfer of as much information as possible as quickly as possible is becoming the norm, with the accelerating development of the modern world, the social function of translation as an activity is also changing. At this time, the degree of the translation unit adequacy is under challenge. The postulate of the adequacy of translation known to all professionals in the field of translation, according to which every author's message should be translated as close to its meaning as possible and must accentuate its content, is taking a back seat. Skopos theory in 1978 authored by the German linguist and translator H. Vermeer pushed a reconceptualization of translation activity where the goal (skopos) conforming to which a translation piece is made and the function determined by the addressee are focused. The revolutionary idea of this theory lies in the fact that it decrowns the dominance of the source text and emphasizes the role of the translator as the creator of the translation text, giving priority to the skopos that was set to create this translation, and bringing the customer out of the shadow of the translation. The main ideas of this theory as well as the interest that is actively shown in foreign translation studies determine the urgency of this research. This article presents arguments for the foundations of this theory that may be used to reproduce modern functional translation, in particular in the scientific and technical field. The purpose of our investigation is to form specific procedures for translation activities in order to reproduce high-quality narrowly specialized translation from the perspective of the target direction of translation activities according to Skopos theory. A scientific and technical text, in terms of its functional characteristics, is best suited for the Skopos theory adaptation. Based on the study of this theory’s foundations, we tried to create some recommendations for translators that may be of interest for the development of specific procedures for the translation of scientific and technical texts. The methodology of comparing the generally accepted theory of adequacy and Skopos-theory makes it possible to identify those attractive features of the latter that add to the creation of high-quality translation text, which indicates the current direction of this work in the field of the Ukrainian scientific and technical translation studies. The given research includes general logical and general scientific methods such as analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, descriptive and comparative methods to render our own conclusions regarding the analyzed theory. In the course of our research, it became possible to determine the paradigm of the main provisions of Skopos theory, which can guide scientific and technical translators in their activity, and on the basis of these provisions’ study to reproduce certain recommendations for professional translators regarding the translation of scientific and technical texts The overall intention of the paper was not to dictate mandatory rules to be followed by a translator, but rather to explain a new methodological approach and to form some appropriate techniques that can teach specialists in scientific and technical translation to evaluate their work as well as to take responsibility for a final translation product in face of both, the customer of the translation and the audience for which this translation is intended.

This article tries to show and explain in some detail the quantitative and qualitative evolution of the bibliography on technical and scientific translation throughout history as compared with other research fields. The underlying corpus drawn on are the more than 20,000 entries collected in BITRA (Bibliography of Interpreting and Translation) up to September 2003. This bibliographical tool is an online multilingual database which attempts to comprise everything ever published on translation and can be freely accessed on http://www.ua.es/dfing/tra_int/bitra_en.htm The paper concludes that concern for technical and scientific translation only appears in the 1950s, when obsession with canonicity seems to decline somewhat within Translation Studies. A further finding is that consideration of this type of translation has been and remains mainly practical, with reflections on problems posed by terminological domains (mostly legal and, lagging far behind, medical, business and IT), teaching, documentation, the interpreting of technical discourse and professional issues as the favourite topics.

This chapter describes how within the framework of distant collaborative projects between European and American universities, combining the activities of technical communication and translation, Paris Diderot students are required to write a blog, to analyze not only the final product but the process they went through. These blogs constitute a source of meta-knowledge about all of the activities taking place over the course of the project. The Paris Diderot students have the task of translating a text designed by technical communicators. However, the final project, the translation, does not reflect the different facets of the project. Asking students to produce a blog in order to gain feedback about the project is rich in learning because students and professors can concurrently analyze the strategies of collaboration employed, the method of translation, the project management and tools used, as well as the creativity of the students and finally, the lessons drawn from these experiences. It is concluded that these elements constitute meta-knowledge as objects of research.

After Kiraly (2000) introduced the collaborative form of translation in classrooms, Pavlovic (2007), Kenny (2008), and Huertas Barros (2011) provided empirical evidence that testifies to the impact of collaborative learning. This chapter sets out to describe the collaborative forms of learning at different stages in the translation processes in the Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project, a long-term cross-cultural virtual team. It describes the forms of collaborative learning practised in this multilateral international project in technical communication and translator training programmes and explores the empirical data that the project may provide for future research into learning translation.

The presented results of a scientific and applied study consider psychological barriers and difficulties of future interpreters studying in the field of 45.03.02 “Linguistics”, profile “Translation and transla-tion studies” at the stage of professional training in higher education. Graduates' psychological readiness for professional activity is relevant. Based on the analysis of the obtained data, we propose projects of educational programs aimed at developing the psychological competencies of linguistics students and present proposals for improving the social and psychological training of bachelors. The research results show the need for the educational organization to cooperate with the professional community and the student in order to consider the needs and interests of all participants in the educational process. In practice, this interaction provides for the expansion of the psychological part of the main professional educational program and the acquisition of additional education by students. These decisions contribute to the form necessary competencies, improve professional activities, and personal growth of future specialists in translation. The introduction of the proposed changes to the educational program is a way to overcome psychological barriers in translation activities at the stage of professional training at the university, as a result, graduates realize the need for self-development and professional self-realization, overcome psychological difficulties with moti-vation, gain confidence in their abilities. The demand for such specialists in the labor market is increasing

Our work describes blended learning initiative and joint activity of the Department of Applied and Computational Linguistics and the regional Translation Service Provider and its Training Centre. We develop and support the special UNITECH-platform based on Moodle e-learning system to model the typical business processes in translation business practice. In this paper, we focus on the aims, tasks, and structure of the UNITECH-platform and its potential applications. The UNITECH-platform provides support for several academic courses in Translation Studies. This platform for blended learning also stimulates the usage of professional translation and linguistic tools, e.g., ABBYY SmartCAT Computer-Aided-Translation. We also present the results of the UNITECH-platform pilot testing for the course in Technical Translation for two groups of learners studying Linguistics and Translation at the Faculty of Humanities, Ulyanovsk State Technical University.

Translation is a unique practice in terms of its function and use as well as the cognitive and technical mechanisms underlying it. Translation Studies (TS) explores the scientific depths of the practices and processes of translation which has become a deeper well with the background, knowledge and skills accumulated over time enriched with the technological developments of our era materialized with the products of machine-aided translation and translation tools (e.g. memories, online aids and corpora software).

Following the severe impact of capitalist industrialization on the environment, the EU has funded several projects in the context of the European Green Deal to pursue climate neutrality by 2050. Some of these projects attempt to achieve zero emissions through political participation, while others by committing EU citizens to adopt sustainable habits in terms of both practical behavior and economic choices. The GreenSCENT project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, aims to develop a Competence Framework compliant with the European Qualifications Framework and the European Green Deal. The present article documents the process of developing such a Competence Framework. Eight distinct research teams independently conducted a similar thorough literature review over an assigned topic (Climate Change; Clean Energy; Circular Economy; Green Building; Smart Mobility; From Farm to Fork; Biodiversity; Zero Pollution). The resulting documental corpora have then elicited to build the competence matrices and the corresponding European Qualification Framework levels. Once the information has been reorganized as a knowledge graph, the researchers discovered a large amount of novel interdomain connections, providing a more engaging way of interacting with the Competence Framework, and potentially apt to avoiding information overload issues while preserving the complexity, in line with the simplexity paradigm. The environmental education tools produced by this research could be useful in mitigating the repercussions of Capitalocene on the environment toward the adoption of more sustainable behaviors.

The translation of technical documents is no longer a process to be tackled once the source text has been produced elsewhere in the corporation or institution. Instead, translation and intercultural issues are taken into account prior to the production of the technical source-text which, most frequently, gains a dynamic feature. From this standpoint, one might think that the translator loses the leading role against the technical writer, who would become the key intercultural communicator for the global marketplace. However, as it has happened to other stakeholders in the multilingual documentation chain, the translator is no longer empty-handed and is gradually developing some technologically-driven competencies that allow them to expand their battle area and contribute to knowledge transfer in our society. This paper provides an overview of the latest workflow patterns leading to multilingual technical documentation production and management, their ideal circumstances and problems, as well as deriving consequences for higher education degree programmes in translation and technical communication.

Project teams will increasingly work virtually in multidisciplinary teams. The degree of virtuality varies from fully virtual to hybrid. The purpose of this study is to identify how the virtual team (VT) members experience multidisciplinary project work and team development in the context of international real-life projects in Higher Education Institutions (HEI).
 The data were gathered from student project teams´ final reports (n=7) and students´ individual reflection diaries (n= 37). Thematic content and sentiment analysis were used.
 The results showed that team members can experience professional diversity and team development in different ways. This can lead, among other things, to social isolation. However, multidisciplinarity was largely perceived as a positive factor in teamwork. The importance of team-level and individual-level reflections are also emphasized.
 The results of this study will be taken into further discussion at HEIs to ensure that the students acquire the competences needed in virtual project teams.