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Workshops: “Lexytrad’s technologies for translation and interpreting: the cases of VIP, gApp and Paidiom” (dr Carlos Manuel Hidalgo Ternero)

In this seminar, we present three translation and interpreting technologies developed by Lexytrad research team (University of Malaga, Spain): VIP, gApp and Paidiom. VIP (Corpas Pastor, 2021), the first integrated system specifically designed to meet the needs and requirements of interpreters, aims at contributing to the improvement of the working environment for professional interpreters, as well as providing support for trainee interpreters. The development of the VIP project has led to the conclusion that it is possible to provide interpreters with a complete working environment that meets all their needs and improves the quality of their work. To this end, VIP includes different modules especially adapted to the interpreters’ needs: semi-automatic corpus compilation, glossary management, name entity recognition, note-taking, interpreting-training exercises, inter alia.

gApp is a text-preprocessing system designed for automatically detecting and converting discontinuous multiword expressions (MWEs) into their continuous forms in order to improve the performance of current neural machine translation (NMT) systems (see Hidalgo-Ternero, 2021 and 2023; Hidalgo-Ternero & Corpas Pastor, 2020, 2023a & 2023b, among others). To test its effectiveness, several experiments with different NMT systems (DeepL, Google Translate and ModernMT, among others) and in different language directionalities ES/FR/IT>EN/DE/ES/FR/IT/PT/ZH) have been carried out so as to verify to what extent gApp can enhance the performance of NMT systems under the challenge of phraseological discontinuity. Subsequently, an upgraded algorithm, called Paidiom, was designed, which is able not only to automatically detect and convert discontinuous multiword expressions (MWEs) into their continuous forms (analogously to gApp) but also to translemmatise them, i.e., to directly convert MWEs into their target text equivalents in order to improve NMT. The promising results yielded both by gApp and Paidiom will shed some light on new
avenues for enhancing MWE-aware NMT systems.

References:

Corpas Pastor, Gloria, «Technology Solutions for Interpreters: The VIP System», Hermēneus. Revista de Traducción e Interpretación, 23 (2021): 91-123. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24197/her.23.2021.91-123

Carlos Manuel Hidalgo Ternero holds a PhD in Linguistics, Literature and Translation with International Mention from the University of Malaga, with a grade of Outstanding Cum Laude. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language and Other Modern Languages from the University of Seville, as well as a Master’s Degree in Teaching Secondary Education, Vocational Training and Language Teaching, from the University of Malaga. As a researcher, he is the author of more than 15 scientific contributions published in English and Spanish in both national (MONTI Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación or CLINA Revista Interdisciplinaria de Traducción, Interpretación y Comunicación Intercultural) and foreign journals (Yearbook of Phraseology or Études Romanes de Brno), as well as in the form of book
chapters in collective works published by SPI first quartile publishers such as Peter Lang, Springer, John Benjamins Publishing Company or Comares, among others. He is also an organising member of the International Conference ‘Computational and Corpus-based Phraseology’ (EUROPHRAS 2019 and EUROPHRAS 2022, where he has presented two papers in each). His two main lines of research are corpus linguistics and computational phraseology applied to translation in which, more specifically, he has specialised in the preprocessing of multiword expressions to improve neural machine translation systems. As a result of this research, he designed the gApp system, registered by the University of Malaga (intellectual property registration) in Safe Creative (information available at the following link.

CfP: Humour and Healing. One Step Ahead

CfP: Humour and Healing. One Step Ahead
(Tentative title)

Kamelia Talebian Sedehi  
Sapienza University of Rome 
kamelia.talebiansedehi@uniroma1.it

Margherita Dore 
Sapienza University of Rome 
margherita.dore@uniroma1.it

Garrick notes that “the use of humor appears to be a beneficial addition to the treatment of trauma survivors” (2006, 170). Trauma has been discussed within various literary works and at times humour has been used to elaborate on traumatic situations. This happens because humour can give the authors the chance to criticize the various types of abuses and plights in non-confrontational ways. Since, for some people, talking about bad experiences and criticizing their victimizers directly would be considered unethical, authors use humour to mitigate the potential disapproval coming from their community while talking about taboo subjects such as sexual abuse and incest. Moreover, authors may employ humour to depict how the community survived hardships, conveying resistance through laughter. Finally, humuour can help to create group cohesion among those who experienced the same situations and exclude people who never underwent extreme conditions.  

This call for papers intends to bring together contributions focusing on the many ways humour is used in literary and non-literary works to deal with experiences of abuse, persecution, death and trauma and as a means for healing. According to Adams (1993, 66), fun “is humor in action” which is necessary while forgetting, forgiving, and putting aside worries. Humour is not only used to mitigate the effect of manmade disasters but also in occasions when natural disasters such as floods, fires, and hurricanes happen (Fry 2000, 1). People use humour to make sense out of nonsensical situations. It should however be noticed that humour “does not minimize the significance of a terrible event. But it does allow the survivor to see how they can cope and thrive in their environment” (Garrick 2006, 169). Humour can have therapeutic effect as in support groups, in which trauma survivors can deploy humour to tackle their problems and move toward the healing process (Curtis 2001, 7). Besides, humour can be employed to reinforce a stance on the topic of social justice. Some examples of this sense can be discussions revolving residential schools in Canada, the loss of lands experienced by indigenous people and the Holocaust discussed within the Jewish community, as well as war and loss of land experienced by Armenians, etc.  

In light of the foregoing, this volume aims to expand the existing literature on the concept of humour as healing, by seeking for contributors from a range of different fields. It seeks to gather proposal exploring literary and non-literary texts (including but not limited to feature films and stand-up comedy) that exploit the power of humour as a therapeutic tool in different contexts.  

We call for contributions engaging with key questions that include, but are not limited to:  

– Armenian culture 
– Jewish culture 
– Indigenous culture  
– Any other context and situation in which suffering was too much to handle or to speak out loud and humor was preferred related, but not limited to the following fields of study: literary studies, translation studies, film studies, cultural studies, audio-visual studies.

The papers will be subject to double blind peer-review. Interested contributors should send their proposals to both Kamelia Talebian Sedehi (kamelia.talebiansedehi@uniroma1.it) and Margherita Dore (margherita.dore@uniroma1.it).  

Timeline  

Deadline: 30/11/2023 – Abstracts (300 words) 
Notification of acceptance: 30/12/2023 
End of May 2024 – Submission of full chapters (up to 7,500 words, including abstract, and references) 
End of July 2024 – Feedback from editors/external readers 
End of October 2024 – Final manuscripts 
Estimated publication date: February 2025 

References: 

Adams, P. (1993). Gesundheit! Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press. 
Curtis, A. M. (2001). Schtick happens: The Power of humor, Part II. Trauma Lines Newsletter, 7-8. 
Fry, W.F (2000). Humor and synergy. Humor and Health Journal, 9 (3), 1-3. 
Garrick, J. (2006). The Humor of Trauma Survivors: Its Application in a Therapeutic Milie. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 12 (1, 2). 

3HRP – Thank you for joining us!

✨Dear All!✨

Thank you once again for joining us on the 2nd and 3rd of October for the 3rd Humor Research Project. What a blast! If you are looking for some photos to remind you how, thanks to you all, great the conference was, visit our Facebook page 🫶

See you in the future! 🔮

Odszedł od nas prof. Michał Głowiński

Z ogromnym smutkiem przyjęliśmy wiadomość, która doszła do nas wczoraj wieczorem. Odszedł od nas prof. Michał Głowiński, znakomity polski literaturoznawca i analityk dyskursu. Jako uczony, przekazywał nam wiedzę i miłość do literatury w sposób niezwykle inspirujący, a jego prace badawcze stanowią trwały wkład w polskie literaturoznawstwo. My jednak najbardziej ceniliśmy go za to, że jak nikt inny Pan Profesor potrafił analizować polski dyskurs polityczny i uczył nas dostrzegać strukturalne i funkcjonalne podobieństwa języka propagandy z ciemnych dekad PRL-u i tego używanego obecnie. Wielki umysł, wielka strata.

Więcej o działalności i życiu Pana Profesora można przeczytać na stronie Biblioteki Narodowej.