Overview

Writing is an essential process in almost every sporting content around the world. During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, for example, the world understood the matches played and the images displayed, viewed on their television sets, mobile devices, tracked online or commented upon in the media. This workshop exposes participants to sports writing techniques in Arabic and English and develops in them the skills required in professional sports writing and editing.

Structure

The workshop consists of:

• Presentations,
• Examples reflecting cases of sports writing,
• Practice on the writing strategies adopted in sports content,
• A review of the sports writing techniques that ensure creative content outcomes.

Methodology

A set of exercises will be presented to the participants to enable them to evaluate their skills in the analysis and writing of texts in Arabic and English. Participants will have the opportunity to openly exchange the challenges they encounter in their writing/editing environments. Brainstorming questions will be raised during the workshop to ensure involving all participants.

Learning Objectives

1. Introduce participants to the creative ways that would develop in them the needed skills to sports writing and editing;
2. Increase professional awareness among participants such as intercultural competence, and social factors in sports contexts;
3. Develop sport terms search skills and train participants to use proper dictionaries and glossaries.

Learning Outcomes

1. Draft sports-related passages and assess them in terms of the criteria of naturalness;
2. Apply writing skills and knowledge to solve issues and problems in sports-related texts;
3. Constructively revise sports-related texts/translations completed by peers, based on international standards, to meet the requirements of naturalness (cohesion, coherence, genre, text type…);

Target Participants

This workshop is recommended for bilingual editors, journalists and copywriters in sport fields. Translators, beginners and professionals, are also encouraged to attend this workshop.

Workshop Leader

Nabeel Rashid is a translation reviser at HBKU’s TII. He also offers professional training to interns during their MA in translation studies. Before working at TII, Nabeel Rashid worked as an accredited court translator in Canada at the Ministry of Justice in Vancouver. He also worked as a registered health care interpreter in the Provincial Health Authority in Vancouver-Canada and provided translation services as a licensed community translator in the same city with human rights organizations such as the United Nations’ Vancouver Association for Survivors of Torture. Nabeel completed a postgraduate diploma in health care and community translation at British Columbia’s top career training hub, Vancouver Community College in 2012. He has two degrees in English, BA and MA from the University of Baghdad, where he worked as a lecturer at the Departments of English and translation. In 2003, he worked as a senior translator to the Secretary General of the Qatar Olympic Committee for years, and acted as a member of the Doha Asian Games Organizing Committee, in charge of the translation legacy in 2006. Nabeel Rashid was granted membership in translation and teaching societies such as the Society of Translators and Interpreters of British Columbia (Vancouver-Canada, 2009-2013), the American Translators Association (Virginia-USA, 2005-2009), and the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (Nova Scotia-Canada, 2015-Present).

Among the translated and revised books by Nabeel Rashid in sports fields are: Vancouver Olympic Games: IOC Gathering and OG Events – 2010, Lifesaving and Water Safety by ILSF in 2008, The Moment of Lifetime: A Documentary on Sports History in Qatar- 2007, Qatar Delegation Book to Macau Asian Games-2007, Qatar in Athens Olympic Games- 2004, as well as tens of translated articles published by Qatar Athletics Federation on biomechanics, nutrition and genetic engineering in sports fields.

Overview

Machine translation can be delivered to the end user as raw output, of course, and it can also be post-edited to varying degrees. There is much to be learned from a look at the rendering process that is executed when the machine stops working and the human user takes over. Certainly, a linguistic study of intervention in the MT product at different levels of refinement can help us to prioritize our strategies. By stratifying the types of corrections that are made, we can begin to orient post-editing policy so that today's MT systems are used more effectively, and we can also contribute to the improved performance of the systems of tomorrow. 

Post-editing starts when the machine stops working and the human translator takes over. There are so much to be learnt when looking at the human edits of an MT output. Studying such linguistic human interventions in the MT product at different strata can always lead to a better intervention strategy based on the text genre, degree of complexity and the target usage of the final output. In practice, time and cost constraints often lead to situations in which post-editing is curtailed to one degree or another. Depending on the purpose of the translation, nuancing may be traded off for expediency and economy, the most drastic barrier. In some cases, there is no post-editing at all, like the policy with translations for information only. Usually, however, even with informative translations there is some type of human intervention. 

In light of the new advancements in machine translation, end users can benefit from its raw output without any human intervention in the target text reproduced by the engine. However, this rule applies only to straightforward meanings and simple genres of text like e-mails and standard business correspondences. Other types of text genres that represent different degrees of complexity require a higher level of human intervention for the target output to reflect the coherence and cohesion degrees usually manifested in a well drafted human authored text. Human intervention by linguists in MT reproduced translations is recognized as post-editing. There are various levels of post-editing depending on the volume of edits the linguist or the post-editor is applying to the MT reproduced target text (TT). 
 
This workshop exposes participants to the practice of post-editing MT reproduced translations within a CAT tool environment.  As such, it is another chance to rediscover the recent developments of MT engines, how far they can help or deter the translation creative process. MTPE is a new trend in the translation industry, which involves a certain process that strikes a balance between the need for creativity in translation and the massive emergence of new translation technologies and text processing environments.

Workshop Structure 

The workshop consists of the following:

Stage 1: The workshop leader shall introduce the attendees to the main concepts of machine translation (MT), its definition, history and recent developments through an introductive presentation. The presentation will hover over different types of MT; RBMT, SMT, and NMT. The workshop shall then focus on post editing; explaining the concepts of heavy and light editing, and how to decide between MTPE and human translation at the beginning of any translation project. 
Stage 2: The workshop leader shall show through practical examples how MT engines, like Google Translate, can be deployed inside a CAT tool environment. The exercise should help attendees see the prose and cons of MT engines in general and the best methodologies to follow when working on an MTPE job in particular. 
Stage 3: The attendees shall work individually to answer some questions related to the background information already delivered during the presentation, and the integration examples. The target of the exercise is to help attendees sum up and link together the different components of the earlier information introduced by the leader during the presentation and the practical examples. 
Stage 4: The workshop leader shall discuss the right answers for the exercise questions with the attendees to make sure that they have managed to digest the main conceptual and practical aspect of using MT engine within a CAT tool environment.  

Participants

This workshop is recommended for translation students and translators who are looking forward to discovering how to use MT engines in a CAT tool environment. Knowledge of CAT tools basic principles and project parameters is preferential but it is not necessary. Whether you are a professional translator or a novice one, this workshop is a good opportunity for you to dig into the basic principles of translation technology in general and machine translation in particular.  Bilingual linguists in charge of language services can also benefit from this workshop. The maximum capacity is 25 participants. 

Workshop Leader

Wahba Youssef has a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham, a BA degree in International Business and Management from Bournemouth University in England, and another BA degree from Ain Shams University, Faculty of Alsun (languages) in Egypt. He has supported his linguistic study with a diploma in Information Systems Analysis and Design regulated by NCC Education Institution. He is also certified in Trados Studio, Trados MultiTerm Desktop, Post-editing and MemoQ Level PM.

Professionally, between 2001 and 2004, He worked in Egypt for Dar El Farouk Publishing House as an English-Arabic Translator where he translated so many books in different disciplines like information technology, medicine, finance, and investment. Then he moved to the leading translation agency in Egypt “Future Group” to work as a senior translator for 3 years. Since then, he focused on using different translation technology applications in translation with special emphasis on CAT tools such as SDL Trados, Wordfast Pro, and MemoQ. In 2007. He was offered a position by Ernst & Young to work as a financial translator and reviewer for 3 years in Kuwait. After that, he settled in London and started a new phase of his professional career; he spent seven years contracting with local and international clients in the UK to provide them with translation services using innovative technologies of translation.

Currently, his job title is a senior translation specialist at the Translation and Training Center (TTC). He is also responsible for the translation technology function at the center and works towards spreading the knowledge and deployment of such applications and project management techniques, in addition to building up and management of terminology databases for specialized translation tracks.