Teaching MT - an Indian pespective

Teaching MT - An Indian Perspective Sivaji Bandyopadhyay Computer Science & Engineering Department Jadavpur University Kolkata, INDIA. sivaj i_ju@vsnl .com Abstract The different factors that affect the level of teaching of machine translation, both as a formal courseware and in an informal manner to students doing developmental and research projects can be identified as the background of the student, the state of machine translation research in the country, the language pattern followed in the education system and the motivation for the students in terms of higher studies and the development of the software industry in the multilingual setting. The paper mainly focuses on the teaching of machine translation in an Indian perspective that gives emphasis on teaching the subject to the students of Computer Science and Engineering. 1 Introduction Machine translation has become a key technology in present-day globalized communications scene, a truly cross- disciplinary technology that should be used with a certain level of understanding. Many universities and academic institutions now teach courses on machine translation, both at graduate and undergraduate level. There are Universities and academic institutions where students carry out doctoral, graduate or undergraduate research and development works in the area of machine translation. These students may not have any formal courseware on machine translation but they are taught the subject by their teachers, albeit informally. Teaching is aimed at trainee translators and students of translation studies, at computational linguistics or computer science students, or even at learners of a foreign language. MT is of interest also to students involved with information technologies in a multilingual setting (electronic commerce, localization, multilingual documentation, cross- language information retrieval, etc.). The cross-disciplinary nature of machine translation poses important challenges to instructors, whether teaching about linguistics and translation to computer science and engineering students or vice versa, while the existence of widespread preconceptions, fears, and expectations about MT also play a role. On the other hand, with the growth in the internet, commercial MT systems are more readily available than ever, and, if appropriately used, may be very beneficial for education. The world wide web may also be seen as the medium used for teaching, as it may naturally integrate real MT systems as part of the learning environment. 2 Different factors that affect teaching Machine Translation The different factors that affect the level of teaching of machine translation, both as a formal courseware and in an informal manner to students doing developmental and research projects can be identified as the background of the student, the state of machine translation research in the country, the language pattern followed in the education system, and the motivation for the students in terms of higher studies and the development of the software industry in the multilingual setting. 13 There is a considerable literature on MT, translation software and Language Engineering in general, but only a small proportion of that literature relates to the teaching of MT and most of it is very recent. Again, that literature is based on the experiences of teaching the …

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