DataLitMT – Teaching Data Literacy in the Context of Machine Translation Literacy

DataLitMT – Teaching Data Literacy in the Context of Machine Translation Literacy Janic¸a Hackenbuchner Institute of Translation and Multilingual Communication TH K¨oln – University of Applied Sciences Cologne, Germany janica.hackenbuchner @th-koeln.de Ralph Kr¨uger Institute of Translation and Multilingual Communication TH K¨oln – University of Applied Sciences Cologne, Germany ralph.krueger@th-koeln.de Abstract This paper presents the DataLitMT project con- ducted at TH K¨oln – University of Applied Sci- ences. The project develops learning resources for teaching data literacy in its translation- specific form of professional machine transla- tion (MT) literacy to students of translation and specialised communication programmes at BA and MA levels. We discuss the need for data literacy teaching in a translation/specialised communication context, present the three the- oretical pillars of the project (consisting of a Professional MT Literacy Framework, an MT- specific data literacy framework and a compe- tence matrix derived from these frameworks) and give an overview of the learning resources developed as part of the project. 1 Introduction In recent years, the professional translation industry has seen accelerating processes of digitalisation – in the form of powerful new artificial intelligence algorithms in the field of natural language processing (NLP) and beyond (most recently, the transformer neural network architecture by Vaswani et al., 2017) – and datafica- tion – through accumulating large volumes of trans- lation data for training translation-specific NLP ap- plications such as neural machine translation (NMT) systems. This has led to a considerable increase in translation automation, mostly through the integration of NMT systems in translation production workflows (e.g., ELIS Research, 2022). Accordingly, an ade- quate degree of machine translation literacy (Bowker and Buitrago Ciro, 2019) is becoming more and more relevant for professional translators. In translation stud- ies, the concept of MT literacy has been applied both to professional translators working in MT-assisted trans- lation production networks, and to layperson audiences © 2023 The authors. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 licence, no derivative works, attribution, CC- BY-ND. (Kenny, 2022), who can use powerful MT technol- ogy as cloud-based “everyware” (Cronin, 2010) in their daily lives and should thus have a basic understand- ing of this technology. In order to delineate layperson MT literacy from MT literacy geared towards profes- sional translators, Kr¨uger and Hackenbuchner (2022) define professional MT literacy as “the full range of MT-related competences professional translators (and other language professionals) may require in order to participate successfully in the various phases of the MT- assisted professional translation process”. The concept of professional MT literacy was then further expanded in a Professional MT Literacy Framework, which we discuss in more detail in section 3.1. Parallel to the increasing relevance of MT literacy for professional and layperson audiences, adequate data literacy is also becoming more and more important, both at the overall level of modern datafied societies and at the level of specific professional fields (such as translation), where management and production pro- cesses have also become increasingly datafied in recent years (Misra, 2021). Against this background, data lit- eracy …

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