The Linguist

Chartered Institute of Linguists SPRING 2025 The Linguist 21 FEATURES trends in localisation and video game translation. This includes employment and training opportunities for our students. Essential CAT skills for linguists The first localisation module on our MA course focuses on the general CAT skills needed for localisation linguists, as well as post-editing machine translation (PEMT) and AI prompts. The second module builds on these skills, and frames practice with theories and concepts such as cultural specificity, functionalist theory, multimodality, censorship and transcreation. Both modules explore the localisation of digital interactive products, such as apps, video games and websites, as well as non- interactive products. While I am responsible for the creation of these modules, my colleague Dr Ya-Yun Chen designs and covers the teaching of AI and multimodality. For CAT skills, we focus on the needs of linguists, which involves translating the segments of a TM, adding terms to a TB and performing quality assurance (QA) checks. Instead of teaching these skills in a computer lab, the CAT tasks are given as short homework assignments – each taking around 30 minutes. For an inclusive approach for a variety of learners, I create short tutorial videos of myself completing these tasks with Panopto – an app that can record what I do on screen. Students can then follow along at their own pace on academic versions of the software at home or on the school computers. Once completed, the strengths and weaknesses of the software are discussed in class and contextualised with case studies and classroom-based tasks. Using this method, it is possible to cover the essential CAT tool skills a linguist needs within five rounds of homework. This prevents situations where less tech-savvy students become anxious and fall behind in a computer lab while more confident students race ahead. There are many CAT tools on the market but we have found that covering two or three is more than enough, as most have similar essential features for linguists: the TM, TB and QA functions. To test this, I ran a research project with five students trained on memoQ and Trados through an existing localisation module. 2 They were asked to localise app and video game texts using unfamiliar CAT tools, which they completed easily, proving that these skills are highly transferable between different CAT tools. As such, we now start students with memoQ, which is known for its user-friendly functionality, before moving on to Trados, which can provide more control and complexity, and then cloud-based CAT tools. Authentic, dynamic assignments Much can be done to enhance the authenticity of localisation practice within academia. In our case, we provide texts with the challenges of digital interactive products, such as app, video game and website texts, and non-digital products like advertisements. While students perform the role of linguists, the instructors simulate the tasks of project managers or, to some extent, localisation engineers. Instructors recreate the text of digital and non-digital products in Excel, which can be readily used in a CAT tool. This simulates typical localisation challenges, such as repetition, tags, spatial restrictions and various cultural challenges. Professionals often receive different levels of resources, such as a client brief, style guide, images of the product and access to the product. Where a partial localisation would include fewer resources, and text only, a full localisation would include full access to the product. It is vital that students know how to respond to these situations. © SHUTTERSTOCK

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