 and a point there on the right, the second one from the top, delivers precise results within the parameters of its developmental stage because machine translation is very much a work in progress. It's progressing, you know, mightily, but it's still in progress. So from our client's point of view, many institutions that they work for may view English translation as some kind of optional extra, you know, something to be added on later. And they may not even allocate a budget for it. There might be no money for it. Or they may not really understand the importance of specialist translation services and specialist editing services. And that leaves, you know, researchers in a difficult position. And some researchers in this position may, shall we say, misunderstand machine translation or free online translation services that may misunderstand these as some kind of a solution to their problem because, you know, their speed for the low cost, indeed, zero cost in many cases. But with machine translation, unfortunately, the quality of the output is almost always too low. In academic terms, it's too low to satisfy a general review panel. Reviewers are going to look at it and reject it immediately. And indeed, most machine translated work will not even reach the review stage if it will be rejected before that. You know, people don't want to, editors don't want to annoy or effects their reviewers who work on paid for this. However, as machine translation becomes more and more sophisticated, machine translation post editing, the MTP has become an increasingly viable option. And MTP basically, you know, is you get a machine translated template. And on top of that, you layer bilingual language checker. And then on top of that, you may layer, you know, whatever specialist editing services you wish or are available. And excuse me. So this MTP approach, it offers much of the speed and the cost effectiveness of pure machine translation. But, you know, the quality is better. You have machine translation, but with enhanced quality. However, of course, the thing is that a machine translated template, once it's in your hands, it presents bilingual checkers and it presents later editors with all the same issues, all the same problems that we've discussed above, you know, of terminology, of consistency, of subject matter expertise. None of these things disappear just because you've put your text through a machine translation. And indeed, machine translation also presents the same issues that you find with human translations in terms of language pairs. So you're working from this language into that language, there'll be characteristic issues and problems arising from machine translation in a kind of similar way to human translation, actually. And, you know, machine translation quite generally gives us issues of clarity, subject matter expertise, consistency, loss of nuance, all of these things. So it's certainly not a magic bullet. And, you know, in terms of academic translation, we're a long way away from machine translation ever challenging human translation entirely. Okay. And so it's not, it's not a magic bullet at all. Okay. Now, let me return you to Karasha. Thanks very much. And the next slide. Thanks. So thank you so much, John, for this enlightening part of the session. So in recent years, researchers have witnessed dramatic changes in the science communications landscape. And since English is predominantly used as a knowledge dissemination language, by high impact academic journals, researchers from ESL regions, though add to the knowledge, but fail at adding to the literature. Hence, translation comes to their resort for sharing knowledge, information, and ideas across the world. As publishing in non English journals will restrict researchers from imprinting their identity on the global map. Moreover, publishing in languages other than English hampers the academic diversity. Furthermore, several peer reviewed non English scholarly journals are excluded from prestigious journal indexes. Translating academic literature goes above and beyond publication barriers and bridges cultural gaps amongst different regions and helps in preserving literature for advancing research in the future. Of academic translations, it can be broadly classified into four types. First being the literary, literary, second being professional, third being technical, and fourth being administrative. The literary type of translation deals with translations of poems, plays, etc. It involves comprehensive and clear translation of the context, sound and expressions of the source text. Next is professional translations, which includes translation of medical or legal documents and requires the translator to have subject matter expertise. Then is the technical translations, which includes translation of engineering documents, instruction manuals, etc. Along with subject expertise and technical knowledge, the translator must also be careful with the numeric data in terms of translating technical documents. Lastly, the administrative translations are also termed as the subtype of professional translations, which includes translation of management texts and documents. As we speak of the important role that translation plays in academia, we must understand the challenges faced during the process. There are eight most common challenges in academic translations as you all must be aware of. First being the failure of understanding the context, translating cultural specific expressions, lexical semantic problems, formal standard language, translating idioms, rhetorical questions, sarcasm, etc. Compound word translations, incorrect usage of keywords, and the most important one is grammar and punctuation errors. First challenge that we talk about today is faced by translation, which is not being able to comprehend the source text. This is the primary need to be able to translate any document. If you cannot understand what's written in the source text, you'll not be able to translate it to the target language. Hence comprehension of the source text and understanding it to the T is very important. Other challenge arises while translating cultural specific expressions as cultural diversity is often reflected in writings by ESL authors. Next challenge in academic translations is lexical semantic problems. This is when there's difficulty in understanding instructions or conversations with words that may have two different meanings such as homophones. Then comes the challenge of translating source text to English as the target language whilst maintaining the target languages standard linguistic rules. Coming to the other four set of challenges faced in academic translations, another challenge is of translating region specific idioms, expressions, sarcastic statements, or rhetorical questions from source text to English. Such expressions must be translated carefully without changing their intent or meaning. Following this is the translation challenge of translating compound words. For example, the word fireman is made up of two words fire and man which have different meanings individually and have a completely different meaning as a compound word. Another major challenge while translating is usage of incorrect keywords as we know the keywords volume may differ in each region. Therefore word-for-word translation may not deliver exact keywords intensity or volume to effectively work on the global platform. Finally, another crucial aspect is the difficulty in abiding by grammar and punctuation rules of the English language whilst conveying contextual meaning of the original language. So as now we've acknowledged the challenges faced in academic translations, we must know how to avoid them to create error-free translated documents and manuscripts. Here I shall be discussing a few tips and tricks to use in order to overcome these challenges. The first challenge is the accurate comprehension of source text. To deal with the challenge of failing to understand the source text, a translator must firstly gain proficiency in the source text language. Furthermore, they must ensure factual correctness of the source text by referring the bibliography to avoid misinterpretation and consequently avoid mistranslation. In addition, the translator must analyze the source text and alter it by adding, deleting or rearranging words and ideas to effectively communicate in the English language. Lastly, clarify your doubts if you have any and do not translate in your case of assumption in terms of gray areas. To overcome the challenge of translating culture-specific expressions, a translator must firstly display a complete command over both the source and the target language in terms of phrasing the sentences clearly, understanding the syntax, that is how words and morphemes which are smaller sentences combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences and the etymology, that is the origin of certain words. Secondly, the translator must avoid word-for-word translations of region-specific ideas or expressions and finally they must use local terms to accurately adapt the translated text to targeted culture. Now, coming to the other problem is dealing with lexical semantic problems. While dealing with lexical semantic problems, a translator must begin with referring to dictionaries, glossaries, subject experts, etc. to get a clear understanding of used words. Furthermore, exact meaning of sentences must be decoded to avoid using words in wrong content. Use descriptive words wherever applicable. More importantly, build a semantic map between words so that there is an interconnection and you are aware of the interconnection between the words that are related to specific themes and concepts. Here comes the major challenge which is faced in academic translation, is of maintaining the formal standards of the target language. The challenges faced here are related to translating in either British or English language, that is the American English language, and other issues such as capitalization, spacing, contractions, typographical errors, etc. While translating from source text to English language, a translator must also be careful whether the text is to be translated in British English or American English. For instance, as we can see on the slide today, the use of serial commas in the British sentence is not incorporated while it is in the American sentence in the statement, absorbance spectra 108914101611, 2918 and 3226 centimeters inverse. However, in the American sentences, we see that there is an incorporation of a serial comma between the digit 2918 and the term and 3226 centimeters inverse. Likewise, there is another difference is between the spellings used by British English and the American English. In the example given on our slide, the typical thermal decomposition behavior and the one given in the American sentence style, the typical thermal decomposition behavior, we can see that the spelling of behavior rather both correct are different in both ways. Hence, we must understand that terms that are used in both the languages in both the terms are similar yet not different from what the standards apply. In addition, maintaining capitalization rules, for instance, laparoscopic versus open hepatotomy approach for regional hepatolithiasis. However, in the correct sentence, you would see that the term regional hepatolithiasis is not written in capital into the next problem is maintaining spacing issues. The first example that you may see is when the frequencies are mentioned, that is, the frequency of electric power is 50 by 60 hertz. And in the correct sentence, you may see that there is a difference between a unit of frequency and the quantity that is given. Likewise, we need to understand that such spacing issues are also not carried forward. Another challenge is of maintaining contractions. As you can see in the incorrect sentence, as we have given in the example here, however, the findings weren't consistent with previous findings. Here, we understand that in academic writing, it is always better to be as unambiguous as we can. Therefore, we write the correct sentence as, however, the findings were not consistent with previous findings. Going forward, I would also like to mention the typographical errors mentioned here. Typographical errors are not just common in translation, but also while writing or creating new content. Thus, as you can see on the screen, both the examples of incorrect and correct sentences, I would like to take up the second example, that is, the conedia resting in the alveoli begin to grow and germinate, where germinate does not make any sense. However, the correct formation is the conedia resting in the alveoli begin to grow and germinate. Going forward, another major challenge is deciphering regional idioms, sarcastic statements, expressions or rhetorical questions, which cannot be translated by the literal definitions of the words. Hence, a translator must find an equivalent idiom or expression in English language without hampering the meaning or intent of the source text. If this is not possible, as a resort, a translator must write an idiom in the target language with different words or sentences structured and completed with a short explanation. Speaking of translating compound words, ensure that the overall meaning of the compound word is retained and that it is translated to its literal meaning. verbatim of such words is not acceptable while translating. As we see here on the screen, the word butterfly is neither a fly nor a butter, though is made of two different words, butter and a fly. Another challenge is of using globally relevant keywords. As we know, regional keywords may not be effective in English and some terms used in regional languages may be missing in the target language, a translator must identify keywords for the manuscripts or documents based on their volume on the global platform. Here, the literal translations of keywords may not be as impactful as it may be for the specific region. Moving forward to one of the most important challenges faced by translators are following the grammar rules. The challenge of abiding by the grammar rules of the English language is very critical. Given the trickiness of it, English grammar rules must be maintained and followed scrupulously. Learn to adopt deductive method whilst not skipping any relevant and important information and convey the exact meaning of the source text. Furthermore, avoid exaggeration and emphasize on the accuracy. However, you would notice that in case of exaggerating, there is a chance of you kind of misquoting or misleading the reader. Your best resort would be to use one of the most reliable online grammar checker tools which is Trinka AI. As we all have heard a comma can kill a man. Another challenge is following punctuation rules carefully. It is a crucial aspect that needs sincere attention while translating. Some key points to remember while using some of these regularly used punctuation marks are comma use it to create a pause or to separate ideas or listed content in a sentence. Semicolon use it to create a break between interconnected ideas colon use it to connect two sentences thematically. Full stop. It is also called as a period which is used to denote that the sentence has ended and lastly is apostrophe which is used to indicate ownership or missing letters or numbers. Finally, we speak of current usage of transition words and phrases. To emphasize a contrast use words such as however nevertheless although even though yet despite in spite of in contrast in comparison, while whereas on the other hand on the contrary to indicate cause for a reason use words such as for because since as to compare data use words such as similarly likewise similar to both and and lastly to indicate results or deliver inferences use words such as as a result as a consequence of therefore does consequently hence going to so as we've understood the tricks and tips to overcome these common challenges in academic translation my colleague and co-presenter John will take you through some relevant examples from original manuscript assignments. Okay, thanks very much because thanks indeed now we're going to take a look at some translations from various language pairs but from basically into English from from various source languages and I won't detain you too long with them we'll just pick out you know one or two from each but please take a moment and just read through these edits of translations and these edits are taken care of mainly of translation issues only you know we're not we're not even looking at a grammar stuff like that in general so this is from yeah Japanese I'm sorry can we go back to the Japanese one minute sorry thanks now this text this translation has a couple of pretty critical have a couple of pretty critical issues which I like to think of as reflexive errors that were that were edited you know in the process and I'm thinking there of you know where you're sitting as a translator and you can see the text but your brain tells you your mind tells you something of it different and you know you think your mind knows better but it doesn't I hope you can see this reasonably well in yeah line two in the first paragraph at the start of July 2019 is actually at the end of July 2019 correctly and it's a kind of you know reflexive error that you just jump to conclusion and that's why it's so important to go back and every paragraph you know look again check again these are you know constant hazards for human translators this kind of a reflexive thing one more just there on line five paragraph one the the Tokyo area should have been the Tokai area it's another reflexive mistake just jumping to a conclusion I presume the translator lives in Tokyo and is just so used to seeing that character then it's east it's Tokyo so so these are constant hazards they produce gross errors and serious problems that we can't do unless we you know are very vigilant on ourselves okay thanks so much next one thank you if you are the Chinese example thank you um we'll just pick out one point here the literature of publishing language was limited to English is that down on there's yeah line line six and seven this was a this is a phrase skip by the translator corrected in the in the in the checking this kind of skip again is a constant hazard for the human translator we must be always vigilant about it but again this is these are issues before we even come to academic translation as such thanks the next one if you would thank you the Korean yes um so there's quite a lot of discussion in this paper on the place name this is a study set in a place called Goyang in Korea which would be known in Korean as Goyangchi um uh and we would have the same thing in Japanese and Chinese as well um and so we have an issue of what we call verity in house it would be like you know almost like localization what what what do we do with this um the apparently the official name of this place is Goyangchi uh that's part of the Korean but that's not really going to to fly with a general of our general English leadership this isn't Korean studies as such is it so um the translator um amended this to city of Goyang uh and yet however uh when we when we go online when we go on to the the city's website and so on we we see that we find the preferred English phrasing they're not the official name but the preferred English phrasing is Goyang city not city of Goyang and uh that's one you know one of the kind of details that we can help our clients with in terms of credibility thank you yeah and we'll take the Spanish one last Louis thanks so much um so about uh your heritage assets heritage industry and we're coming in from a language that's you know much closer to to English and and yet we can see let me pick out one thing where is it um your second paragraph end of the first line and second line so the excuse me the translator has chosen the phrase uh material and immaterial heritage looks fine right it looks fine to me until we realize that the normal way um the standard way that this concept is discussed in English uh academia is you know tangible and a tangible heritage it's a small difference but it's a big difference in subject matter expertise and you know in the client's credibility and their membership of of a language community that will afford them with you know trust and credibility so that was a quite I think a quite crucial look smaller quite a crucial edit in helping the uh our client okay thank you so much uh but we'll we'll wrap up this part with uh some best practice pointers um quite pragmatic um that's we discussed before in in uh talking about client expectations um so when a job comes into you as a translator that you clearly establish the academic discipline and field there will be a subject allocation with email for example but you know with your own eyes you're the best person to to judge as well um going down establish your suitability for the assignment uh okay this is ballpark for me I I know this is a subject area I belong to this language community but are there any uh red flags uh maybe I should give this to someone else with a bit more expertise in this particular part uh of this field that I belong to so know your limits it's it's good to to do that and be cautious in accepting assignments uh going down clearly establish the source target key terminology you you establish it in in the original text and you nail it down in in the um target text English text whatever if you're working on a platform like men's source it'll it'll help do it automatically if you're working in word you can do it mechanically by you know find and replace um but it should be there very clearly in your mind and very consistently throughout the text you know then you can go go and do the rest of the text and translate it around that so ensure that the key key terminology is consistently in place yeah thanks uh check for emissions etc rolling um reflexive errors um skips uh clarity issues all of this you know is best done I think on a rolling basis on a paragraph basis when you reach the end of the assignment your your mind is just too tired really to to go back the way through it all again so you know just when you finish a paragraph take a deep breath scan through it again best way um very important point flag all and starting points for a project manager's quality team editor's client okay flag them don't try to to conceal them that's the most helpful thing for us all flag quoted material um either way they'll be sourcing existing translations that needs to be marked or directly back translated that needs to be flagged and finally special attention must be paid to keywords footnotes and references all of which are full of potential pitfalls and that's it thank you very much thank you john for sharing such useful information we hope our attendees have certainly gained a lot of critical information from this session we are now open to taking questions we request all the attendees to kindly send us their queries using the questions tab in the control panel alongside do we have one question in here yes please don't go ahead hang on i'm not seeing it do you mind would you mind reading it sorry which one are you referring to we've got a handful okay okay can you please tell us some english translation examples um for for the for the points i was discussing earlier uh in in the webinar um yeah sure uh if that's if that's what your your intended question is um we were thinking about uh or mentioning rather um your terminology that is inconsistent and and dated so for example you might be looking at as i was a study um well an abstract on on nursing studies where the student nurses at the beginning of the abstract are uh being asked to make entries in a thing called a student diary and at the end of the abstract they're filling out a thing called a student journal and uh so that that's in the source text so as a translator i will want to know you know is a student journal a student diary are they the same document are they something different if they're different you know what is the difference uh and so i will be um you know flagging that probably for the client in this case because it's coming from from the source um um dated terminology it's just one just an example that struck me recently was that um academic japanese uh quite commonly and quite casually uh uses the phrase um toio toio law and this comes out in english as the orient or oriental and um uh i can imagine that um oriental might work in the context of talking about you know oriental medicine the traditional medicines of japan korea china um but once you bring it over into the humanities uh the the term oriental is highly uh controversial it's it's gotten very negative connotations ever since you know uh edwards side in in the early 80s talking about orientalism as uh as a um you know the west of viewing other cultures as other and in a manipulative way indeed so that kind of uh um terminology you know maybe problematic going from one language to another though it doesn't you know cause an issue within the source language thanks yes um hi john there is another query directed to you yeah that's uh if the source paper is written badly to what degree should the translator adjust the translation um you know we're not we are i think free to to do a little bit of of paraphrasing to make something smoother um but if there are serious questions about what does the author mean uh what are they really trying to say here and you know i just can't understand what they're trying to say well that definitely should be um flagged it should be marked it should be brought to the attention of people going up the uh checking chain editing chain and finally if necessary to to the client you know um so we should be i think uh quite activists are quite ready to flag issues that are in the original yeah so i'm getting a very i don't know why but my question box is is really really narrow so sorry karsh if you can no no problem select anything thanks yes definitely okay and there is another question that is uh scientific issues have many things in common in writing stage methods and discussion have similarities with other papers and this make plagiarism problem how to solve this while translating um yeah i'm not sure that this is uh a translation issue is such i think it's more of an editing issue would you agree rukasha but uh certainly in the case of any you know quoted material appearing in in a paper you know that needs to be flagged you know um i mentioned we we often have issues of uh of for example japanese papers quoting other language material as translated in japanese what are we to do with this it certainly needs to be flagged rukasha do you have any thoughts on this yeah i agree to that the plagiarism check needs to be done at the source text itself and while the author is writing the article himself or herself uh there's another question that has brought my attention is if some question cannot be asked in a specific culture could that be left out if you are translating a questionnaire um i would have to see the you know particular context in the particular text too but generally speaking uh a questionnaire the ones that the ones that come to my mind tend to be things like uh you know psychological questions etc etc you're translating perhaps quite a lot from english into into another language actually in this case um i think that if you have an issue like that that is a good example of something that you flag to the client because if the client isn't aware of this issue then it's something they should be aware of um and i don't think it's our job as as translators to to um you know make up for for any lack of understanding that they have you know of contextual awareness shall we say that they have but it certainly is our job as translators and you know going down the line to uh to let the um client know that that there's an issue there so we take the last question for today as we have it uh there's laura asking if uh companies or uh companies that take up translation assignments are aware of the time constraints that translators face and they do not really have time to study in depth the source text so are companies aware and work on that aspect with their clients um you know in in my experience as a freelancer working for myself in the past very commonly know you know very commonly companies will come to you in a panic going we need this you know yesterday um and with uh with your latest you know we we have a much uh well developed structure uh through project managing through through client services where a project will come to us you know flagged as you know normal or or express or super express and so um that's taken into consideration on the project management end but for you as a translator if you're if you're when you when you accept a project um you're taking responsibility for that project you know um and if you feel that you you know this isn't exactly your area and that you know you won't really have time to read around as much as you should then that's one of the red flags I talked about and you know am I suitable for this project and that would be kind of a red flag for you to to decline the project it doesn't um you know it doesn't impact you negatively if you turn the project down it shows us that you're exercising discretion in fact as a translator you know so there are times when you might feel this one's not for me you know even though as a freelancer you want the job of course but not this time around yeah thanks agree so that's all the questions that we had so we would once again like to thank all the attendees for joining the webinar please find the exclusive code to get a discount on our translation services in the chat box we would also request you all to please fill the feedback survey displayed after you leave the webinar your participation will allow us to evaluate the effectiveness of our webinar have a good day thanks for asking thank you