Kent State University’s Institute for Applied Linguistics will hold its fifth annual Gregory M. Shreve Lecture Series in Translation Studies on Wednesday, Oct. 22, at 3:30 p.m. in the Moulton Hall Ballroom. The event is free and open to the public and refreshments will be provided.
This year’s lecture will feature Sharon O’Brien, director of the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies in Dublin, Ireland. The lecture is titled “Machine Translation: Bust or Boom for Professional Translation,” focusing on the use of software to translate speech or text from one language to another.
“The lecture will be focused on issues in machine translation,” said Françoise Massardier-Kenney, director of Kent State’s Institute for Applied Linguistics. “O’Brien will talk about its advantages and the problems it has created, and how those problems can be handled.”
Massardier-Kenney described O’Brien as a world expert on the topic.
O’Brien conducts research focused on the interaction between translators and technology (including translation memory and machine translation), post-editing and cognitive aspects of translation among other topics. Massardier-Kenney said O’Brien was chosen for this year’s lecture because of her expertise.
“Every year, we alternate between a lecture on humanistic approaches and on empirical methods in translation studies,” Massardier-Kenney said. “O’Brien is one of the leading experts on empirical methods, and I think she will appeal to those interested in global communication.”
In addition to her research, O’Brien has authored and edited Cognitive Explorations of Translation (2011), Research Methodologies in Translation Studies (2013) and Post-editing of Machine Translation: Processes and Applications (2014).
For more information about Kent State’s Institute of Applied Linguistics, visit http://appling.kent.edu.