The purpose of this study is to explore the strategies and attitudes of students towards translation in the context of language learning. The informants come from two different classes at an Upper Secondary vocational program. The study was born from the backdrop of discussions among some English teachers representing different theories on translation and language learning, meeting students endeavoring in language learning beyond the confinement of the classroom and personal experiences of translation in language learning. The curriculum and course plan for English at the vocational program emphasize two things of particular interest to our study; integration of the program outcomes and vocational language into the English course - so called meshed learning – and student awareness of their own learning processes. A background is presented of different contrasting methods in translation and language learning that is relevant to our discussion. However, focus is given to contemporary research on reforms within the Comparative Theory, as expressed in Translation in Language and Teaching (TILT), Contrastive Analysis and “The Third Space”. The results of the students’ reflections are presented as attempts to translate two different texts; one lyric and one technical vocational text. The results show a pragmatic attitude among the students toward tools like dictionaries or Google Translate, but also a critical awareness about their use and limits. They appear to prefer the use of first language to the target language when discussing the correct translation as they sought accuracy over meaning. Translation for them was a natural and problem-solving event worth a rightful place in language teaching.

No description available.

In the information era of the 21st century, information is communicated through various ways or media. These include electronic media, print media for example publications, exhibitions and open days and face-to -face interaction, for example with consultants. The current situation is that the existing distribution of information through the different media is not successfully integrated causing the isolation of entities that distribute and communicate information. The solution proposed in this paper is to design an information hub where information is communicated through various media. The interior design should support and be conducive for an effective and integrated model for the communication of information. In addition to this, the problem of the identity crisis of the discipline of Interior Architecture within the Built Environment Profession will be addressed. Public perception still is that Interior Architecture cannot stand firm in its responsibilities and identity. Interior Architecture therefore must in itself acknowledge and celebrate its legitimacy before pursuing greater recognition and formal acknowledgement. “Interior Architecture is an essential need and it is important” (Caan, 2007:53) Interior Architecture occupies and inhabits a space, which does not need to be fully enclosed but should rather reflect the condition of control over the space. This reveals the opportunity of exclusion as much as it reveals the ability of inclusion. The line between the two bodies carries an important weight and brings the argument back to the division of space. This paper argues that the line itself represents more than a division of space, for the line holds in it the opportunity of being part of either space. This line becomes an issue of ‘betweeness’ which should be exposed to reveal the grey area that exist between Interior Architecture and Architecture. / Dissertation (MInt(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Architecture / unrestricted

Google Translate helps people around the world to translate from one language to another, and translates about 100 billion words every day. The translation is used for all types of information, for essays, on websites, social media or for every day communication. Companies and organizations can reach people all over the world by offering machine translation on their websites. This means that companies and organizations can spread their messages and their products to a much larger group of people. However, in order for the information to be correct, there must be an availability regardless of language. It is therefore interesting to find out if the usefulness of Google Translate as machine translation can affect the availability of websites. The purpose of the study is to find out if Google Translate as machine translation can affect a website's usefulness in translating the information provided by the website. The purpose of the study is limited by merely examining in what ways the usability and availability of the information "About Us" on government and municipal websites is affected by Google Translate as machine translation. The method used in the study is usability tests where a think aloud observation was conducted with study participants who tested the websites using task scenarios. The result of our study showed that Google Translate is useful as machine translation on websites. In conclusion, however, we discussed whether the results could have been affected due to the delimitations we made, such as language selection, websites and method.

The aim of this qualitative study is to explore two high school level Swedish as a Second Language (SVA) and two Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) teachers’ approach to their adult students’ use of machine translation in the classroom. The study also aims to explore the teachers’ approach to whether they incorporate machine translation into their teachings. The study is conducted through qualitative interviews of a total of four teachers, and the results show that the SVA-teachers did not experience that their students use machine-translation, whilst the SFI-teachers did. This is due to the linguistic level that their students are at, respectively. Furthermore, the results show that the SVA-teachers did not implement the usage of machine translation into their teachings, apart from when the students are performing digital exams and have access to a website that provides definitions (Swedish-Swedish), but also translations of single words. The SFI-teachers, on the other hand, did implement the usage through exercises that require students to translate words into their first language. All teachers did question the intention of the usage and the commonly known shortcomings of such systems.

This qualitative study aims to explore the ways in which digital dictionaries andmachine translation are being used to help students learning Swedish as a secondlanguage (L2). The study focuses on teacher’s reasoning for the use of these tools andthe problems they face in trying to implement the guidelines specified around the useof such tools in the Swedish curriculum. Through interviews with teachers of Swedishas a second language, and phenomenographic analysis, the study shows that mostteachers use these tools as a lexical aid rather than a steppingstone to implementingstrategies which facilitate the symbiotic uses of both the students first and secondlanguages in their linguistic development. This due to the controversial issue of usingmachine translation as a pedagogical tool in second language acquisition. Many of theteachers mentioned the shortcomings of both the tools and their own ability to usethem as a problem in implementing these tools. The teachers also had difficultiesdeciding which resources would be best in helping their students develop theirlanguage skills in the target language. Possible solutions for this problem would befurther training for teachers in the uses of machine translation and in which strategiesto teach their students to make didactic use of translation tools like Google Translate.

In this thesis we examine singularities of surfaces and affine Schubert varieties in the affine Grassmannian $mathcal{G}/mathcal{P}$ of type $A^{(1)}$, by considering the action of a particular torus $widehat{T}$ on $mathcal{G}/mathcal{P}$. Let $Sigma$ be an irreducible $widehat{T}$-stable surface in $mathcal{G}/mathcal{P}$ and let $u$ be an attractive $widehat{T}$-fixed point with $widehat{T}$-stable affine neighborhood $Sigma_u$. We give a description of the $widehat{T}$-weights of the tangent space $T_u(Sigma)$ of $Sigma$ at $u$, give some conditions under which $Sigma$ is nonsingular at $u$, and provide some explicit criteria for $Sigma_u$ to be normal in terms of the weights of $T_u(Sigma)$. We will also prove a conjecture regarding the singular locus of an affine Schubert variety in $mathcal{G}/mathcal{P}$. / Mathematics

No description available.

The English translation of the Swedish compound fönsterbräda into windowsill, or the proper noun Danmark into Denmark makes perfect sense. But how about the compound fossilbränslefri as simply fossil fuel or the name Mälaren as Lake?  All four of these translations have been produced with the help of automatic machine translation. The aim of this paper is to present the expanding field of application of machine translation and some issues related to this type of translation. More specifically, the study has looked at Google Translate as one of the most commonly used machine translation systems online, and how it responds to the two linguistic categories that were selected for this small study: compound nouns and proper nouns. Besides analyzing these categories, two different text types were chosen: general information articles from a local authority website (Stockholm City) and patent texts, both of which belong to the expanding field of application of Google Translate. The results of the study show that in terms of compound nouns, neither of the text types proved to be significantly better suited for machine translation than the other and neither had an error rate below 20 %. Most of the errors related to words being erroneously omitted in the English output and words which were incorrectly translated in relation to context. As for proper nouns, the patent texts contained none and subsequently no error analysis could be made, whereas the general information articles included 76 proper nouns (out of a total word count of 810). The most prominent error related to the Swedish version not being maintained in the English output where it should have been, e.g. translating Abrahamsberg as Abraham rock. The errors in both of the linguistic categories had varying impact on the meaning of the texts, some of which distorted the meaning of the word completely, and some which were of minor importance. This factor, along with the fact that the reader of the text influences how the comprehension level of the text is perceived through their language and subject knowledge, makes it difficult to evaluate the full impact of the various errors. It can, however, be said that patent text could pose as a better option for machine translation than general information articles in relation to proper nouns, as this text type is likely to contain no or very few proper nouns.

In this thesis I outline my theory of translation as an interpretive tool. I undertake an analysis of the concepts of heteroglossia, hybridity, and positionality, as conceived of by Mikhail Bakhtin, Homi K. Bhabha, and Linda Alcoff, respectively. These ideas function similarly: heteroglossic forces are constantly being brought to bear upon languages, the hybrid nature of culture is continually being rearticulated, and the positionality of the interpreter is always subject to change. I establish a theory that allows for translation to remain open, a theory that sees all incarnations of a text (the source and all of its translations) as being perpetually discursive, rather than fixing upon one version as the definitive or “correct” rendering. Translations occupy a fluctuating, unstable, and therefore creative location; they provide an ever-shifting temporal and spatial perspective. I translate excerpts from texts written by the Afro-German poet May Ayim and the Turkish German author Emine Sevgi Özdamar from German into English. This brings my theory into application and demonstrates both the fluidity of translation and the depth of interpretation to be found within this process. / Graduate / 0311 / 0679