Internship report 28 06 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITYUNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE INTERNSHIP REPORT AT COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS CENT

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS &

LITERATURE

INTERNSHIP REPORT

AT COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS CENTER

Instructors: Ms Trần Thị Vân Hoài

Mr Nguyễn Xuân Triều

Student’s name: Nguyễn Tú Uyên Student’s ID: 1357010278

Ho Chi Minh City, June 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS &

LITERATURE

INTERNSHIP REPORT

AT COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS CENTER

Instructors: Ms Trần Thị Vân Hoài

Mr Nguyễn Xuân Triều

Student’s name: Nguyễn Tú Uyên Student’s ID: 1357010278

Ho Chi Minh City, June 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY_HCMC Socialist Republic of Vietnam

University of Social Sciences & Humanities Independence – Freedom – Happiness FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

HCMC, _2017

INSTRUCTORS’ EVALUATION SHEET

Student’s name: Nguyễn Tú Uyên Student’s ID: 1357010278

Grading:

(1) Internship process (reflected in the Practicum Evaluation

Sheet by the student’s direct supervisor in the company) 2

(2) Supervisor’s evaluation of student’s working attitude and

written internship report (i.e quality & content of the

(3) Full attendance of all the training seminars on essential

skills for practicum and participation in activities for the

field trip & full compliance with all the field trip rules 1.0

(4) Oral site presentation/ on-site interpretation 3.5

Other comments:

Suggestion for improvement of the practicum portfolio:

(Signature & full name) (Signature & full name)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

II Report on the actual practicum at Computational Linguistics Center

a The actual context in which English is used in CLC 7

b How I acquainted myself with the real working environment 8

III Experiences from the practicum 9 a Useful experiences from the practicum 9

b How my English courses at the USSH help and do not help my practicum work 9

 How my English courses at the USSH help my practicum work 9

 Why my courses at the USSH do not help my practicum work 11

c The effects of the internship on my personality and viewpoint 11

IV Recommendations 12 a To CLC 12

b To Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature 12

V Conclusion 13 VI References 14 VII Appendices 14 a Images of CLC office 14

b Translation product in the internship 16

Firstly, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Ms Nguyễn Thị Như Ngọc,Head of Department of Translation & Interpreting in Faculty of English Linguistics &Literature, HCMC - USSH and Mr Đinh Điền, Director of Computational LinguisticsCenter (CLC) for providing me with an opportunity to do my internship in CLC

I also would like to thank all staff members at CLC, especially Mr HuỳnhCông Toàn, from the bottom of my heart for their careful guidance, enthusiasticsupport and tolerance for my mistakes during my internship

Last, but not least, my very special thanks go to Ms Trần Thị Vân Hoài and

Mr Nguyễn Xuân Triều for your valuable guidance, feedback and support on myinternship report and field trip interpretation Without your help, I could not havefinished the report and field trip interpretation well

I Introduction

As a senior student, to fulfill graduation, I am supposed to participate in aninternship at least for one month, then write an internship report as a record of a wholeinternship and submit it to the department for evaluation

Moreover, personally, writing this report will give me the chance to look back

on whole process of internship and find out what I have learned and which parts of methat I need to improve

These days, in the field of translation, most translation companies and manyfreelance translators have been applying Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) toolsand Translation Memory to their translation tasks, which means that if we wishes tobecome professional translators, we definitely cannot ignore the importance oftechnology and computer science We have to provide ourselves with skill of usingCAT tools However, there is not any course about applying CAT tools to translating

in the curriculum of Translation and Interpretation major Therefore, the departmenthas provided us with many intern positions at Computational Linguistics Center(CLC) of University of Science, Vietnam National University – HCM City to help ushave opportunities to learn skill using CAT tools and have real experience astranslators for translation companies

Computational Linguistics Center (CLC) is a center of University of Science,Vietnam National University – HCM City (pursuant to the Decision No 1723/QĐ-KHTN-TCHC) This is an interdisciplinary research center between linguistics and

computer science, specializing in automatically processing Vietnamese and otherrelated languages via building and exploiting Vietnamese-related resources (e.g.corpora, dictionaries, tools, etc.) [1]

II Report on the actual practicum at Computational Linguistics Center (CLC)

The only office of CLC is the computer laboratory located at Room C44,Building C of HCM University of Science The staffs of CLC include Board ofDirectors, Board of Advisors, Research Team and Supporting Team All members ofstaffs here have degrees in which master’s degree is the lowest level Their majors aremainly Information Technology, Linguistics and Foreign Languages Generally, theiraffiliations are HCM University of Science and HCM University of Social Sciences &Humanities [2]

CLC combines of training, research and application in order to create scientifictechnological products that meaning and reality to serve the society’s needseffectively Simultaneously, it can sign contracts, cooperate, associate with other units

in the domestic and international [3]

Through the research, training and cultivation activities, the center will helpstrengthen the organized and professional qualified cadres It’s also the source thatattracts domestic and foreign talents to solve the huge issues in computationallinguistics while promoting the formation of intensive research group in the period of2015-2020; applying Computational Linguistics in teaching Vietnamese forforeigners, exploiting text (rated products, the summary text, support decision-making), the political – security (information monitoring), etc [4]

During one-month internship at CLC, we have worked as trainees taught how

to use CAT tool SDL Trados Studio by the staff At the end of the internship, our assignment is translating three English documents with SDL Trados Studio and then

submitting them to the department and CLC for evaluation In addition, the data fromour translations will be exploited by CLC for the purpose of further research, not forcommercial purpose

a The actual context in which English is used in CLC

Through my observation and interview of the staff, they do not communicatewith each other by English at the office because simply all staff members areVietnamese there However, one of the specific tasks of CLC is building neededresource sources to serve the Vietnamese computational Linguistics that is developedsustainability and efficiency [5]Therefore, staff has to know English to communicate

or discuss with foreign partners or professors, write English scientific articles that will

be published in international prestigious journals and be able to present their scientificworks at international conference Doing all those things not only developsVietnamese computational linguistics but also introduces it to the world

Of course, the staff has to face with difficulties when they use English at work.The main difficulty is something about English pronunciation Sometimes, theymispronounce English words, so the foreign professors cannot understand ideas orthoughts staff would like to convey

Every day, the staff has to deal with software written in English However,their major is Information Technology, which means they have been familiar with ITterms Therefore, they face no problem when using English-written software

b How I acquainted myself with the real working environment

Actually, I only participate in the internship for one month, particularly twomornings each week Every working day, I come to the office and do the exercises the

staff assigns in order to make us know how to use CAT tool SDL Trados Studio 2014.

If I do not understand anything or encounter difficulties when doing exercises, I canfeel free to ask for help and staff will help me immediately Therefore, until now I feelthat this internship is just like training rather than working actually In staff’s eyes, weare eventually just students who need instructing and are not really workers or interns.Perhaps, our contributions to CLC are our Vietnamese translations of three documents

at the end of internship They will be used for the research purpose

However, I still try to work with the attitude I am supposed to have in the realworking environment I try not to be late every working day and try not to submittranslations late Moreover, I have to deal with relatively complicated CAT tools andprocess of translating using Translation Memory in the internship I try to be active atwork by reading manuals at home first and looking at the CAT tool and exercises tobecome familiar with CAT tool and understand the whole process Thus, I am able tounderstand, finish all the exercises and ask the staff for help at least at possible I saythat because in the real working environment, sometimes we may be given difficulttasks However, we have to be independent and active to complete the tasks, whichmeans we are not supposed to not to self-study anything and only ask others foranything we do not know how to do.

a Useful experiences from the practicum

The practicum at CLC gives me the chance to learn to use and get familiar with

the most popular CAT tool SDL Trados Studio – a tool that you will have to use every

day if you are a translator for a translation company Therefore, I can gain not onlyskills using CAT tool but also real experience as a translator for a translation companyafter taking part in practicum at CLC Through the experience as a translator for atranslation company, I can find out what a job at a translation company will be likeand whether or not I am interested in or suitable for that kind of job In general, I willhave one more career path choice and be able to decide whether I should go for thatcareer or not

The staff at CLC is also friendly and enthusiastic They will come immediately

whenever we need help They also provide us with careful instructions in using SDL I

also learn from their high self-discipline Without supervisors or directors around,they still quietly concentrate on their work and just chat with other co-workerssometimes

It sounds like a personal matter but thanks to working at CLC, I can talk tomore classmates whose names and faces I may know but I had never had a chance to

talk to them or had talked to them very little We also helped each other when doingexercises and ate lunch together

b How my English courses at the USSH help and do not help my practicum work

 How my English courses at the USSH help my practicum work

A Translation Memory contains bilingual pairs that you have translated beforeand it can be updated to contain more and more pairs When you translate a document

with Translation Memory in CAT tool platform like SDL Trados Studio 2014, firstly

CAT tool will find any source language sentences in the Translation Memory thatmatch those in your document in highest level Then CAT tool will show youtranslation results which are target language sentences of those source languagesentences that you have translated, saved in Translation Memory before and got thehighest match with your source language sentences in your document Or else, thetranslation results can be chosen from previous translations of other people in the

same system and from Automated Translation Machine like SDL BeGlobal

Community and My Memory Plugin Finally, you only edit translation results by

translating those words, phrases or sentences that are not in the Translation Memory –those you have never translated before In general, translating with TranslationMemory will save you a lot of time and effort However, sometimes the translationresults from Translation Memory, especially those from others’ previous translations

or from Automated Translation Machine, are like word for word translation, notnatural in the target language or even not accurate Here are some examples I get fromexercises I did at CLC:

1 A ballet tells a story without any words to help

 Một vở ba – lê thường kể lại một câu chuyện mà không một lời nói nào.

 Một vở ba – lê kể lại một câu chuyện mà không cần sự giúp sức của bất cứ ngôn từ nào (My correction)

2 The film is very true to life.

 Cuốn phim này rất giống như ngoài đời.

 Cuốn phim này rất giống với đời thực (My correction)

3 Old memories stirred as she looked at the photographs

 Những kỷ niệm cũ đã khơi dậy khi cô ấy nhìn vào các bức ảnh.

 Khi cô nhìn những bức ảnh, chúng khơi dậy những kỉ niệm cũ trong cô (My correction)

The purpose of translation methods and procedures and of translating itself

-is to achieve equivalent effect The term “equivalent effect” refers to the target text

having the same effect on the target text reader as the source text has on the sourcetext reader A total equivalent effect is impossible to achieve [6] However, we can try

to translate somehow to make the translation version be able to possess a high level of

naturalness Thanks to this knowledge of translation theories I learned in the Theory

of Translation and Literary Translation Practice courses, I know that a goodtranslation version should be both accurate and natural Therefore, during internship, Ican base on the level of accuracy and naturalness of the translation version to evaluate

a sentence to have been well translated or not Whenever I find out sentences thatwere not accurately and naturally translated, I try to re-translate them as accuratelyand naturally as possible to make them better

 Why my courses at the USSH do not help my practicum work

In the USSH’s Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature curriculum, we areonly required to achieve Basic Computational skills like using Microsoft Office Word,Excel and Power Point On the contrary, my practicum work at CLC mainly deals

with CAT tool SDL Trados Studio, which is quite complicated for those students

whose majors are not Information Technology Therefore, at first, it was quite hard for

me to finish exercises using SDL and understand process of translating using

Translation Memory

c The effects of the internship on my personality and viewpoint

In terms of personality, I am an over-careful person I often take too much timeunnecessarily to check my tasks over and over again to make sure that there is nomistake left In this internship, the exercises are relatively complicated and we need to

do many steps to finish them Because of the fear that if I do them too fast, I maymake mistakes, I keep checking and checking my exercises It is that action thatslowed my working pace down Particularly, there were some days when I could notfinish my exercises at CLC because of my over-carefulness and I had to bring them tohome to finish Then I think that if I always have to bring tasks home to finish when I

do my real job in the future, it will not be good at all I will never have time for myselfanymore Therefore, process of doing exercises at CLC made me aware ofdisadvantages from my over-carefulness and then I need to stop being over-careful if Iever wish to finish tasks right at the office in the future

In terms of viewpoint on which kind of the job I will choose in the future, I amnot interested in Computational Linguistics and after one month of working at CLC, I

do not intend to work in this field in the future However, I admire the staffs here fortheir contribution to Vietnamese Computational Linguistics and the society More

commendably, they created products for the blind people like applications Happy Sun

– Typing tutor software for the Blind and Happy Sun – Math equations editor for the Blind; dictionary English-Vietnamese Braille Dictionary for the Blind; research

projects Happy Sun – Spelling practice Software for the Blind and Let’s Learn –

English learning Software for the Blind; International Cooperation Project Vietnamese Braille printing software with Nippon TeleSoft [7] Their contribution to the society,especially to the blind people, has inspired me that no matter which kind of job I willchoose in the future, it should be somehow useful for the society

a To CLC

As I mentioned before in the section II a, the main difficulty that the staff faceswhen using English at work is about English pronunciation Sometimes, theymispronounce English words, so the foreign professors cannot understand ideas orthoughts staff would like to convey My suggestion is that CLC should hold more

seminars with the lecturer who is an English native speaker or any foreign lecturerwho can speak English well Thus, staff can not only gain valuable computationallinguistics knowledge from foreign lecturers but also get familiar with authenticEnglish to find out which words they mispronounce and correct them They also havemore chances to communicate with English native lecturers through discussions oncertain topic to improve their English communication skills

b To Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature

In the 2017 field trip, there are two things I would like to comment on and

recommend some solutions for improvement: the quality of ENVIET tour guides and

the places where the presentation and interpretation of students took place

Firstly, I suggest that in the next field trips, our department should be morecareful in choosing tour guides who should have appropriate qualifications andbehaviors In the last field trip, when we were on coach, the tour guide actually did notgive us so much valuable and useful information about Cu Chi and Can Gio On thecontrary, I felt like he only wanted to point out that how bad we were and how littleinformation we knew and show off his knowledge and skills Moreover, he sometimeshad impolite words and behaviors In fact, in the end, we could not gain anythinguseful and we only felt annoyed Therefore, I hope that in the future, our departmentcan choose tour guides who will be able to show students more valuable and rarerinformation about the places they will go to instead of doing impolite things

Secondly, I propose that our department should choose tourist attractions thatare in urban Ho Chi Minh City instead of suburb areas like Cu Chi and Can Gio Thus,students can feel easier to go to check out the places first to prepare well for theirpresentation and interpretation Then, they can present or interpret beside artifacts andcultural and historical objects, which will make the field trip more authentic andlively, like in the real situation Of course, I know that because of some objectivereasons, our department chose presenting and interpreting places where there were notartifacts that we were assigned to present and interpret However, if that is the case,the field trip will not be real anymore and be a mere formality For example, our group

was assigned to interpret about Tomb of Whale God in Can Gio, but we actuallyinterpreted in Information Room at Monkey Island! We even could have done thesame thing at the school and we should not have needed to go there to interpretwithout any Whale God skeleton!

[6] The material ‘Translation - Basic Terms & Concepts’ provided by Mr Lê Huy

Lộc at the Literary Translation Practice course (9/2016)

[7] CLC Homepage – Research and Resources

http://www.clc.hcmus.edu.vn/?page_id=443&lang=en

http://www.clc.hcmus.edu.vn/?page_id=1569&lang=en

VII Appendices

a Images of CLC office