Developing information mining competence in translation teaching exemplified by working with dictionaries and parallel texts

Abstract

Information mining competence is one of the six professional competences of translators worked out by a group of experts appointed in 2007 by the Directorate- General for Translation (DGT) of the European Commission within the project of creating the European Master’s in Translation (EMT) network. The six skills are as follows: translation service provision competence, language competence, intercultural competence, information mining competence, thematic competence and technological competence (mastery of tools). Information mining competence is understood as an ability to search for information with a critical attitude to various information sources. The reason why professional translators need this skill today more than ever is because of efficient time management, because of the mass of information and a wide range of source types from which information can be gathered (dictionaries, glossaries, thesauri, parallel texts, encyclopedias, CAT tools and other electronic media, etc.). The need was recognized also by the European Committee for Standards which in 2006 released the specification EN 15038 that defines translation quality and normalizes procedures and translation processes for delivering language services. There are six competences in the specification which translators should at least have, namely, translating competence, linguistic and textual competence in the source language and the target language, research competence and information acquisition and processing, cultural competence and technical competence. However, developing information mining competence remains in the background of teaching translation or is completely omitted as a simple and obvious skill. Translation practice shows that the ability to effectively search for information with a critical attitude to various information sources should be an absolutely necessary component in the training of professional translators. That is why the present paper focuses on developing information mining competence and suggests some examples of exercises how to use dictionaries and parallel texts effectively and how to extract and process relevant information for translation tasks.