On September 9-14, 2019 teachers from universities of Belarus and Russia (Nizhny Novgorod) supervised by Associate Professor at Institute of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies Alexander Behrens (Leipzig, Germany) gathered together at Polotsk State University to participate in the seminar “Software Localization”. The seminar was funded by German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and supervised by DAAD lecturer at PSU Georgia Mattias.
The opening of the seminar was held in the concert hall of Polotsk College. Head of the Department of World Literature and Foreign Languages Tatiana Gordeyonok gave her welcoming speech. Mr. Behrens gave a presentation on translation opportunities and software localization to teachers, students and university guests. The speaker noted that Belarus is the leading country in software development. Mastering IT technologies seems to be especially popular and necessary while working as a translator or a philologist.
The main aim of the seminar is to broaden translators’ horizons and provide the participants with the main terminology, technologies and formats required for software localization.
During the week, the participants were learning a scripting language, a markup language, regular expressions and XPath examples. Special emphasis was given to computer-assisted translation software suites as SDL Trados and memoQ.
When speaking to the lecturers of the Department of World Literature and Foreign Languages, Mr. Behrens expressed his opinion on the future of the translation profession in the context of software localization. Based on his practical experience, Mr. Behrens noted that today’s society is at the digitalization stage and soon everything will operate in the software localization. To be in demand in the translation industry, the specialists have to be proficient in IT-technologies.
Last week turned out to be fruitful for educational purposes. That was also a good way to establish new contacts with teachers of German from Belarus, Russia and Germany.
Ekaterina Lushnevskaya, senior lecturer at the Department of World Literature and Foreign Languages
Photos by E. Lushnevskaya, P. Kosarevskaya