Abstract:

The role and importance of bilingual parallel texts are uncontested for training prospective translators. Especially for such domains as technical translation and legal translation, the confirmed and accepted parallel texts have been extensively used to give translation students both an opportunity to check their translation products and to extract terminology from these parallel texts. However, it should be noted that translator training has experienced many significant changes with the increased use of technology by both professional translators and prospective professionals in recent years. By the same token, with the latest improvements in translation technology, most of the bilingual materials written on word-processors or published as hard copies are now converted into Translation Memories (TMs) via the alignment function which is either a part of a translator’s workstation or acting as separate software. However, the relevant literature lacks the studies that consider these aligned texts from a translator training perspective. For this purpose, in this study, first, the importance of the parallel texts is stressed with a view to using them for translator training purposes. Then, the definition and use of alignment function in TMs are presented in detail and the transformation of parallel texts into digital format as aligned materials are discussed within the scope of translator training. The study follows a descriptive method and stresses the pedagogical function of parallel corpora and ad hoc corpora, and discusses the possible ways of how ad hoc bilingual parallel corpora can be utilized to create TMs. Based on this proposition, this study suggests that TMs can be actively used as an aid in translator training, and students should be familiarized more with using these kinds of translation technology tools.

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