UNG : Translation Software Assists Students

Press release from University of North Georgia:

Denise Ray

February 21, 2022

The University of North Georgia (UNG) received a software donation that will help students in the Spanish translation certificate program.

Software company Wordfast donated the license to translation program in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UNG for students to use during their 18-month program and an additional year post-graduation.

"Because the Department of Spanish and Portuguese seeks to make the translation program grow, I thought it would be a great idea to expose students to the software," Dr. Raphael Palermo, associate professor of Spanish, said. 

Wordfast solutions are designed to help translators save time, money and effort by storing their translations in a translation memory database and retrieving that translated content automatically for future projects.  

"The software creates a personal glossary, and every time the word appears in text, it reminds you how you translated it before," Palermo said. "Students will be trained to use software, but will need to continue to learn the language. The argument for software usage is speed."

With the software available in the language labs on both of those campuses, there will be opportunities to offer workshops and advanced training to students and anyone who's interested.

Upon successful completion of the 18-hour certificate program, students will be able to apply language-related skills in a variety of professional venues such as businesses, medical facilities, courts, law enforcement and social services agencies, education, and other job scenarios requiring literacy skills. It can be taken as a stand-alone program or in conjunction with another major. Students will have the opportunity to build vocabulary and gain experience in the translation of medical, legal, business, financial, and general literature documents.

This press release was produced by University of North Georgia. The views expressed here are the author’s own.