UNIVERSIDAD JUREZ AUTNOMA DE TABASCO

DIVISIN ACADMICA DE EDUCACIN Y ARTES

STUDENT: MARGARITA CONCEPCIN CULEBRO GMEZ

22nd JUNE 2011

THE IMPORTANCE TO USE A DICTIONARY, THE COMPUTER AND THE ALTERNATIVE TEXT IN A TRANSLATION

Dictionaries have an enormous importance for translators due to their valuable information. A dictionary constitutes an essential stage in the process of translation because it provides translators with valuable advantages. For example, in a dictionary the words are all in alphabetic (A-B-C) order and these words sometimes have more than one definition. There is also other information about words such as their function or part of speech, their pronunciation, as well as origins, or roots. Other useful information can be found in the dictionary as well such as information of metric conversion tables, maps, presidents of the United States, explanations of common symbols, etc. Besides, dictionaries can be used to check spelling, to learn new words or to find the right word to use. A dictionary can help us if we're not sure about the meaning of a word in a document and for getting the keywords, phrases, and synonyms. With a dictionary we have the opportunity to learn a number of related words while we are looking up for a specific one. So the more we read in the dictionary, the greater the number of secondary meanings we will learn and the more senses we will get to become familiar with. So, with a good dictionary (knowing well how to use it) we can do at least the following activities: y y y y y y y y y y y look up the meaning of an English word we see or hear find the English translation of a word in our language check the spelling of a word check the plural of a noun or past tense of a verb find out other grammatical information about a word find the synonym or antonym of a word look up the collocations of a word check the part of speech of a word find out how to say a word find out about the register of a word find examples of the use of a word in natural language

On the other hand, nowadays another important tool of any translator is the computer, which, first of all, helps us to achieve skills in handling electronic resources and tools. The importance of using it has a relationship with electronic dictionaries, which can be monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual. These kind of dictionaries are very useful because they contain information about word forms, pronunciation (often voiced by natural speakers), and word collocations. They may also include dictionaries in particular fields of science (applied mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, religion, engineering, etc.), idioms, slangs, etc. Another advantage of the computer is its convenience, visual impact, ease of use, high speed of information processing, and the possibility to quickly find the equivalent of a specific word in a text. The dictionaries that we can have in our computer are constantly updated. This is especially important when we deal (as translators) with sciences such as telecommunication, nanotechnology, computers, etc., because they provide an easy access to many resources of linguistic information

not only in the dictionary we have but also on the Internet. Besides, the computer documents are always available and can be opened and processed easily. Finally, talking about the alternative text, we can say that they are very useful in translation because they can provide us general ideas of the original text taking in account all the specifics characteristics of the context of the new language such as the place, the language itself and the subject which it belongs the text to translate. Also, an alternative text supports the future translation by providing to translators the description, meaning, content and function of the original text in another version (different translator and circumstances). UNKNOW WORDS 1. Handling /N/ Manejo/ Such a situation needs very careful handling/ 2. Slang /N/ Jerga/ Their speech was full of slang expressions/ 3. Updated /V/ Modernizar/ We updated the kitchen in the old house/

BIBLIOGRAPHY y y y http://www.oppapers.com/essays/The-Importants-Of-Dictionaries-In-Translation/598551 http://www.translationdirectory.com/articles/article2324.php http://www.slideshare.net/Teritaa/machine-translation-and-computer-2133860