Postgraduate Degree in Software Localisation
and Research at UL
Outline
 | Aims of the Programme |
| Overall Design |
| Module Outlines |
| Current Status |
| Related Research at UL |
Aims of the Programme
| Support the Localisation Industry |
| Respond to HEA call for more computing places |
| Increase number of postgraduate students |
| Improve output of published research |
Overall Design
| One year taught course of two semesters leading to Graduate Diploma |
| Students with good exam results may proceed to the second year and complete an M.Sc. by thesis |
Intake
The aim is to admit students who
| Possess a first degree |
| Are interested in natural languages |
| Have little or no previous computing experience |
| Wish to work in the Localisation Industry |
Product
The aim is to produce students who
| Understand the Localisation Industry |
| Are familiar with the main stages of localisation together with the principal techniques used in them |
| Have used some of the common localisation tools |
| Are capable of writing simple programs in C++ |
| Have some experience of technical communication |
| Understand the language engineering mechanisms underlying products like Logos and Trados. |
Course Outline
Staffing
Lecturers on the course come from
| The Localisation Resources Centre (Localisation Process, Quality and Localisation) |
| The Languages and Cultural Studies Department at UL (Technical Communication) |
| The Computer Science and Information Systems Department at UL (Programming Language, Language Engineering) |
| Various companies involved with software localisation (for guest lectures in the above courses) |
Programming Language
| Notion of an algorithm |
| Programming concepts |
| Development of competence in C++ |
Localisation Process
| What is localisation |
| The localisation industry |
| Key stages of the process |
| Case studies of a software publisher and a service provider |
Quality and Localisation
| Localisation engineering |
| Quality assurance and testing |
| Tools and resources for QA |
| Project management |
Language Engineering
| What is Language Engineering |
| Stages in document analysis |
| Typical applications |
| Case study in Logos |
--------------
| Markup languages and Corpora |
| Text processing tools |
| Results from Corpus Linguistics |
| Case study in Trados Workbench |
Technical Communication
| Principles of technical communication |
| Economics of text production |
| Desk top publishing |
| Practice through writing projects |
Current Status
| First intake was in October 1997 |
| 50 students registered |
Related Research
| Analysis of terminology |
| Multilingual lexicography |
| Japanese text retrieval |
| Robust syntactic parsing |