Enriching the world of terminology: TermCoord and IATE at the University of Nitra, Slovakia

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Slovakian

As a former translation trainee at the European Parliament, I was honoured by my alma mater, University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra (Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre) with the opportunity to actively contribute to the workshops devoted to the terminology databases. I felt flattered to be even considered as a competent translator with enough experience. I agreed right away and started to prepare for the workshops with the kind support from the Slovak Translation Unit and the Terminology Coordination Unit of the European Parliament in Luxembourg.

The workshops were organised on the 22nd and 23rd October 2015 by the Department of German studies – by PaedDr. Oľga Wrede, PhD and Mgr. Jozef Štefčík PhD, who were responsible for the whole agenda and were so kind to involve me in this wonderful project.

The first workshop “Terminological work and translation” was dedicated to the students of translatology with various language combinations. My presentation took 90 minutes and was dealing with two main topics: the traineeship possibilities in the European institutions and the terminology databases used when translating texts in the European Parliament.

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I talked about the traineeship and what it includes, I mentioned the missions to Brussels and Strasbourg, as well as internet web pages, where it is possible to apply for the traineeships. The second part of my presentation, which was thematically of big importance, introduced the databases that I personally used while translating during my traineeship. Thanks to the cooperation with the Slovak Translation Unit, more precisely with Jana Böehmer-Šuverová, and the Terminology Coordination Unit, mainly with Viola Laci-Pongrácz, I was able to collect all the necessary information, screenshots and materials in order to provide a brief and practical introduction into the most important (not only) terminology databases. The feedback of the students, as well as of the organisers was very positive. I was even offered by another university to hold a presentation at their premises next year.

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The second workshop “How to work with terminology corpus and terminology databases” was partially organised by the Slovak Society of Translators of Scientific and Technical Literature (Slovenská spoločnosť prekladateľov odbornej literatúry SSPOL) in cooperation with the Department of German studies of my former university. This workshop was dedicated mainly to professional translators who were interested in the terminology databases. My presentation was focused only on the terminology and contextual databases with some practical translation examples. As the audience consisted of mainly professionals, no information regarding the traineeship was mentioned.

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Hereby I would like to thank Constantine the Philosopher University for giving me this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to present about my professional experience I gained in the European Parliament in Luxembourg. Nevertheless, the realisation of this project would not be possible without my former colleagues in EP, who had helped me with the preparation for both workshops. They were very helpful and did not hesitate to provide me with necessary materials and useful conversations.

I look forward to the next project with both entities!

Written by Lenka Meszarosova
Former trainee at TermCoord