This blog article is based on the case study prepared by Jana Ukušová, MA, PhD., lecturer at the Department of Translation Studies of CPU in Nitra, Slovakia.
It is our pleasure to share the insights kindly provided by Constantine the Philosopher University about the use of Juremy in the classroom within the framework of our academic program.
The University became an academic partner of Juremy in February 2024, providing master’s students of the Department of Translation Studies, CPU in Nitra with the opportunity to use Juremy, an online concordance search tool, free of charge in specialised translation courses.
Course Structure and Implementation of Juremy
The course Translation of Specialised Texts 2 (English language) is taught in the 1st year of the master’s level at the Department of Translation Studies, CPU in Nitra. The first half of the semester (7 weeks) is dedicated to translating texts of the European Union, while the second half (6 weeks) focuses on translating legal documents. In the summer semester of the academic year 2023/2024, a total of 22 students were enrolled in the course. The first (introductory) class was aimed at presenting the contents of the course and the requirements for passing it. During the first week, students were also sent a registration link for Juremy and in the second week, its basic features and how to work with this tool effectively was explained to them. From then on, they could use it both in class and at home for all translation assignments.
Students translated mostly two types of EU documents: notices to members and press releases. Students were either translating from scratch or post-editing a text which had been translated using e-translation, i.e., neural machine translation service of the European Commission.
Consequently, students used Juremy either to
- look up EU terminology and parallel texts or
- to verify (and if necessary, to correct) the EU terminology which was already provided by e-translation.
All texts (except for the final translation assignment) were translated by students at home with a given delivery deadline. In the classroom, students presented and confronted each other’s translations, and discussed the optimal translation solutions. During the discussions, students were always encouraged to provide the specific EU document where they have found a specific term or phrase – something Juremy makes quite easy since it provides a CELEX number with a hyperlink which points to a specific EU document.
Student Feedback on Juremy
At the end of the semester, students were asked to fill out a questionnaire survey aimed at gathering their feedback on using Juremy. The survey demonstrated that exactly 50% of the students had used Juremy for all the translation assignments given to them, 38.9% of students for the majority of their assignments and 11.1% of students only for selected translation assignments. As was stated above, the second half of the semester was dedicated to translating legal texts, we may thus conclude that students also found Juremy helpful when translating documents containing legal (but not necessarily EU-related) terminology.
Students were also asked to rate the following features of Juremy: fast search in EUR-Lex and IATE, search query results reliability and user-friendly interface. As regards the speed of search in EUR-Lex and IATE, almost all students (88.8%) considered this feature to be very useful. When asked about the search query reliability: 50% of students considered the search query results to be very reliable, and 33.3% reliable. At this point, we have to note that since Juremy conducts searches in IATE and official EU documents in EUR-Lex, its reliability can be considered very high, however, other factors come into play when searching for a specific term or expression, such as the publication date of the document where the term occurs, thematic area, further context, etc., which have to be carefully examined. Moreover, Juremy was rated as a highly user-friendly tool by a vast majority of the students.
Students were also asked to share any further observations and reflections about using Juremy and provide possible drawbacks they may have observed. Students’ answers are provided below:
- “I didn’t notice any shortcomings, Juremy was very easy to work with and I rate it very positively.”
- “It is useful. It makes searching easier. Thank you.”
- “I have used Juremy for all translation assignments and have had no problems with it.”
- “In addition to terminology, Juremy was also helpful when looking up collocations and phrases.“
- “I am satisfied with everything.”
- “[It is] very user-friendly.”
Less than one third of students (27.7) named a couple of shortcomings of the tool, such as limited results for the translation direction Slovak - English (which is understandable since most EU texts are drafted in English and translated into EU official languages and not vice versa), focus limited to only EU texts (this answer may have been, paradoxically, influenced by students’ good experience with Juremy when translating EU texts, wishing to apply it also to other specialised texts), and limited parallel texts when searching for longer expressions or phrases. Students’ answers are again listed below:
- “[It is a] good tool, unfortunately when translating from Slovak to English it does not always provide a sufficient number of variants/provides no variants at all.”
- “The tool could also focus on more general texts and terms, not just those which are EU-related”.
- “Juremy was sometimes really helpful when translating and was good at providing parallel texts, but for certain kinds of texts it was not possible to find parallel texts when searching for a relatively larger number of words and terms.”
Conclusion
To conclude, the survey results demonstrated that the integration of Juremy into the course Translation of Specialised Texts 2 was received positively by all the students enrolled in the course and a vast majority of students considered it to be a very useful tool to look up EU terminology and search for parallel texts. Moreover, from a teacher’s perspective and from a perspective of a freelance EU translator who has been working with Juremy on a regular basis for the past 3 years, I believe that the integration of Juremy into training can be seen as a valuable impetus for students who are considering the career of an EU translator since it helps to approximate authentic EU translator experience and helps improve the overall quality of EU translator training.
We would like to thank Jana Ukušová and the Constantine the Philosopher University for their partnership and their contribution to this article.