A final year immigrant student in Dublin has been awarded a top thesis prize. Enrika Baleviciute, a BA graduate in languages for international communication from DCU’s School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS), received the Cipherion Top Thesis Prize – which is sponsored by Cipherion Translations – for her dissertation on crowdsourced translations.
The school said the Lithuanian student’s dissertation, which is an observation and analysis of TED.com’s Open Translation Project, is one of the top studies carried out in the new area of crowdsourcing at undergraduate level.
Her study states that crowdsourcing – the act of outsourcing tasks to a large fluid community of contributors – does not replace professionals in fields such as translation.
Crowdsourcing is a community-based response which brings people with shared interests together to work voluntarily with the aim of making information available in their language for other users.
Reacting to the award, Baleviciute’s thesis supervisor and a senior lecturer at SALIS, Dr Minako O’Hagan, said: “Being at the forefront of research means we can share with the students our insights into the latest and emerging translation phenomena and issues such as crowdsourcing.”
María Jesús de Arriba Díaz of Cipherion Translations said “Crowdsourcing is one of the most current topics in the translation and localisation industry right now. It is highly relevant as it is a challenging emerging phenomenon, on which very little research has been carried out to date.
“Enrika’s dissertation shows clearly that although crowdsourcing has its place, mainly in community-based initiatives and platforms, it by no means replaces the clarity of message that professional translations bring to an organisation’s brand, corporate messaging and profile.”
