The Uptake Of Online Tools And Web-Based Language Resources By Freelance Translators: Implications For Translator Training, Professional Development, And Research

Freelance translators today have at their disposal an ever-increasing array of online tools and language resources, including search engines, electronic mail, dictionaries, document archives, and terminology databases. A survey of working practices has been conducted among UK translators, with responses received to date from around 400 freelancers. Included in the survey was an investigation of the uptake of online services by translators, the findings of which are reported in this paper. These findings indicate that freelance translators have adopted, and are making extensive use of, both general online tools, and more specialised online terminology resources. Less use is being made, however, of mailing lists, document archives, and online machine translation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings, together with a number of research questions arising from those findings.