Building a specialized corpus in Macedonian
Nikolche Mickoski is an experienced translator, interpreter and terminologist and is deeply involved in Macedonian lexicographic projects. He is also a mentor for his students at the Department of Translation and Interpreting at Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. He set his goal to tackle the problem of the lack of a national Macedonian corpus by building one from specialized scientific publications, published by the
Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
© Nikolche Mickoski, 2019
How did you learn about the ELEXIS travel grants?
I learnt about the ELEXIS travel grants when I attended the CLARIN Workshop “Translation memories, corpora, termbases: Bridges between translation studies and research infrastructures”. Tanja Wissik, from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, informed me of the ELEXIS project and the opportunity for travel grants for researchers.
Which hosting institution did you apply to?
When I was interviewed for the ELEXIS Skillset Report, I said that “…it would be great if colleagues who work on similar languages [to Macedonian] … could organize a workshop on building corpora and training POS taggers so that we can learn how to do this ourselves.” Since Slovenian, like Macedonian, is a South Slavic language, I chose the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Additionally, researchers at the Jožef Stefan Institute have implemented many projects related to corpora creation and annotation, and are very advanced in the field of language technologies.
What is your project about?
My project is about building a corpus from specialized scientific publications published by my parent institution, the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The lack of a national corpus presents a great obstacle for terminologist in creating specialized dictionaries. The corpus containing specialized scientific publications will be a good starting point for excerpting relevant terms that can be included in dictionaries. Currently, Macedonian terminologists provide translation equivalents for some terms, but they are not able to explore other translation equivalents already in use. They are also not able to support the relevance of the proposed translation equivalents about their usage in professional life and cannot provide corpus-based justification about why a certain term was included in a dictionary.
Find out more about ELEXIS visiting grants and former winning projects:
The lack of specialized Macedonian corpora makes our work very hard and that is why I think that this project will be a good starting point for a corpus-based terminology in our country.
What is your background that brought you to this point?
I am a PhD student in terminology and terminology management at the Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. I am working as a research associate at the Lexicographic Center of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts on the project Macedonian Scientific and Professional Terminology. I collaborate with scientists and researchers in order to create dictionaries containing specialized and professional terminology. Unfortunately, the lack of specialized corpora makes our work very hard and that is why I think that this project will be a good starting point for corpus-based terminology in our country.
Where does your interest in languages/lexicography come from and what keeps you motivated?
I have been working as a translator and interpreter for about 18 years. During my career, I prepared many glossaries in various subject areas. I love defining translation equivalents for new terms that will be used in the Macedonian language. My focus is on the terminology of an information society in which there is a constant influx of new terms related to new concepts. I teach consecutive and simultaneous interpreting and a special course on ICT terminology at Department of Translation and Interpreting at Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, and I try to introduce new translators and interpreters to the basic principles of terminology and how to define translation equivalents for the new terms they will encounter in their everyday work.
Find out more:
| Profile: Nikolche Mickoski |
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| Travel Grant | Call 3 | |
| Period of stay | 16. – 30. 3. 2020 | |
| Project title |
Building a specialized corpus in Macedonian |
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| Home institution |
Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts |
#elexis_mk |
| Hosting institution | Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI, Slovenia) |
#elexis_sl |
