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DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2024.76.04.20
How to Cite:
Kіrіlenko, O., Ryzhkova, V., Rybalko, L., Zahrebelnyi, O., & Sokolova, Y. (2024). The use of the SmartCat platform for the
development of soft skills in masters of philology. Amazonia Investiga, 13(76), 247-257. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2024.76.04.20
The use of the SmartCat platform for the development of soft skills in
masters of philology
Використання платформи SmartCat для формування м'яких навичок у магістрів-філологів
Received: February 28, 2024 Accepted: April 20, 2024
Written by:
Olena Kіrіlenko1
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4496-3787
Viktoriia Ryzhkova2
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7083-3911
Liudmyla Rybalko3
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1262-8551
Oleksandr Zahrebelnyi4
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1449-6257
Yevheniia Sokolova5
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1497-4987
Abstract
Skill requirements and implementation of new
information technologies drive changes in the
professional training for future technical
translators, including the development of both
highly professional and soft skills. The purpose of
this study was to develop soft skills in Masters of
Philology and future technical translators in the
process of implementing the group project using
the SmartCat Cloud Platform. The soft skills in
Masters of Philology required to implement the
group project using the SmartCat Cloud Platform
have been identified and analyzed: planning and
time, workload, stress management skills; skills of
compliance with project implementation terms,
instructions and technical specifications;
teamwork skills, including in a virtual media,
using modern communication technologies;
responsible use of information technology for
professional purposes; continuous self-
1
PhD in Pedagogic sciences, Professor at the Department of Software Engineering, National Aerospace University n. a.
N. E. Zhukovsky "KhAI", Kharkiv, Ukraine. WoS Researcher ID: AAE-4068-2019
2
PhD of Philology, Professor at the Department of Applied Linguistics, National Aerospace University n. a. N. E. Zhukovsky "KhAI",
Kharkiv, Ukraine. WoS Researcher ID: KJL-8365-2024
3
Doctor of Pedagogic Sciences, Professor at the Department of General Pedagogics and Pedagogy of the Higher School, H.S.
Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University, Kharkiv, Ukraine. WoS Researcher ID: ABB-7677-2021
4
PhD in Pedagogic sciences, National Academy of the National Guard of Ukraine, Kharkiv, Ukraine.
WoS Researcher ID: KJL-9218-2024
5
PhD of Technical sciences, Assistant professor at the Department of Software Engineering, National Aerospace University n. a.
N. E. Zhukovsky "KhAI", Kharkiv, Ukraine. WoS Researcher ID: ACC-6007-2022
248
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assessment, updating and developing
competencies and skills through personal
strategies and co-education. The didactic
opportunities of the SmartCat Cloud Platform
have been revealed, enabling instructors to
monitor and evaluate the activities of both the
group as a whole and individual activities of group
members. Overall, the SmartCat platform is a tool
for the development of soft skills needed for a
future professional career of technical translators.
Keywords: development, soft skills, Masters of
Philology, SmartCat Cloud Platform, information
technology.
Introduction
At present, the work character and competency
requirements for a technical translator are
quickly changing (Zetzsche, 2023). There are
over 600 job titles used on the LinkedIn profiles
of employees working in Language Service
Providers (LSPs) globally (Bond, 2018). In
particular, experts in information system
analysis, information technology specialists,
software developers, researchers in the field of
philology, linguists, translators and interpreters,
teachers of foreign languages, word-processing
and data collection operators, project managers,
project management professionals (Faes, 2018).
Demands on hard and soft skills of future
technical translators are growing (Zinukova,
2021).
Today, employers need specialists with work
experience and professional knowledge,
including soft skills significantly affecting
operational efficiency. The UK Engagement
Survey has shown that students did not realize
the importance of soft skills for professional
progress, and the influence of universities was
limited (Havergal, 2015). Nevertheless, the
translation services workforce analysis reflects a
noticeable trend in considerable interest of
employers in soft skills of job applicants. Most
employers consider them to be as important as
hard skills (Hirudayaraj et al., 2021;
Horváth-Csikós et al., 2023; Mytsenko &
Rusanovska, 2023).
An experience in customer and translator
database management, knowledge of specialized
translation programs (Computer-Assisted
Translation (CAT)-tools), and the ability to use
them have also proven to be important
(Tarasenko et al., 2021). Especially decisive have
been a confident use of a personal computer, an
experience in organization and management of
translation and interpreting projects, stress
tolerance, teamwork skills, sociability, diligence,
ability of independent decision-making, taking
responsibility, a focus on results. The workforce
requirements and introduction of new
information technologies require changes in the
professional training of future translators,
development of both hard and soft skills. The
study conducted in the scope of this work is
aimed at identifying and developing soft skills in
masters of philology in the process of a group
project implementation based on the SmartCat
platform.
The purpose of this study was to develop soft
skills in Masters of Philology using the SmartCat
Cloud Platform.
To achieve the goal, the following objectives
needed to be met:
− to determine the role functions of an
interpreter (manager, translator, post-editor)
to model them in the educational group
project;
− to clarify the soft skills of masters necessary
for the high-quality implementation of the
group project;
− to develop soft skills online in Masters of
Philology using the SmartCat platform;
− to determine the didactic capabilities of the
SmartCat Cloud Platform to enable teachers
to monitor and evaluate the activities of both
the group as a whole and the individual
activities of group members.
Kіrіlenko, O., Ryzhkova, V., Rybalko, L., Zahrebelnyi, O., Sokolova, Y. / Volume 13 - Issue 76: 247-257 / April, 2024
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Literature Review
The scope of the translator's tasks is determined
by the translation industry, which is undergoing
substantial changes: a growing need for
professional networking and cultural
communication; major changes in the interpreter
qualification requirements; a replacement of
classical translation and an ongoing
diversification of a translation profession; a
growth of virtual translator teams; an increasing
need for organizing the work with terminology,
generating multilingual terminological and text
databases; software localization; continuous
integration of the translation profession with
special disciplines. Changing market
requirements have resulted in expanding the
social roles of a translator. Translators,
customers, translation managers, text authors,
editors, experts and consultants specialized in a
particular subject area are participants in the
activity of professional translators (Pattison &
Cragie, 2022; Şahin & Kansu-Yetkiner, 2020).
According to Esselink (2022), a translation
project can be successful only if translations are
executed on time, within budget and in
accordance with agreed quality standards. Any
professional activity, and a translator activity in
particular, is not possible without reliable and
easy-to-use tools (Bowker, 2022). Proponents of
the situated translation theory argue that the
translation process is carried out not only in the
translator's mind but also by complex systems
including people, their specific social and
physical environment, and all their cultural
prerequisites (Risku & Rogl, 2020). Risku (2010)
considers these prerequisites, including
computer information technologies (text
processors, online research tools, translation
memories), as a means of translator's activity.
Zetzsche (2023), a professional technical
translator, offers the following classification of
the translator's tools according to their functional
feature: tools providing translators with specific
functions (resource search, terminology
management, project management, word count,
software localization); tools providing functions
to better use of translation aids (term and text
extraction, transformation, text justification,
quality assurance); tools integrating a wide range
of functions (translation tools, applications for
complex file formats, development of reusable
translation and terminology databases).
According to Pym (2011), these tools are not just
supplementary ones for the translator's activity.
They change the very nature of the translator's
cognitive activity, social relations, and
professional status. Computer-assisted
translation (CAT) tools are currently one of the
main approaches to the professional work of
translators. CAT techniques provide translators
with the tools to automate a translation project
while leaving them the right of decision-making
and free correction of translation. The main
objective of CAT tools is to shorten the time
needed to translate a document via machine
translation. It is possible by reusing translated
content (also known as translation memory
(TM)), presenting prepared parts from TM,
automatic translation according to glossaries,
automatic verification of the translation quality,
etc. The CAT tools also allow to use checking for
grammar or spelling, terms management, specific
dictionaries, term databases, and text indexers. It
helps to conform the translation with the source
text, manage projects and translation memories,
as well as automate translation work. CAT tools
play an important role in the curricula of
international universities for the translators'
training (Tarasenko et al., 2020).
Alotaibi (2014) & Fernández-Parra (2016) have
shown that the insufficient use of CAT resources
as language learning tools in universities happens
both because the teachers do not know the
didactic capabilities of the systems as well as
teachers and students are not prepared to work
with them. The guideline for the training of
future translators should be the coordination of
their training programs with the requirements of
the translation services market. The Ukrainian
standard of higher education in specialty 035
"Philology" for the second level of higher
education notes that a master should be prepared
for effective interaction in a professional team
and with representatives of other professional
groups of different levels, as well as be able to
plan, organize, implement and present research
or innovative developments in a particular
philological field, in particular, applied
linguistics. Thus, an important issue is to develop
master’s skills in working with both CAT tools
and soft skills.
However, the analysis of the Educational and
Professional Program content of masters in
Philology in Ukrainian universities shows that
the solution to this problem is fragmented and
must be addressed.
There are several approaches to the process of
developing soft skills. (Devadason et al., 2010),
are focusing on the development of soft skills in
the teaching and learning process through
integrated inter-disciplinary courses, rather than
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separate academic subjects for university
students.
The study by Rashidi et al. (2018) considers soft
skills as interpersonal qualities that a person
possesses, which are developed through an active
participation of students in collaborative learning
activities. Hard skills and soft skills have a close
and inescapable connection complementing and
balancing each other (Setiana et al., 2019).
The most advantageous way to activate the
formation and further development of the soft
skills is the implementation of interdisciplinary
projects. The effectiveness of using
interdisciplinary project-based learning for the
soft skills development has been shown in the
studies by (Vogler et al., 2018),
(Cardoso-Espinosa et al., 2021), (Younis et al.,
2021) and (Licorish et al., 2022). Research have
shown that the interdisciplinary character of
project-based learning ensured essential aspects
of student education which were difficult to
implement within traditional classroom learning.
The results have also emphasized the importance
of inter-disciplinary collaboration of teachers
within the framework of the project-based
learning experience.
The work by (Almonte et al., 2023) has proven
the effectiveness of the soft skills development as
a part of mandatory training course, that has been
confirmed by both students and employers. To
raise awareness among students about soft skills
in academic and professional activities,
researchers have proposed implementing the soft
skills development in undergraduate and
graduate programs.
A literature analysis has shown that the education
of future translators should be guided by
coordinated training programs with the
requirements of translation services market,
which has been undergoing major
transformations since the profession of a linguist
has becoming increasingly specialized and
multidisciplinary, that is impossible without
reliable and easy-to-use tools, such as CAT
platforms. Studies have revealed a need for
developed soft skills to maintain a collective
character of a modern translator work. Despite
this, there is a limited number of works focused
on the development of soft skills in future
translators.
We believe that the solution to this problem is
urgent and requires specially organized study.
We pay a special attention to the development of
soft skills in masters - future translators in the
process of the group project implementation by
using the SmartCat platform. Additionally, the
study discusses the didactic capabilities of the
SmartCat platform, which can motivate teachers
to use it in the academic process.
Methodology
The study employed the following methods: a
content analysis of the study results from
scientists on the development of soft skills; the
use of information technology in the training
process for future technical translators; a method
for monitoring the activity and communication
process of group members on the SmartCat
Cloud Platform and in the Mentor distance
learning system; an online questionnaire using
Google Forms to determine the attitude of
masters to using the SmartCat Cloud Platform;
qualitative approach to data collection, analysis
of Wilcoxon Signed-Rank-test and Kruskal-
Wallis Test Calculator.
Participants
We conducted the study at the Department of
Applied Linguistics, National Aerospace
University n. a. N. E. Zhukovsky “KhAI” during
2021 – 2023 academic years. The number of
students participating was 48 masters, ten of
whom were men, and thirty-eight masters were
women. Groups were formed at the request of the
students using a learner-centered approach taking
into account the rights, choices and desires of
individual students. Such groups provided
comfortable conditions for working and learning
cooperation of the students. It was impossible to
form gender-homogeneous teams due to a small
number of young men (18%). Nevertheless, the
men were assigned to different teams in the
project. Choosing the number of students in the
group, we were guided by the recommendations
of Davies (2009).
Instruments
Each team member had a certain role: a manager,
a translator, and a post-editor. The main
functions of the manager included creating a
project (creating a project activity in the project
system and a project schedule, recruiting a team
for project implementation, assigning salaries to
project participants, distributing tasks between
the project participants, monitoring the task
completion by the project participants, choosing
machine translation tools for text, defining
requirements for the translation quality). The
main functions of the translator included
preliminary text editing (checking the
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grammatical, spelling and logical correctness of
a source text; changing the word order at the level
of phrases and sentences; replacing idiomatic
expressions; changing complex punctuation).
Furthermore, entering the original and target
languages, creating a glossary of terms in an xlsx
file, attaching an xlsx file to a project, editing a
glossary, and creating a TM, saving the TM in a
file and text translation were also integrated. The
main functions of the post-editor included text
normalization to a single style after a machine
translation, composing the description of typical
translation errors, editing a glossary of terms and
TM. The group project was organized using the
SmartCat Cloud Platform. Constraints for
conducting the educational group project were
the time of the project and limited free options of
the SmartCat Cloud Platform. The project
implementation time were limited to 4 weeks.
Procedures
We implemented the training group project
within the academic subject “Information
technology usage in linguistic research” which
was learned by first-year masters in the first
semester. The purpose of the group project was
to create a terminological dictionary covering the
aircraft industry term system. The topic was
relevant because the existing terminological
aircraft fund needed to be complemented and
upgraded. As part of the group project, we gave
each group the task of compiling a glossary (each
group created 22 terms for a total of 260 terms),
including an aircraft terminology system and the
TM for texts from the aircraft industry. Based on
the created glossary and TM, we checked the
translation quality of aviation technical tests. The
Cloud Platform SmartCat was used to implement
the group project as well as organize,
communicate and monitor the group work of
masters. The group and individual results of the
training group project implementation were
documented via the university-wide distance
learning Mentor system using the Moodle
platform.
After the training group project completion, a
teacher, who acted as an expert, measured the
masters’ grade of soft skill development. The
study included 7 stages. At the first stage, under
the Order of the Ministry of Education and
Science of Ukraine No. 871 (2019) for the
specialty 035 “Philology” and following
European Master's in Translation program (Emt
Competence Framework, 2022), we determined
the soft skills for Masters of Philology necessary
for the group project implementation by a virtual
team based on the SmartCat Cloud Platform:
skills of planning and managing time, workload
and stress; skills to comply with project
implementation deadlines, instructions and
specifications; teamwork skills, including in a
virtual environment, using modern
communication technologies; responsible use of
information technology for professional
purposes; constant self-assessment, updating and
development of competencies and skills through
personal strategies and collaborative learning. At
the second stage, for all roles in the group, the
teacher rated actual levels of soft skills
development in masters following the European
standard for the training of translators of the
European Masters in Translation program and
using the technology tools for quantitative
measurement of the education quality in an
educational institution by Yelnikova G.V.
(2001). At the third stage, masters planed their
work in the group using the activity of the
“Forum”. They determined the goal, formulated
the project tasks, drew up a schedule for the
project, distributed roles in the group, and chose
the means of implementing the project and
communication in it. At the fourth stage, the
masters carried out the project. At the fifth stage,
masters produced individual reports on the
activity implemented within the group project
and uploaded reports for an assessment into the
university-wide Mentor distance learning system
based on the Moodle platform. At the sixth stage,
under the schedule for the group project
implementation, the presentation of the project
results occurred in the Google Meet online
conference in the presence of other groups. At the
last stage, the teacher rated the levels of soft skills
development in Masters of Philology after the
group project implementation. To assess the
significance of the results obtained, the Wilcoxon
Signed-Rank Test was used. We formulated two
hypotheses:
H0: positive changes (shifts) in the level of soft
skills development in Masters in the process of
the group project implementation using the
cloud-based SmartCat platform are random.
H1: positive changes (shifts) in the level of soft
skills development in Masters in the process of
the group project implementation using the
cloud-based SmartCat platform are non-random.
The Kruskal-Wallis Test Calculator was used to
determine whether there were differences in the
three groups (n1=19, 2021; n2=15, 2022; n3=14,
2023) regarding the average value of the
softskills developed by the masters in the process
of the group project implementation using the
SmartСat Cloud platform.
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Results
Masters were adults, socially established
individuals who made their own decisions,
actively regulated their behavior, and had a C1
level of English proficiency, so they played the
leading role in organizing the group project. The
main feature of the group project implementation
was the process of self-determination of its
organization and implementation parameters. A
teacher created favorable conditions for the
group project and helped the masters to identify
their needs. Such organization of the training
project made it possible to achieve the following
learning outcomes for masters within the
academic discipline “Information technology
usage in linguistic research”. In particular, to
formulate the goals and objectives of both the
group project and the individual activities of each
participant; to develop a schedule for completing
the group project tasks; to justify the means of
the group project implementation; to critically
analyze the results of activities in the group
project; to demonstrate teamwork roles
depending on experience and practical interests;
to efficiently use the SmartCat Cloud Platform to
perform professional tasks in the group project;
to manage, regulate and control the work; to
organize the workplace; to manage time
correctly; to meet deadlines. The study results are
presented in Table 1.
Table 1.
Results of the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test
Parameter
Value
P-value
5.961e-8
Surprisal (S-value)
23.9999
Effect Size (r)
0.8792
Z
5.42
W, (W-, W+)
0, (0, 741)
Number of pairs (N)
48
Non-zero difference pairs (n)
38
Ties Correction
94.5
S.E
68.266
)
d
x
Average of differences (
2.9375
)
d
SD of differences (S
2.0043
Normality p-value
0.001068
Skewness
0.07283
Skewness Shape
Potentially Symmetrical (pval=0.832)
Excess kurtosis
-0.5962
Kurtosis Shape
Potentially Mesokurtic, normal like tails (pval=0.377)
Source: systematized by the authors
Results of the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test
indicated a significant difference between Before
(Mdn = 5, n = 48) and After (Mdn = 9, n = 48), Z
= 5.4, p < 0.001, r = 0.9. Since the p-value < α,
H0 was rejected and H1 was accepted, the
positive change in the developed level of soft
skills in masters in the group project using the
cloud-based SmartCat platform was non-
random.
The calculation results have shown insignificant
differences at two significance levels (ρ=0.01
and ρ=0.05). We have explained this result by the
following reasons. In all three groups, the same
teachers provided support, guidance and
motivation for the masters to complete the group
project using the SmartCat platform. The survey
results have shown that 60% of the masters had
practical experience working in a team, and they
shared their experience with other project
participants. The educational goals and
objectives of the project were defined and
notified to all project members, which also
contributed to a close interaction and activity in
the project. The students dynamically
communicated with each other and shared their
thoughts and ideas using various digital
technologies and the SmartCat platform. This
may also have allowed to achieve similar
performance levels in their work. Thus, a
combination of clear goals, effective use of tools,
interaction within the group, and support from
teachers have resulted in the similar level of soft
skills developed in the three groups.
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The group project implementation was effective
if the masters were personally interested in it and
when the tasks performed by them met their
practical goals. The survey result of the masters
has shown the priority motives for the project
implementation: “Getting information about the
functionality of the cloud-based SmartCat
platform” – 23% of respondents, “Terminology
glossary development in the aircraft industry” –
20% of respondents, “Translation memory
development” – 18% of respondents. The
responses have shown that the masters had
positive motives in mind while implementing the
project. It happened because the masters
coordinated the significance and content of the
group project with their practical and cognitive
needs: to get a job, create a glossary and TM to
use in practical classes on the translation theory
or during research work, as well in the future.
The remaining 39% of masters correlated their
participation in the group project with the need to
complete tasks as a part of the educational
process. The analysis of discussions in the
“Forum” made it possible to reveal the main
challenges of planning the group project. When
designing the project goals and objectives, some
masters replaced the goals with the content of
training: “to know the main functions of the
SmartCat Cloud Platform”, “to know the features
of creating a glossary in the SmartCat Cloud
Platform”. They formulated goals that were not
set and had a general wording from which it was
difficult to understand the project result. For
example, “to be able to use the capabilities of the
SmartCat Cloud Platform in the process of
technical text translation”. They formulated
goals that met their private interests and planned
their activities: “learning how to create a project
in the SmartCat Cloud Platform”. The masters
formulated some tasks with the general phrases
“to define aviation terms”. Several tasks were
excessively detailed “selecting a project creation
mode”, and “selecting a mode of team members”.
When planning the schedule for completing
tasks, they reduced (compared to the objective)
the needs necessary for the task duration and did
not account for the need to prepare for the next
task. When choosing the means of implementing
the project, the masters preferred polytechnic
dictionaries over specialized dictionaries, or they
did not indicate the need to use dictionaries at all.
After the project implementation, the masters
participated in the survey. Answering the
question “Do you find it useful to use the
SmartCat Cloud Platform in the educational
process for masters?”, 85% of masters have
found the use of the SmartCat Cloud Platform
beneficial. To the question “What advantages of
using the SmartCat Cloud Platform in the group
project can you note?”, the masters answered: an
ability to complete tasks online (100%); an
ability to work using different hardware
platforms (65%); a convenient intuitive interface
(74%); an ability to visualize and understand the
features of a factual virtual team of translators
(54%); a clear split of work between team
members (62%); collective responsibilities for
the project (35%); a visual representation of the
work intermediate results (52%); an ability to
translate different segments by team members
simultaneously (68%); an ability to get instant
answers to questions online (46%); a translation
with a simultaneous discussion of translation
issues in the comments (37%). An analysis of the
masters’ answers has shown that the use of the
SmartCat Cloud Platform contributed to
increased motivation and development of needs
and interests in learning. It also shaped their
feelings of belonging to the team and the
conditions for collaboration while solving
common problems. It helped to develop
partnerships to get the most effective results. The
participants noted an excessive initiative of some
team members in discussion and decision-
making (35%) and a passivity of the others (15%)
as the main difficulties of the training group
project.
Discussion
Researchers are currently paying a great deal of
attention to the problem of developing soft skills.
It has come to play a major role in curricula along
with hard skills (Massey, 2023). However,
according to Cimatti (2016), it is quite difficult
for teachers to keep track of them and evaluate.
An analysis of studies has shown no uniform
definition and structure of soft skills. It is
common ground that soft skills are not
specialized and, due to their versatility, are the
most essential goal for all professional persons.
They influence the effectiveness of both masters’
educational process and their future professional
activities. The development of soft skills should
occur throughout the entire stage of students'
learning at higher educational institutions.
A study analysis has shown that the use of online
tools contributed to the development of soft skills
necessary for the future professional career of
translators (Herget, 2020). Although the role of
up-to-date online tools is considerable for the
activities of professional translators, they are
rarely used at universities in the training
programs for masters in philology (Massey,
2023). We fully endorse the view of
Fernández-Parra (2016) that this is due, on the
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one hand, to the fact that teachers are often
unaware of the didactic capabilities of the
systems and do not integrate them into university
training programs for future technical translators,
and on the other hand, to the fact that Masters do
not realize the importance of using online tools
for their professional development.
Wilson et al. (2012) have shown a high
effectiveness in the development of soft skills
given the environments of operational training.
At the implementation phase of the educational
group project, we limited the tasks of each master
in the group and ascertained the degree of
individual responsibility for the work. A project
manager created a “project activity” using the
SmartCat online platform, fixed time limits for
the project and invited a translator and a post-
editor to participate in the project. After
translator's and post-editor's confirmation of their
participation in the project, the manager fixed a
wage rate for them, assigned tasks among the
project participants, defined the source language
and the target language, and also added a free-to-
play machine translation software Microsoft
Translator, connected automated translation
quality control, as well as specified requirements
for the development of a glossary and a
translation memory for the translator and the
post-editor.
The translator selected aviation terms and saved
them to an xlsx file. When choosing terms from
the sphere of aircraft engineering, the masters
were not limited to the project requirements
formulated by the teacher. To select unique
terms, sort them, and evaluate their frequency in
technical literature, the free LexTutor service
was chosen. They then used Excel application to
create a glossary that enabled a master of
translation to begin the work together with the
manager. The master of translation uploaded the
glossary generated by Excel into the project.
When the terms in the glossary were confirmed
by a translation quality manager, the translator
saved the glossary in the project and used it for
machine translation of text fragments. It has
provided the relevance and uniformity of terms.
The translator's responsibilities also included
creating the translation memory (as a means of
translating technical text) in Excel and loading it
into the project. The post-editor reviewed and
edited the translated fragments as soon as they
were approved. Commenting on segments in the
SmartCat Cloud Platform allowed the post-editor
to leave comments and the translators to ask
clarifying questions about the correctness of the
translation in context. The editor ensured a
uniform style for presenting the text, indicated
and analyzed common errors, edited and saved
the translation memory into a file. This has
enabled to develop skills of analysis, critical
thinking and self-control. All team members
worked on the project at the same time without
violating anyone's work pace. They had access to
state-of-the-art translation resources that allowed
to guarantee the project's completion on time and
develop self-management and self-learning
skills. Teachers monitored the activity of team
members using individual progress indicators in
the SmartCat project and data about the
participants displayed in the SmartCat interface
(who worked in the project, which documents
were in the work within the project, what
language pair was used in the project). A visual
representation of the task completion allowed
both the masters and the teachers to assess the
progress at all main stages and the amount of
work completed and remaining within the
project. The exchange of ideas and prompt
discussion of current issues as part of the project
were carried out using the option “Chat” in the
cloud-based SmartCat platform. This has
promoted the development of communication,
collaboration and leadership skills.
Thus, the study results have shown that the
Smartcat platform could be used to develop the
soft skills of masters, enriching their learning
experience and preparing them for a successful
career in various educational contexts: teamwork
and communication, project management,
editing and feedback, independent learning and
research.
These project activities of the masters have
resulted in a public statement at the Google Meet
online conference, where they conducted
reflection-based analysis of their activities,
demonstrated ways to solve project problems and
practical application of the results. Such an
organization of the educational project has
helped to develop the following soft skills: to
formulate the goals and objectives of both the
group project and the individual activities of each
participant; develop a schedule for completing
group project tasks; justify ways to implement
the group project; critically analyze the results of
one's own activities in the group project;
demonstrate teamwork roles based on one's own
experience and practical interest; use the
SmartCat Cloud Platform responsibly to
complete professional tasks in the group project;
manage, regulate and control own work; organize
the workplace; regulate one's time; comply with
timeframes for the educational group project
completion.
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original source is cited.
Conclusions
It has been shown that soft skills allow specialists
to navigate the environment, interact with co-
workers, work effectively and achieve their
goals, complementing hard skills. Soft skills
have been defined to influence the effectiveness
of both Masters’ training efforts and their future
professional activities. It has been revealed that
the development of soft skills should begin in a
university environment, as they are essential for
the academic and professional advancements of
future specialists. The soft skills in Masters of
Philology required to implement the group
project using the SmartCat Cloud Platform have
been identified and analyzed: planning and time,
workload, stress management skills; skills of
compliance with project implementation terms,
instructions and technical specifications;
teamwork skills, including in a virtual media,
using modern communication technologies;
responsible use of information technology for
professional purposes; continuous self-
assessment, updating and developing
competencies and skills through personal
strategies and co-education. The interpreter role-
functioning (manager, translator, post-editor) has
been defined for modeling them in the training
group project.
The didactic opportunities of the SmartCat Cloud
Platform have been revealed, enabling
instructors to monitor team goals and objectives
as well as their content, compliance with the rules
of conduct in the team by each participant,
supervise the stages of teamwork, control
communications between project participants,
evaluate the whole group work as well as a
personal contribution of each participant to the
project results. The findings have shown the
effectiveness of developing soft skills in Masters
of Philology in the process of implementing the
group project using the SmartCat Cloud
Platform.
Recommendations
The described experience is interdisciplinary
since it can be transferred to other academic
subjects of educational industries. The research
conducted does not cover all aspects of the issue.
Further study requires the use of training group
projects performed on the SmartCat Cloud
Platform in studying such professional subjects
as “Translation of Scientific and Technical Texts
in Aviation”, “Academic and Professional
English Language”.
Study Limitations
Limitations for conducting the educational group
project were the time of the project and limited
free options of the SmartCat Cloud Platform. We
limited the project implementation time to 4
weeks. As a part of the educational group project,
we used the following free functions of the
SmartCat Cloud Platform: creating projects;
engaging an unlimited number of users;
assigning wages to users; appointing specialists
to different stages of working with a text
(translation, editing, proofreading), monitoring
the work of performers; creating and managing
TM and terminological glossaries; automatic
quality checks; connecting industry dictionaries,
recruiting the team, translating a limited amount
of text segments.
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