Center for Languages and Translation Studies (CELTS)

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Centre for Languages and Translation Studies is the pioneer platform of translation studies as an academic field in Pakistan. It has played its instrumental role in creating awareness, developing human resources, providing foreign knowledge in our national language to the respective audience in the country. It is established fact now that trends in technology and globalization have fundamentally altered the scope and role of languages, cultures, demands of research and the needs of cultural diversity and harmony in recent times especially after post-Covid situation in world. Information technology and knowledge are the key determinants of wealth creation, social transformation, and human development. Language enables the delivery of information and knowledge coded in different sociocultural, political, and economic contexts. Language is considered the most important observable aspect of culture. It plays a pivotal role not only to communicate values, customs and beliefs, but also to form identity. Language and culture are knitted together in such a bonding that the loss of a language entails the loss of an identity, a culture, concepts and ideas. CeLTS also believes in data driven approaches for tracing and understanding linguistic patterns of national languages of Pakistan, which may be employed for AI-powered linguistic systems. It in this regard organizes workshops of international level on a regular basis to provide hands-on training to individuals interested in conducting research in various aspects of regional languages, especially in translation studies, computational linguistics, machine learning, natural language processing, corpus linguistic, forensic linguistics and screen translation. An intensive workshop on ‘Language Documentation’ provided training to the participants on digital archiving that included recording, annotation, translation, preservation and distribution of resulting material. A more recent one-week international training workshop on ‘Natural Language Processing’ organized by CeLTS helped professionals and research scholars from more than 30 universities of Pakistan to further enhance their NLP and AI skills. These initiatives will raise the technological standard of indigenous languages and will play a key role in development of a comprehensive linguistic system to address the socio-cultural and linguistic issues of Pakistan.

Director’s Message

In this backdrop, the establishment of the Centre for languages and Translation Studies (CeLTS) is based upon my belief that sharing of knowledge is today’s ever-changing world is the need of the hour. The process of sharing knowledge depends a lot on translation work and translation depends a lot on indigenous languages’ compatibility with the latest language technology, apps, soft wares, tools and gadgets. CeLTS is striving to meet the needs of Pakistani languages and cultures as a gateway both within the region and globally — serving as a hub for local and global talent, cross-disciplinary research, business-university partnerships and local entrepreneurship and innovation to support the creation of more avenues for local upgrading of high-end skills by producing authentic translators equipped with the knowledge of the concepts and principles which ensure the production of reliable translations in our national and indigenous languages and vice versa. It aims not just at producing Translation Scholars, but at nurturing the generations of the individuals equipped with knowledge and skills for a glorious national uplift. This is what the new age demands and what ensures our survival in this rapidly changing world.

The philosophy of CeLTS pertaining to languages revolves around revitalizing national and regional languages of Pakistan and aim to empower their speakers by mainstreaming them by following contemporary trends in education and research. For this purpose, Mphil & PhD programs in Applied Linguistics with specialization in Translation Studies and National languages programs are being offered by CeLTS which would permit scholars having academic backgrounds in various local languages to build the indigenous knowledge base through research and by providing world-class linguistic and technological based research management system and innovations in themes, programs and delivery methods to serve the evolving needs of less technologically equipped indigenous languages and cultures.

I believe that our efforts thus far have taken us in the right direction, and I can see indicators of our intended destination. Given the high caliber of our faculty and the methodical approach we've taken thus far, I am confident that CeLTS will achieve great success. I pray to Allah Almighty for enabling CeLTS to achieve its determined objectives.   

Chairperson

 

 

Faculty & Staff Members

 

 

About

The Allama Iqbal Open University was established in May, 1974, with the main objectives of providing educational opportunities to masses and to those who cannot leave their homes and jobs. During all these past years, the University has more than fulfilled this promise.