The OTCT project will build on the results and recommendations of the OPTIMALE network, an Erasmus Academic Network of 70 academic and language industry partners in the field of professional translation. The OPTIMALE online survey of language industry employers’ competence requirements showed that awareness of and the ability to implement professional procedures throughout the translation process are key factors in the employability of university translation graduates. This led to the definition of good practice in specific areas of translator training, in particular in the integration of professionally-oriented practices in the curriculum.The OTCT project (Optimising Translator Training through Collaborative Technical Translation) aims to enhance the professionally-oriented content of university translation degree programmes via intensive collaborative technical translation sessions in simulated professional conditions (referred to as “Tradutech sessions”), and by exchanging good practice and resources on the implementation of project-based teaching and learning in the field of translator training.The project will involve students and staff in advanced translation degree programmes from seven academic institutions (Rennes 2 University, France; HE Vinci, Brussels, Belgium; Swansea University, UK; Univerzita Karlova V Praze, Prague, Czech Republic; Universitatea Babes-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; Universita ta Malta, Malta; Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, Spain). It will primarily involve 1st and/or 2nd year Master’s degree students (i.e. 20-80 students in each institution) but may also involve students in the final year of Bachelor’s degree programmes where relevant (i.e. Sevilla). Two to three members of the teaching staff from each institution will be directly involved, but a larger number will benefit from the outcomes of the project.The project will center on the “Tradutech” intensive sessions, with preparatory activities leading up to the sessions and material from the sessions feeding into further resources for use in the classroom. Four “Tradutech” sessions will take place during the project. Each five-day session will involve students setting up simulated translation companies (i.e. teams of 5-10 students, with specific responsibilities and roles assigned to each team member), who will then carry out large-scale multilingual technical translation projects according to the specifications and deadlines set by their “clients”. Source documents will be authentic technical manuals, reports or multimedia materials which will be translated into the main target language(s) of the partner institutions. The source documents will be in English or French as the case may be. Projects will be managed in turn by students from each partner institution, using collaborative software to exchange resource materials and files and computer-assisted translation software to carry out the translations. Prior to the Tradutech sessions, students will receive training in technical translation, project management, quality control and translation technologies, using resources produced by different partner institutions and shared with the other partners within the project. Participants will be briefed on the conditions and implementation of the Tradutech sessions, using tutorials produced by students from Rennes and Cluj with prior experience of such sessions. A joint terminology project will involve students from all the partner institutions, in order to promote cooperation and familiarize them with the use of the collaborative platform set up for the project. Output from the student “translation companies” will be assessed according to professional criteria by language industry professionals and feedback will be provided to the students and used as learning materials in classes following the Tradutech sessions. All students who have completed a Tradutech session (i.e. have successfully carried out the responsibilities and tasks allocated to them within one or several translation projects) and the preparatory work prior to the session, will be awarded 4 ECTS credits as part of their study programme.Two of Rennes Tradutech sessions will be attended by teaching staff from the other partner institutions, who will take part in a parallel training of trainer session. Two other sessions will be attended by students from the other institutions, who will be integrated as full members of the Rennes teams.Sustainability will be ensured by teaching and learning resource production and dissemination, the training of trainer sessions, and the production of a Handbook on the implementation of project-based translator training which will be made freely available to other institutions. Participating students will benefit from the hands-on experience and professional feedback, while teaching staff will gain experience of project-based collaborative learning methodologies.

In the natural world, nearly all colors that we experience are seen within a context of surrounding light and nearby objects, and this context strongly affects color appearance. In this way, one of the most important mechanisms in color appearance is color assimilation. Color assimilation is a shift in the perceived color of a region toward the chromatic appearance of a nearby inducing stimulus. The Watercolor effect is a new interesting phenomenon for studying such process. Here, color assimilation occurs within an area enclosed by a light chromatic contour (e.g., orange) which in turn is surrounded by a darker chromatic contour (e.g., purple), thus the central area will appear orangish. At the core of the project is the fine investigation of this visual phenomenon. How chromatic assimilation is integrated to generate perceived colors is a cornerstone in color vision. Here, some experiments using psychophysical and fMRI methods are proposed to elucidate such questions. As a result, relatively little is known about color assimilation. Indeed, most studies showed a diversity of patterns producing color or brightness assimilation but quantitative measurements were not systematically reported. Contour parameters producing the coloration effect have been recognized from some previous work and the importance of these changes has recently been emphasized. Data are still lacking, however, that identify specific conditions responsible for color assimilation. To that end, some set of experiments are proposed to determine the strength of the effect depending on contour parameters (widths, waviness and separation) but also as depending of background luminance. Our originality is to determine precisely how parameter modulations change our perception of color using some psychophysical techniques. Thus, observers will report in a cone-based color-space what they perceived precisely using a hue-cancellation method. A set of experiment will be also developed to propose an explanation of this phenomenon. The coloration effect is characterized by a spread of color from the inner contour onto the enclosed surface area, suggesting a global effect from sparse (local) stimulation. The question is how the color diffuses out of the boundary to fill the adjacent area. These phenomena can in principle be explained by two alternative theories. One assumes that color and brightness signals actually spread from the borders into uniform regions at the same cortical level. Other postulates that color is represented at a higher level as attributes of object surfaces, and assumes that the phenomenal color spreading corresponds to a change in this abstract representation. Here, we propose to determine the locus of neural activity of color assimilation and to test these competing hypotheses using an fMRI method. We will also respond to the following question: Does the visual system respond to physically uniform surfaces in the same way as color assimilation? Finally, we will extend previous experiments by characterizing the relationship between parametric variations in color assimilation phenomenon with cortical responses. Moreover, we will display and analyze the results as a function of the retinotopic visual areas. The retinotopic procedure will distinguish the fMRI responses obtained from the contours to those obtained from the inner surface. The proposed experiments will provide an important step to understand the color appearance mechanisms recording behavioral data and by the way of neural correlates of color assimilation that never been explored.

It is state of the art that multi-model ensembles (MME) of future freshwater-related hazards of climate change (CC) (e.g. derived by driving a number of global hydrological models by the output of a number of climate models) are optimal for informing CC risk management. However, studies on how to best utilize MMEs (e.g. ISIMIP MMEs) in risk management are lacking. The main project goal is to co-develop methods for providing and utilizing MME data on freshwater-related hazards for risk and adaptation assessments at various spatial scales, and to provide data in a suitable way, in order to increase availability and applicability of information for different types of end-users, with a focus on how to address uncertainties. Furthermore, future research in the framework of ISIMIP is to be co-designed, focusing on uncertainty and water. Co-development of PUNI (Providing and Utilizing eNsemble Information) methods will be done jointly by global hydrological modelers, scientists investigating co-development methods and societal information needs, boundary organizations and stakeholders (end-users). They will all participate in three stakeholder dialogues at the global scale (end-user industries), transboundary scale (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), and river basin scale (Ebro). PUNI methods will be co-developed by testing alternative ways of presenting MME data in support of exemplary (participatory) CC risk assessments in each stakeholder dialogue in an iterative manner, based on MME data that are either available or generated specifically in the project in response to end-user input. Expected results include a handbook on PUNI methods and a web portal at UNESCO’s International Centre for Water Resources and Global Change where end-users from around the world will be able to access hydrological MME data for their region of interest for free and in a way that suits their needs, e.g. by selecting a hazard indicator for low flows as well as its spatial and temporal aggregation.