About me

Picture of Carla Parra Escartín

Welcome!

Thanks for visiting my website, my name is Carla, and I am a computational linguist and translator specialized in Human Factors in Machine Translation, Machine Translation Quality Evaluation, Translation Quality Assurance and Multiword Expressions. I am based in Dublin, Ireland.

I currently work as Research Manager for RWS Language Weaver, a leading Machine Translation and AI solutions provider. Before that I worked as the Global Program Manager of Iconic Translation Machines, Ltd., a Machine Translation company part of the RWS group and specialised in bespoke Machine Translation and Language Technology solutions. As of October 2021, Iconic Translation Machines and RWS integrated into RWS Language Weaver. Up to April 2020 I worked as Director of Linguistic Services at Unbabel, a Machine Translation startup company that aims at removing language barriers in customer support. Prior to joining Unbabel I worked as a Marie Skłodowska Curie fellow within the EDGE MSCA COFUND project at the ADAPT Centre in Dublin City University (DCU). While in Dublin I was also a member of the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies (CTTS) of DCU. In my MSCA project, I investigated how we can use Machine Translation to help non-native speakers of English to publish their research in English.

I graduated in English Philology at the University of Zaragoza (2004) and then moved to Barcelona to continue studying. There, I graduated in Translation and Interpretation (German, English, Spanish) (2006), and Linguistics and Technological Applications (2007). After working in the translation industry for a few years and as a part-time researcher in linguistic infrastructure projects, I was granted a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher fellowship in 2011. As a result of that, I relocated to Norway to pursue my PhD in Computational Linguistics at the University of Bergen. There, I also worked as a researcher in linguistic infrastructure projects. In 2015 I was granted a Marie Curie Experienced Researcher fellowship and relocated to Spain to work in a translation company researching the impact of Machine Translation in professional translation workflows.

I was also actively involved in the ICT Cost Action PARSEME, both as representative of Spain and as vice-leader of one of its working groups. A detailed list of the research projects I have been involved in is available here.

Areas of expertise

Multiword Expressions, Translation Studies, Natural Language Processing, Machine Translation, and Human Factors in Machine Translation.