Professor Constantin Orasan
Academic and research departments
Literature and Languages, Centre for Translation Studies, Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence (PAI).About
Biography
I am Professor of Language and Translation Technologies at the Centre of Translation Studies, University of Surrey, UK, and a Fellow of the Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence. Before starting this role, I was Reader (Associate Professor) in Computational Linguistics at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, and the deputy head of the Research Group in Computational Linguistics at the same university. I hold a PhD in computational linguistics and a BSc in computer science.
With over 25 years of experience in the fields of Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and Linguistics, I have established myself as a leading researcher in the development of technologies that facilitate access to information. My PhD was in automatic summarisation, and I have led projects on question answering, text simplification, and translation technologies. Notable projects that I have led are EmpASR, an AHRC-funded project focused on training interpreters on how to benefit from the latest developments in artificial intelligence; HarnessingNLP4Court, a UKRI-funded project focused on facilitating access to legal information; the EXPERT project, an Initial Training Network (ITN) funded under the EU’s FP7 to train the next generation of world-class researchers in the field of data-driven translation technology; and the FIRST project, which developed language technologies for making texts more accessible to people with autism.
My current research is interdisciplinary, focusing on the intersection of AI, NLP, and translation studies. In recent years, I have increasingly focused on the practical application of NLP to support translators and interpreters. My recent publications explore reference-less translation evaluation, the processing of multilingual content in low-resource settings, the use of automatic speech recognition to support interpreters, and the use of large language models in text accessibility. My research is well known as a result of over 150 peer-reviewed articles in journals, books, and international conferences.
I am currently leading an EPSRC-funded project focused on making science accessible, and I am Co-Director of the ADA Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Network. More information about my work can be found at https://dinel.org.uk/.
Areas of specialism
My qualifications
News
Research Recent research projects
These are the main projects I have been involved in since I joined the University of Surrey. A list of older projects can be found on my personal website.
Terminology-Aware Machine Translation for Accessible Science (TamTAS)
Principal investigator: Professor Constantin Orasan
Start date: February 2026
End date: January 2029
Funding amount: £310,525.94
Empowering public service interpreters with the help of automatic speech recognition
Principal investigator: Professor Constantin Orasan
Start date: September 2024
End date: February 2025
Funding amount: £51,179
Harnessing court data using NLP and spoken language technology
Principal investigator: Professor Constantin Orasan
Start date: March 2022
End date: August 2023
Towards User-intent aware Multimodal Retrieval
Principal investigator: Dr Diptesh Kanojia
Start date: April 2025
End date: March 2027
Funding amount: £120,000
Recent research projects
These are the main projects I have been involved in since I joined the University of Surrey. A list of older projects can be found on my personal website.
Terminology-Aware Machine Translation for Accessible Science (TamTAS)
Principal investigator: Professor Constantin Orasan
Start date: February 2026
End date: January 2029
Funding amount: £310,525.94
Empowering public service interpreters with the help of automatic speech recognition
Principal investigator: Professor Constantin Orasan
Start date: September 2024
End date: February 2025
Funding amount: £51,179
Harnessing court data using NLP and spoken language technology
Principal investigator: Professor Constantin Orasan
Start date: March 2022
End date: August 2023
Towards User-intent aware Multimodal Retrieval
Principal investigator: Dr Diptesh Kanojia
Start date: April 2025
End date: March 2027
Funding amount: £120,000
Supervision
Postgraduate research supervision
- First supervisor of Eleanor Taylor-Stilgoe's PhD Thesis on A study of healthcare staff awareness of potential risk posed by machine translation
- Second supervisor of Wangyi Tang’s PdD thesis on Disrupter or enabler? Assessing the impact of using automatic speech recognition technology in interpreter-mediated legal proceedings
- Second supervisor of Archchana Sindhujan’s PhD thesis on Document level quality estimation
- Second supervisor of Shiyi Tan's PhD thesis on ASR Support: A Solution for Cognitive Load and Interpreting Quality?
- First supervisor of Najat Alhuthali's PhD thesis on Using MT in Translating Saudi Laws and Regulations
- First supervisor of Anastasiia Bezobrazova's PhD thesis on An investigation of prompting techniques for improving text accessibility
- First supervisor of Daria Sokova’s PhD thesis on LLM-based Assessment of Web Content Accessibility
- Second supervisor of Charlotte Bonneau’s PhD thesis on AI-mediated comics: a critical phenomenology of access
- Second supervisor of Elena Volkanovska’s PhD thesis on Integrating large language models in natural language processing pipelines for linguistic annotation of domain-specific texts from various genres (TU Darmstadt, Germany)
- First supervisor of Georgina Willoughby’s PhD thesis on Context-sensitive AI for text simplification and comprehension
- Second supervisor of Hope Qianhui Hao’s PhD thesis on Evaluating Interpreting Performance through Comparative Quality Assessment Models
- First supervisor of Emily Wells’ PhD thesis on Investigation of AI chatbots or widgets with entity linking for accessibility
- Second supervisor of Iuliia Smarkhtina’s PhD thesis on AI for speech-to-text accessibility
Completed postgraduate research projects I have supervised
- Second supervisor of Maria Andreea Deleanu’s PhD on Enhancing cognitive accessibility: embedding ‘Accessible Cues’ in audiovisual material to support comprehension and enjoyment for audiences with diverse cognitive abilities, University of Surrey, UK (pdf)
- First supervisor of Shenbin Qian's PhD thesis on Evaluating Machine Translation of Emotion-loaded Chinese User-generated Content, University of Surrey, UK, 2025, (pdf)
- Second supervisor of Gökhan Firat's PhD thesis on Translation Work in the Digital Economy: Working Conditions of Translators on Platforms and in Cooperatives, University of Surrey, UK, 2024, (pdf)
- Second supervisor of Alistair Plum’s PhD thesis on Biographical information extraction: A language-agnostic methodology for datasets and models, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2023 (pdf).
- Second supervisor of Hadeel Saadany’s PhD thesis entitled A Study of the translation of sentiment in user-generated text, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2023 (pdf)
- Second supervisor of Tharindu Ranasinghe’ PhD thesis on Deep learning based semantic textual similarity for applications in translation technology, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2021 (pdf)
- Second supervisor of Reshmi Gopalakrishna Pillai’s PhD thesis on Expressions of psychological stress on Twitter: detection and characterisation, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2021 (pdf)
- First supervisor of Richard Evans' PhD thesis entitled Sentence simplification for text processing, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2020
- First supervisor of Hanna Bechara' PhD thesis entitled A Semantic Textual Similarity Enhanced Quality Estimation Method and its Applications to Natural Language Processing Task, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2020
- First supervisor of Rohit Gupta's PhD thesis on Use of language technology to improve matching and retrieval in translation memories, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2016
- Second supervisor of Sanja Stajner's PhD thesis on New Data-Driven Approaches to Text Simplification, University of Wolverhampton, 2015 (pdf)
- Second supervisor of Natalia Konstantinova's PhD thesis on Knowledge acquisition from user reviews for Interactive Question Answering, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2013 (pdf)
- First supervisor of Iustin Dornescu's PhD thesis on Encyclopedic question answering, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2012 (pdf)
- Second supervisor of Georgiana Marsic's PhD thesis on Temporal Processing of News: Annotation of Temporal Expressions, Verbal Events and Temporal Relations, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2011 (pdf)
- Second supervisor of Laura Hasler's PhD thesis entitled From extracts to abstracts: Human summary production operations for computer-aided summarisation, University of Wolverhampton, UK, 2007 (pdf)
Teaching
MODULES TAUGHT THIS ACADEMIC YEAR
TRAM500: Introduction to computational thinking for translators (module leader)
The purpose of this module is to enable students to acquire basic and intermediate concepts of computer science and programming, and to learn how to apply them to problems related to translation-related tasks such as glossary creation, error analysis, automatic substitution. The programming language used in the class is Python.
TRAM502: Smart technologies for translators (module leader)
The module explores the main theoretical and practical aspects of smart technologies for translation, with emphasis on how to use methods from Natural Language Processing and Corpus Linguistics to help translators. The purpose of this module is to enable students to understand the challenges faced when using computers to process text automatically or when they need to process speech as an input.
TRAM449: Interpreting and technologies
This module introduces students to the principles and practical implications of using technologies in the interpreting profession. In this module, I contributed with lectures on machine translation and speech to speech translation.
TRAM495: Principles and challenges of translation and interpreting
This module provides students with a systematic framework for understanding the key concepts in Translation and Interpreting Studies and how they relate and apply to everyday professional practice. In this module, I contributed with lectures on human-computer interaction for translators and interpreters and quality in translation.