1,721,149 research outputs found
Approaches to human and machine translation quality assessment
Full text linkIn both research and practice, translation quality assessment is a complex task involving a range of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. This chapter provides a critical overview of the established and developing approaches to the definition and measurement of translation quality in human and machine translation workflows across a range of research, educational, and industry scenarios. We intertwine literature from several interrelated disciplines dealing with contemporary translation quality assessment and, while we acknowledge the need for diversity in these approaches, we argue that there are fundamental and widespread issues that remain to be addressed, if we are to consolidate our knowledge and practice of translation quality assessment in increasingly technologised environments across research, teaching, and professional practice
Using Free On-line Services in Machine Translation Teaching
No full textThis paper discusses the role that can be played in teaching machine translation (MT) by free on-line MT services,
emphasising the advantages that they offer for didactic purposes as well as their
drawbacks in comparison with traditional PC-based MT software. Some of the key
reasons behind the huge potential for the successful integration of on-line systems
into MT teaching activities are explored.
The paper argues that exposing students to Internet-based MT can raise their awareness on crucial issues in today’s
multilingual communication processes, which are relevant inter alia to web localisation and multilingual on-line
content management
Exploring Expo Milano 2015: a cross-linguistic comparison of food-related phraseology in translation using a comparallel corpus approach
No full textThis article compares the food-related phraseology used in the official online descriptions in English and Italian of the 116 national pavilions at the universal exhibition Expo Milano 2015, whose main theme was ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’. An innovative comparallel corpus methodology is adopted to investigate the bilingual phraseology celebrating the best culinary products and gastronomic traditions from all over the world; in spite of consisting of seemingly parallel texts, the pavilion descriptions in English and Italian are analysed as a comparable corpus: even though the corpus data were collected from corresponding localised versions of the Expo Milano 2015 website, a classic analysis of the English and Italian parallel texts was impracticable, because many of these descriptions were bound to be themselves translations from the official languages of the respective countries, resulting in a chaotic mix of language pairs and translation directions. The cross-linguistic phraseological comparison of the formal and functional features of the most frequent lexical items used to describe food cultures from across the world in the two languages shows that the English keywords tend to have a much broader and more diverse collocational range than their prima facie translation equivalents in Italian, which are subject to more severe co-selectional restrictions. This sheds light not only on how Expo Milano 2015 presented itself to the online global audience, but also, and more crucially, on how multilingual translated food-related phraseology shaped the perception of the key themes of this world-scale event across different linguistic and cultural communities
Relevance of Parallel Corpora to the Latest Developments of Machine Translation and Computer-assisted Translation
No full textThis paper discusses the role played by parallel corpora in the design and implementation of fully automatic machine translation (MT) systems, and also looks at their impact on the use of translation memory software, which represents one of the most popular computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools. The main features of example-based machine translation (EBMT) are outlined and compared with those of conventional rule-based machine translation (RBMT), emphasising in particular the viability of the corpus-based approach to MT for the so-called minority and low-density languages.
Pure EBMT systems rely on the examples provided by an aligned parallel corpus stored in a database for a given language pair, and they lack explicitly encoded linguistic information. As a result, the most important knowledge basis is represented by a selection of real translation examples contained in written corpora. The paper looks at the crucial aspects of the choice of the parallel corpora that make up the collection of aligned textual data, along with the practical issues raised by the maintenance, improvement, debugging and scaling-up of such example-based MT engines.
The second part of the paper is focused on the practical importance of aligned parallel corpora in the neighbouring area of computer-assisted translation, by considering in particular the popular translation memory (TM) tool. TMs allow professional translators to store, manage and retrieve bilingual passages and textual units of previous translations, so as to reuse them whenever this is appropriate and helpful.
The degree of comprehensiveness and accuracy of the archives containing the multilingual data crucially affects the usefulness of translation memories, and the translation units stored in the linguistic database of such tools (an aligned parallel corpus) represent a valuable asset that can have a great impact on repetitive or similar translation projects from a practical point of view
Integrating On-line Machine Translation Services into Monolingual Web-sites for Dissemination Purposes: an Evaluation Perspective
No full textOn-line machine translation (MT) services are becoming increasingly popular
among Internet users. In particular, over the last few years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of monolingual web-sites that rely on Internet-based MT systems to disseminate their contents in a variety of languages, which seems to be one of the most interesting areas in the current use of MT technology. This paper is based on
preliminary observations of these recent developments and reports on how on-line MT
services are actually integrated into a sample of monolingual web-sites only available in English, attempting to evaluate the success of the strategies used to incorporate webbased
MT technology for dissemination purposes. The discussion suggests in
conclusion that the overall lack of a user-oriented approach and the limited
consideration of issues of user-friendliness make the integration of on-line MT into the sample of monolingual web-sites largely ineffective
Controlled Language, Web Usability and Machine Translation Services on the Internet
No full textThis paper examines the extent to which the writing style of texts published on highly usable web-sites provides input that is amenable to Internet-based machine translation (MT) services, thus giving rise to a form of MT-friendly controlled language, in a loosely defined controlled translation environment for web content. Controlled languages are traditionally divided into two groups, human-oriented and machine-oriented, depending on the purpose and applications for which they have been developed. Even though this distinction is justified and useful in a number of respects, it is recognised that these two types of controlled languages often share significant features.
The paper investigates the common ground between human-oriented and machine-oriented controlled languages in the context of reader-friendly monolingual on-line material that needs to be translated into a variety of target languages by means of web-based MT services. The paper argues that a usability-oriented writing style for originally monolingual web content not only improves the readability of on-line material for human Internet users, but can also dramatically improve the performance of web-based MT systems. The discussion suggests in conclusion that authoring conventions and guidelines primarily aimed at improving readability for human users in the Internet environment also have a significant impact on the successful application of on-line MT technology, if monolingual web content needs to be disseminated in a variety of languages
The Added Value of Free Online Machine Translation Services: Confidence Boosters for Linguistically-challenged Internet Users, a Case Study for the Language Pair Italian-English
No full textThis paper reports on an experiment investigating
how effective free online machine translation (MT) is in helping Internet users to access the contents of websites written only in languages they do not know.
This study explores the extent to which using Internet-based MT tools affects the confidence of web-surfers in the reliability of the information they find on websites available only in languages unfamiliar to them. The results of a case study for the language pair Italian-English involving 101 participants show that the chances of identifying correctly basic information
(i.e. understanding the nature of websites and finding contact telephone numbers
from their web-pages) are consistently enhanced to varying degrees (up to nearly
20%) by translating online content into a familiar language. In addition, confidence ratings given by users to the reliability and
accuracy of the information they find are significantly higher (with increases between
5 and 11%) when they translate
websites into their preferred language with free online MT services
Review of the Book 'Between Text and Image: Updating research in screen translation' by D. Chiaro, C. Heiss and C. Bucaria (eds)
No full text
The Role of Online Machine Translation in Webpage Translation
No full textThis book is concerned with the use of translation technology, and in particular online machine translation (MT) services, to translate web-based text and enable the efficient production and management of multilingual content on the Internet. The perspectives of interlingual dissemination and assimilation of digital information are both considered, to address the key challenges of using MT in the online environment. Thanks to the broad perspective that is adopted and to the extensive experimental work that underpins this research, the volume presents the first in-depth investigation of issues regarding the successful deployment of translation technology on
the Internet
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