Natural language processing

Beginning with the basic issues of NLP, this chapter aims to chart the major research activities in this area since the last ARIST Chapter in 1996 (Haas, 1996), including: (i) natural language text processing systems - text summarization, information extraction, information retrieval, etc., including domain-specific applications; (ii) natural language interfaces; (iii) NLP in the context of www and digital libraries ; and (iv) evaluation of NLP systems

Quantifying the effect of machine translation in a high-quality human translation production process

This paper studies the impact of machine translation (MT) on the translation workflow at the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT), focusing on two language pairs and two MT paradigms: English-into-French with statistical MT and English-into-Finnish with neural MT. We collected data from 20 professional translators at DGT while they carried out real translation tasks in normal working conditions. The participants enabled/disabled MT for half of the segments in each document. They filled in a survey at the end of the logging period. We measured the productivity gains (or losses) resulting from the use of MT and examined the relationship between technical effort and temporal effort. The results show that while the usage of MT leads to productivity gains on average, this is not the case for all translators. Moreover, the two technical effort indicators used in this study show weak correlations with post-editing time. The translators' perception of their speed gains was more or less in line with the actual results. Reduction of typing effort is the most frequently mentioned reason why participants preferred working with MT, but also the psychological benefits of not having to start from scratch were often mentioned

MOTYWACJA I MEDIA ELEKTRONICZNE W NAUCZANIU TŁUMACZEŃ SPECJALISTYCZNYCH

Expansion of IT-media in every field of human activity is one of the essential characteristics of modern time. This paper aims at presenting the role of electronic media in teaching translation in the field of law at the University of Osijek, Croatia, and analysing their impact on the motivation of the target group of students in the teaching process. The paper endeavours to provide some insight into the modern teaching practice and to analyse the interconnectedness of the use of electronic media and student motivation rather than to present some empirical research in the field. In the first part of the paper, a theoretical approach to teaching legal translation today is offered. In the main part, teaching legal translation by using modern media is presented on the examples of the Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists at the Faculty of Law Osijek, and the course on legal translation within the German Language and Literature Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Osijek. The usage of electronic media in translation teaching is discussed with reference to the courses Introduction to the Theory of Legal Translation and Online Translation Tools and EU Vocabulary. Specific types of online materials, translation tools and sources are discussed from the point of view of student motivation. New media are also discussed from the perspective of their efficiency at different stages of translation teaching. In the concluding part, application of modern technologies in teaching legal translation is compared with other teaching methods, approaches and techniques. Finally, the author questions using IT as motivation tools in the higher education teaching discourse and argues for application of “moderate approach” in the teaching of legal translation.Ekspansja mediów informatycznych w każdej dziedzinie życia jest jedną z podstawowych cech współczesnego życia. Niniejszy artykuł ma na celu przedstawienie roli mediów elektronicznych w nauczaniu przekładu prawniczego na Uniwersytecie w Osijek w Chorwacji oraz przeanalizowanie ich wpływu na motywację grupy docelowej studentów w procesie nauczania. Autorka stara się przedstawić nowoczesną praktykę dydaktyczną i przeanalizować wzajemne powiązania korzystania z mediów elektronicznych i motywację studentów. W pierwszej części artykułu zaproponowano teoretyczne podejście do nauczania tłumaczenia prawniczego. Na przykładach programu „Lifelong Learning Programme for Lawyer-Linguists” na Wydziale Prawa Osijek oraz kursu tłumaczenia prawniczego w ramach „German Language and Literature Studies” na Wydziale Nauk Humanistycznych i Społecznych w Osijek autorka prezentuje nauczanie tłumaczenia prawniczego przy użyciu nowoczesnych mediów. Wykorzystanie mediów elektronicznych w nauczaniu tłumaczeń omawia się w odniesieniu do kursów „Wprowadzenie do teorii tłumaczenia prawniczego i narzędzi tłumaczenia online oraz słownictwa UE”. Konkretne rodzaje materiałów online, narzędzi tłumaczeniowych i źródeł omawia się z punktu widzenia motywacji studentów. Nowe media są również analizowane pod kątem ich skuteczności na różnych etapach nauczania przekładu. Podsumowując, zastosowanie nowoczesnych technologii w nauczaniu tłumaczenia prawniczego porównuje się z innymi metodami, podejściami i technikami nauczania. Na koniec autorka kwestionuje zasadność wykorzystania narzędzi IT jako motywatorów w dyskursie dydaktycznym szkolnictwa wyższego i opowiada się za zastosowaniem „umiarkowanego podejścia” w nauczaniu tłumaczenia prawniczego

Compact Personalized Models for Neural Machine Translation

We propose and compare methods for gradient-based domain adaptation of self-attentive neural machine translation models. We demonstrate that a large proportion of model parameters can be frozen during adaptation with minimal or no reduction in translation quality by encouraging structured sparsity in the set of offset tensors during learning via group lasso regularization. We evaluate this technique for both batch and incremental adaptation across multiple data sets and language pairs. Our system architecture - combining a state-of-the-art self-attentive model with compact domain adaptation - provides high quality personalized machine translation that is both space and time efficient.Comment: Published at the 2018 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processin

Implementation of a Human-Computer Interface for Computer Assisted Translation and Handwritten Text Recognition

A human-computer interface is developed to provide services of computer assisted machine translation (CAT) and computer assisted transcription of handwritten text images (CATTI). The back-end machine translation (MT) and handwritten text recognition (HTR) systems are provided by the Pattern Recognition and Human Language Technology (PRHLT) research group. The idea is to provide users with easy to use tools to convert interactive translation and transcription feasible tasks. The assisted service is provided by remote servers with CAT or CATTI capabilities. The interface supplies the user with tools for efficient local edition: deletion, insertion and substitution.Ocampo Sepúlveda, JC. (2009). Implementation of a Human-Computer Interface for Computer Assisted Translation and Handwritten Text Recognition. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/14318Archivo delegad