Applying Wikipedia to Interactive Information Retrieval

There are many opportunities to improve the interactivity of information retrieval systems beyond the ubiquitous search box. One idea is to use knowledge bases—e.g. controlled vocabularies, classification schemes, thesauri and ontologies—to organize, describe and navigate the information space. These resources are popular in libraries and specialist collections, but have proven too expensive and narrow to be applied to everyday webscale search. Wikipedia has the potential to bring structured knowledge into more widespread use. This online, collaboratively generated encyclopaedia is one of the largest and most consulted reference works in existence. It is broader, deeper and more agile than the knowledge bases put forward to assist retrieval in the past. Rendering this resource machine-readable is a challenging task that has captured the interest of many researchers. Many see it as a key step required to break the knowledge acquisition bottleneck that crippled previous efforts. This thesis claims that the roadblock can be sidestepped: Wikipedia can be applied effectively to open-domain information retrieval with minimal natural language processing or information extraction. The key is to focus on gathering and applying human-readable rather than machine-readable knowledge. To demonstrate this claim, the thesis tackles three separate problems: extracting knowledge from Wikipedia; connecting it to textual documents; and applying it to the retrieval process. First, we demonstrate that a large thesaurus-like structure can be obtained directly from Wikipedia, and that accurate measures of semantic relatedness can be efficiently mined from it. Second, we show that Wikipedia provides the necessary features and training data for existing data mining techniques to accurately detect and disambiguate topics when they are mentioned in plain text. Third, we provide two systems and user studies that demonstrate the utility of the Wikipedia-derived knowledge base for interactive information retrieval

The Value of Everything: Ranking and Association with Encyclopedic Knowledge

This dissertation describes WikiRank, an unsupervised method of assigning relative values to elements of a broad coverage encyclopedic information source in order to identify those entries that may be relevant to a given piece of text. The valuation given to an entry is based not on textual similarity but instead on the links that associate entries, and an estimation of the expected frequency of visitation that would be given to each entry based on those associations in context. This estimation of relative frequency of visitation is embodied in modifications to the random walk interpretation of the PageRank algorithm. WikiRank is an effective algorithm to support natural language processing applications. It is shown to exceed the performance of previous machine learning algorithms for the task of automatic topic identification, providing results comparable to that of human annotators. Second, WikiRank is found useful for the task of recognizing text-based paraphrases on a semantic level, by comparing the distribution of attention generated by two pieces of text using the encyclopedic resource as a common reference. Finally, WikiRank is shown to have the ability to use its base of encyclopedic knowledge to recognize terms from different ontologies as describing the same thing, and thus allowing for the automatic generation of mapping links between ontologies. The conclusion of this thesis is that the "knowledge access heuristic" is valuable and that a ranking process based on a large encyclopedic resource can form the basis for an extendable general purpose mechanism capable of identifying relevant concepts by association, which in turn can be effectively utilized for enumeration and comparison at a semantic level

A study into the motivations of internet users contributing to translation crowdsourcing: the case of Polish Facebook user-translators

Facilitated by technologies enabling a large number of networked individuals to collaborate voluntarily on translation tasks, translation crowdsourcing isa new translation procurement model which relies on crowds of Internet users willing to engage in translation activity at the request of a company or organisation. Taking the case of Facebook translation, with specific reference to the community of Polish Facebook user-translators, this study seeks to understandthe motivation underpinning contributions that are typically without financial reward, especially when the call for translation is made by a for-profit entity. A mixed methods research design involving netnography, online surveys and an observational study with elements of remote usability testing and contextual inquiry was incorporated to collect the data on the community of contributors, their translation activity and use of the Facebook collaborative translation platform. The analysis of the data suggests that the Polish Facebook user translators are motivated by a number of factors, both personal as well as social, which primarily contribute to the satisfaction of their needs of competence, autonomy and relatedness. The studied user-translators perceived the Facebook initiative as an opportunity to practice skills and effect change for the better while collaborating with others and experiencing fun. However, the flaws and limitations inherent in the purpose-built Facebook collaborative translation platform frequently prevented the translation activity on Facebook from being carried out as intended. This was found to undermine the satisfaction of needs and thus negatively affect the user-translators’ motivation. Based on these findings, the study characterises the motivations of user-translators in translation crowdsourcing in for-profit contexts and explains how motivation to contribute is affected by the translation platforms provided for the purpose. A set of guidelines for the design of such platforms is offered to organisers of translation crowdsourcing initiatives for consideration in future. Keywords: translation, crowdsourcing, motivation, collaborative translation platfor

Multimodal translation analysis: Arab Spring speeches in Arabic and English

In the contemporary globalized world, translation plays a key role in sharing news across the globe, in particular in the age of multimedia, where meaning is transferred through various modes and genres. This study focuses on two Arab Spring speeches of Mummar Algaddafi’s and Hosni Mubarak’s and their translations in different media. The thesis initially conducts a comparative study of the source texts (STs), including a textual/contextual analysis drawing on Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis, and on Gunther Kress’ multimodal analysis. This is followed by examining the target texts (TTs) to investigate the inventible changes that occur during the translation process, particularly if the translation involves not only a transfer of meaning from Arabic to English but also from mode to mode (such as, speaking to writing) and genre to genre (a political speech to a newspaper article). The thesis introduces the Multimodal Translation Analysis model to investigate the following aspects of the TTs: linguistic aspects of the TTs, the TT’s multimodal qualities, and, drawing on Mona Baker’s narrative theory, the role of dominant narratives in the shaping of the TT

Agency and professionalism in translation and interpreting: navigating conflicting role identities among translation and interpreting practitioners working for local government in Japan

This thesis investigates the ethical choices of Coordinators for International Relations (CIRs), a group of largely non-professional translators and interpreters working for local government bodies in Japan. In addition to T&I, CIRs are tasked with engaging in intercultural relations, “internationalising” their local areas, and working with the public as members of the civil service. The thesis examines the different roles and particular circumstances of CIRs to describe and explain how they make ethical decisions in T&I. This was explored using an ethnographic methodology featuring both traditional and online sites. Specifically, data was collected from participant observation of an internet forum created by CIRs, through online surveys, and also by employing focus groups and interviews held with CIRs in Japan. Analysis of forum and survey data illuminated the ethical struggles experienced by CIRs in T&I. It indicated that professionalism and agency were of particular concern for these CIRs when dealing with questions of ethics. Through focus groups, more detailed data was elicited surrounding the ethical struggles faced by CIRs, with a particular focus on professionalism and agency. Forum and focus group data combined to create a set of hypothetical ethical scenarios discussed during semistructured interviews held to understand factors that influence CIR decision making. A theoretical framework combining Agency Theory (Mitnick, 1975) and Role Identity Theory (Stryker, 1968) was used to describe and explain CIR ethical decision making; foregrounding their potential to effect change in their workplaces (agency) and the prioritisation afforded to different roles with which they identify in their work (role identity). Ultimately, CIRs were most disposed to translate or interpret in a manner that they believed was in keeping with the wishes of their employers, based on their superior ability to monitor and control the CIRs. However, in instances where the CIR operated with free will, their choices were a result of complex structuring of the various identities that they had normalised within themselves. Keywords: translation, interpreting, Coordinator for International Relations (CIR), Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme, agency, professionalism, role identity

Электронные библиотеки: перспективные методы и технологии, электронные коллекции

Электронные библиотеки – область исследований и разработок, направленных на развитие теории и практики обработки, распространения, хранения, анализа и поиска цифровых данных различной природы. Основная цель серии конференций RCDL заключается в формировании сообщества специалистов России, ведущих исследования и разработки в области электронных библиотек и близких областях. Всероссийская научная конференция 2009 г. (RCDL'2009) является одиннадцатой конференцией по данной тематике (1999 г. – Санкт-Петербург, 2000 г. – Протвино, 2001 г. – Петрозаводск, 2002 г. – Дубна, 2003 г. – Санкт-Петербург, 2004 г. – Пущино, 2005 г. – Ярославль, 2006 г. – Суздаль, 2007 г. – Переславль-Залесский, 2008 г. – Дубна). Настоящий сборник включает тексты докладов, коротких сообщений и стендовых докладов, отобранных Программным комитетом RCDL'2009 в результате проведенного рецензирования