A reception study of machine translated subtitles for MOOCs

As MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) grow rapidly around the world, the language barrier is becoming a serious issue. Removing this obstacle by creating translated subtitles is an indispensable part of developing MOOCs and improving accessibility. Given the large quantity of MOOCs available worldwide and the considerable demand for them, machine translation (MT) appears to offer an alternative or complementary translation solution, thus providing the motivation for this research. The main goal of this research is to test the impact machine translated subtitles have on Chinese viewers’ reception of MOOC content. More specifically, the author is interested in whether there is any difference between viewers’ reception of raw machine translated subtitles as opposed to fully post-edited machine translated subtitles and human translated subtitles. Reception is operationalized by adapting Gambier's (2007) model, which divides ‘reception’ into ‘the three Rs’: (i) response, (ii) reaction and (iii) repercussion. Response refers to the initial physical response of a viewer to an audio-visual stimulus, in this case the subtitle and the rest of the image. Reaction involves the cognitive follow-on from initial response, and is linked to how much effort is involved in processing the subtitling stimulus and what is understood by the viewer. Repercussion refers to attitudinal and sociocultural dimensions of AVT consumption. The research contains a pilot study and a main experiment. Mixed methods of eye-tracking, questionnaires, translation quality assessment and frequency analysis were adopted. Over 60 native Chinese speakers were recruited as participants for this research. They were divided into three groups, those who read subtitles created by raw MT, post-edited MT (PE) and human translation (HT). Results show that most participants had a positive attitude towards the subtitles regardless of their type. Participants who were offered PE subtitles scored the best overall on the selected reception metrics. Participants who were offered HT subtitles performed the worst in some of the selected reception metrics

CHOOSING A DATABASE QUERY LANGUAGE

A methodology is presented for selecting query languages suitable for certain user types. The method is based on a trend model of query language development on the dimensions of functional capabilities and usability. Expected developments are exemplified by the description of "second generationâ database query languages. From the trend model are derived: a classification scheme for query languages; a criterion hierarchy for query language evaluation; a comprehensive classification scheme of query language users and their requirements; and recommendations for allocating language classes to user types. The method integrates the results of existing human factors studies and provides a structured framework for future research.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

An Initial Analysis of Leadership Competencies for Organization Development Intervention: A Case Study Of Educational QA Agency

This research is aims to determine the  leadership competencies for organization development intervention; it is a case study on educational quality assessment (QA) agency in Thailand. The objectives consisted of first, to identify and compare the current and expected perception toward leadership competencies of employees and management, and second, to identify the most important leadership competency.  The nature of this research work is research and development while employing the mixed method for data collection, analysis and interpretation. The eighty-one employees completed the questionnaires and ten of them were interviewed. The content validity on the instruments were reviewed by three experts prior to the realiability, Cronbach’s Alpha was tested. The result of reliability Cronbach indicated 0.968 on all questions in the questionniare. Key findings based on the survey showed that leaders “sometimes” demonstrated leading behaviors. Top three leadership competencies that are frequently perceived comprised professional knowledge, decision-making/problem-solving, and development of others. Statistically, there was significant difference between current and expected perception in every leadership competency component with the P value of 0.01. When comparing the perception between management and employee, it was found to have significant difference in driving result, strategic thinking and communication. When ranking all components of leadership competencies to determine the most important factors, the most important leadership competencies were professional knowledge, following with driving results, and strategic thinking. Qualitatively based on the interviews, employees recognized the needs for leadership competency to be develop with the emphasis on development of others, building a team, and supporting work performance. In conclusion, based on mixed methods data, the recommendations for leadership competency of the participating organization were that first, a roadmap to leadership competency development is essential, and second, customization on leadership competency in practices is to be done appropriately to minimize leadership competency gap among the management level.

A portable natural language interface from Arabic to SQL.

In recent years, natural language interface systems have been built based on the Front End and the Back End architecture which gives a guarantee of modularity and portability to the system as a whole. An Arabic Front End has been built that takes an input sentence, producing syntactic and semantic representations, which it maps into First Order Logic. Expressing the meaning of the user's question in terms of high level world concepts makes the natural language interface independent of the database structure. It is then easier to port the interface Front End to a database for a different domain. The syntactic treatments are based on Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG) whereas the semantics are expressed in formal semantics theory. The focus is mainly to provide syntactic and semantic analyses for Arabic queries based on correct Arabic linguistic principles. The proposed treatments are proved and tested by building a prototype system. The prototype is implemented using one of the existing systems called Squirrel. An Arabic morphological analyser is also proposed and implemented to distinguish between two types of morphemes: internal morphemes which are a part of the word's pattern, and external morphemes which are independent words attached to the word but which are not part of the word's pattern. So, the system focuses on the extraction of morphemes from the various inflexions or forms of any Arabic word

Stakeholders' conceptions of quality in distance higher education

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A Study into the Challenges of Subtitling English into Arabic

This study examines the quality of subtitles from English into Arabic. The motivation behind selecting this topic area is that subtitling of English language programmes into Arabic is under-researched. Therefore it is in need of further research in order to enhance subtitlers’ skills and performance. The study explores the main challenges that translators face in the subtitling of English language films into Arabic and addresses the key issues, by examining the common features hindering audio-visual translation and highlighting particular cultural limitations intrinsic to translation for Arabic speaking audiences, assuming that particular fundamentals of translation theory can be beneficial in overcoming the linguistics, technical and cultural challenges. A qualitative approach is adopted in the study. The rationale for adopting a qualitative research approach is related to the purpose of the study, the nature of the problem and research questions. Thus the study data have been collected using a thematic questionnaire for general viewers who are interested in watching subtitled programmes to gauge their perceptions on the current quality of English into Arabic subtitling. The findings of this study have practical contribution to enhance the quality of subtitling. They also benefit academic research through expanding the literature in the field of subtitling which in turn will benefit future researchers

The role of the translator’s personality in the process of self-revision

Wydział AnglistykiW rozprawie doktorskiej pojęcie autokorekty jest zdefiniowane jako etap decyzyjny w procesie tłumaczenia oraz jako „procedura zapewniania jakości” (Mossop 2014) powstającego produktu − tłumaczenia. Takie podejście do autokorekty pozwala na połączenie ilościowych danych z procesu tłumaczenia oraz jakościowych danych z ocenionego produktu tłumaczenia. Podobnie, pojęcie osobowości jest postrzegane w kontekście takich jego składników jak cechy osobowości (charakterystyki ilościowe) oraz funkcje psychologiczne (opis jakościowy). Cechy procesu autokorekty wykonywanej przez tłumacza, takie jak: czas poświęcony na korektę końcową, ilość i typ wprowadzonych poprawek, często były uznawane jako składniki „indywidualnego stylu pracy” tłumacza (Jakobsen 2003; Carl i in. 2011), lub jego „profilu” (Dragsted i Carl 2012). Przedstawione w pracy badanie empiryczne miało na celu ujawnić rolę preferowanych funkcji psychologicznych w podejściu tłumaczy do procesu autokorekty oraz formowaniu „indywidualnego stylu pracy”. Również badanie miało pokazać, jakie dominujące cechy osobowości najlepiej opisują profil psychologiczny tłumaczy oraz odróżniają ich od przedstawicieli innych zawodów. Psychologiczne profile autorów najlepiej ocenionych tłumaczeń zostały zanalizowane w celu wyjaśnienia, czy pewne „style pracy” oraz dominujące cechy osobowości korelują z jakością tłumaczenia. Wyniki badania mogą pomóc nauczycielom tłumaczenia uświadomić rolę, jaką cechy osobowości odgrywają w zawodzie tłumacza, oraz jak studenci rozwijają swoje podejście do aspektów decyzyjnych w procesie autokorekty tłumaczenia.In the dissertation, self-revision is viewed as both the decision-related stage of the translation process and the “quality-assurance procedure” (Mossop 2014) of the emerging translation product. Such a view of self-revision allows combining the quantitative translation process data and qualitative translation product assessment data using multi-method approaches. Similarly, the concept of personality is referred to as a set of its quantitative characteristics, personality traits, and qualitative characteristics, personality types. The process characteristics of the translator’s self-revision behaviour, such as the duration of the end revision and the number and the type of corrections introduced, have often been found to form the translators’ “individual working styles” (Jakobsen 2003; Carl et al. 2011) or “profiles” (Dragsted and Carl 2012). The aim of the empirical study was to identify the role of the preferred psychological functions in the translator’s approach to self-revision and the formulation of their “individual working styles”. The experiment also sought to determine the translator’s dominant psychological traits that make translators differ from the representatives of the other professions. The psychological profiles of the authors of the best translations were analysed so as to establish if certain “working styles” and dominant personality traits correlate with translation quality. The results of the study may help translation teachers understand the role that individual personality characteristics play in the translator’s professional life, and in their approach to the decisional aspects of the translation process reflected in self-revision

Employee commitment after change at work

Human resource management advocates consider that obtaining employees' affective commitment to the organisation is an important objective. A key part of this concept is concerned with employees' identification with organisational goals and values. Recent research however, indicates that employers want employees to maintain their commitment levels even though organisations are undergoing periods ofextensive change that impact on many aspects of these goals and values. In the literature, employee commitment is regarded as a stable construct that nothing seems to alter. Despite this, there is increasing evidence to suggest that commitment may change if something in the organisation changes. To date, little research has sought to measure the impact of organisational changes on employee commitment. This study seeks to find out if commitment is altered by organisational changes or if commitment remains constant after the implementation of change. It also examines the impact of a range ofvariables on employees' commitment levels not previously addressed in the literature. The study adopted a cross sectional design. Data was collected by use of both quantitative techniques, (incorporating the British Organisational Commitment Scale or BOCS) and qualitative approaches, in three organisations located in the South East of England. An evaluation of the BOCS' reliability and dimensionality was carried out. In contrast to the literature, an eight item scale was shown to be superior, providing the best fit to the data. BOCS was found to comprise two distinct, but related components, hence the measure is considered bi-dimensional. The study makes several contributions to the literature. In particular, the: process of change (i.e. strategy used by each organisation to elicit organisational changes); antecedents to commitment (i.e. personal and work related variables); extent to which changes are experienced and content of change (i.e. the changes themselves) are all shown to affect the outcomes for individuals' commitment after periods of change in the organisation. Of the changes examined, almost all lead to increased levels ofemployees' self reported commitment. This challenges the claims that suggest commitment is stable and unchangeable. The study also revealed a number of factors lead to increased commitment amongst the workforce after change. These represent employee perceptions of change. Researchers and practitioners will need to focus on these issues in the future when considering commitment if they are to safeguard it after changes in the workplace

Does it take an expert to lead experts?: professionals versus managers in universities

This is an empirical study of leaders and how they affect organizational performance. Its context is the research university as a knowledge intensive organization. It appears to be the first of its kind. The thesis explores whether the characteristics of a leader in position today can tell us about the future success of their institution. It asks the question: Should research universities be led by top scholars? One reason why universities are an interesting case is that, unusually for knowledge-intensive organizations, their leaders' technical expertise can arguably be measured reasonably objectively. Using cross-sectional analysis, the first approach adopted in this thesis is to identify whether accomplished scholars are currently leading the world's top universities and business schools. It demonstrates -- using a variety of data sets, and in a variety of settings, including a check on the role of outliers -- that better universities and business schools are led by presidents and deans with systematically higher numbers of life-time scholarly citations. Next the dissertation attempts to go beyond simple cross-sectional patterns to address the question of causality. It does so in a longitudinal study that follows the performance of a panel of 55 universities over a nine-year period from 1992 to 2001. Using regression analysis, this thesis uncovers some evidence that is consistent with the existence of a causal relationship between the research ability of a leader and the future achievement of their institution. The results suggest that a university tends to improve in the UK Research Assessment Exercise if its leader has been a successful scholar. Qualitative evidence in the form of interviews with university leaders then motivates a theory of strategic leadership that might explain the statistical patterns. It is argued in the thesis that scholars may make effective leaders for reasons that are both internal and external to the individual. A scholar-leader, it is suggested, influences performance because of an inherent knowledge of the core business of a research university, and also through the extension of powers acquired by being viewed as credible by followers. Finally, the thesis concludes by asking whether university governing bodies appoint the right people. The central argument being made in this thesis is that where expert knowledge is the key factor that characterises an organization it is expert knowledge that should also be key in the selection of its leader