Discourse Structure in Machine Translation Evaluation

In this article, we explore the potential of using sentence-level discourse structure for machine translation evaluation. We first design discourse-aware similarity measures, which use all-subtree kernels to compare discourse parse trees in accordance with the Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST). Then, we show that a simple linear combination with these measures can help improve various existing machine translation evaluation metrics regarding correlation with human judgments both at the segment- and at the system-level. This suggests that discourse information is complementary to the information used by many of the existing evaluation metrics, and thus it could be taken into account when developing richer evaluation metrics, such as the WMT-14 winning combined metric DiscoTKparty. We also provide a detailed analysis of the relevance of various discourse elements and relations from the RST parse trees for machine translation evaluation. In particular we show that: (i) all aspects of the RST tree are relevant, (ii) nuclearity is more useful than relation type, and (iii) the similarity of the translation RST tree to the reference tree is positively correlated with translation quality.Comment: machine translation, machine translation evaluation, discourse analysis. Computational Linguistics, 201

LEXICAL ANALYSIS OF SEMANTIC ERRORS FOUND IN THE TRANSLATION OF JOKO WIDODO’S INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT

This research focuses on the semantic errors in lexis occurred in the translation by Instagram Machine Translation. This research aims at identifying the types of semantic error in lexis made by Instagram Machine Translation found in the Joko Widodo’s Instagram account. This research also analyses semantic errors in lexis to show how Instagram machine translation works and the potential errors that it may cause. This study utilized observation method in collecting the data. Descriptive qualitative method was applied in analyzing the semantic errors in lexis by elaborating each type of them. In addition, translation procedures were also examined to find out clear explanation on what procedures contribute to the errors. The data were taken from the posts in Joko Widodo’s Instagram account and were analyzed by the semantic errors in lexis based on theory by James (1998). The study concluded that the confusion of sense relations in choosing a wrong synonym is mostly found in the translation of Instagram machine translation

Logical types and linguistic types

this paper is to outline an intermediate language for machine translation which is based on combinatory logic. Section 1 sketches the background assumptions of type theory. Section 2 discusses some of the problems with the traditional (typed) approach in Montague Grammar, and Section 3 outlines some general problems with type theory. In Section 4 a type-free intermediate language is dened and exemplied: its interpretation is discussed in the last section

TRANSLATION SHIFTS AND EQUIVALENCE STRATEGY PRODUCED BY INSTAGRAM MACHINE TRANSLATION

The fast advancement of technology forces people to use it to simplify their lives. In the translation field, besides human translator, there is also machine translator used to help people in transferring the meaning of a text from source language (SL) to target language (TL). Along with the development of technology and social media, Instagram as one of the most famous social media platforms launched Instagram Machine Translation in 2016 that can help people to translate the captions and comments posted by the users. This study was conducted to identify the types of translation shift and the types of translation equivalence performed by Instagram machine translation in translating the captions on @instagram account from English to Indonesian. By using descriptive qualitative method to reach the goals of the study, the appropriate data were obtained. The data were analyzed based on the translation shifts theory from Catford (1965) and translation equivalence by Nida (1964). The findings showed that all types of Catford’s translation shifts were found in the translation process and the most common type was structure shift. It was also found that Instagram machine translation was successful in transferring the message from SL to TL equivalently. Keywords: Translation shift, Translation equivalence, Instagram Machine Translatio

The Quality of Machine Translation Assessment On Gender Markers Lingual Units

Machine Translation (MT) is one of the most advanced and elaborate research fields within Translation Technology, the quality of MT output has always been a great concern, and MT evaluation is a popular research topic. This research aims to assess the quality translation on the gender markers lingual unit of the Arabic short story "عَبْدُ اللهِ وَالْعُصْفُوْرُ" which is translated to English and Indonesian using Machine Translation. The research was qualitatively-based method. The subject is gender markers lingual unit that taken from the Arabic short story "عَبْدُ اللهِ وَالْعُصْفُوْرُ".  The key instrument of this research is human instrument. Additional instruments used to support this research consisted tables of the lingual units of gender markers and table of rating scales based on Nababans' theory (2012). The research findings showed that this analysis has discovered were 72 lingual units of gender markers in the short story.  Further, the dominant type was personal pronoun. Based on the results, it can be concluded that the google translate translation on the gender markers lingual units have the high quality on the accuracy, acceptance, and readability level

LFTOP: An LF based approach to domain specific reasoning

Specialized vocabulary, notations and inference rules tailored for the description, analysis and reasoning of a domain is very important for the domain. For domain-specific issues researchers focus mainly on the design and implementation of domain-specific languages (DSL) and pay little attention to the reasoning aspects. We believe that domain-specific reasoning is very important to help the proofs of some properties of the domains and should be more concise, more reusable and more believable. It deserves to be investigated in an engineering way. Type theory provides good support for generic reasoning and verification. Many type theorists want to extend uses of type theory to more domains, and believe that the methods, ideas, and technology of type theory can have a beneficial effect for computer assisted reasoning in many domains. Proof assistants based on type theory are well known as effective tools to support reasoning. But these proof assistants have focused primarily on generic notations for representation of problems and are oriented towards helping expert type theorists build proofs efficiently. They are successful in this goal, but they are less suitable for use by non-specialists. In other words, one of the big barriers to limit the use of type theory and proof assistant in domain-specific areas is that it requires significant expertise to use it effectively. We present LFTOP ― a new approach to domain-specific reasoning that is based on a type-theoretic logical framework (LP) but does not require the user to be an expert in type theory. In this approach, users work on a domain-specific interface that is familiar to them. The interface presents a reasoning system of the domain through a user-oriented syntax. A middle layer provides translation between the user syntax and LF， and allows additional support for reasoning (e.g. model checking). Thus, the complexity of the logical framework is hidden but we also retain the benefits of using type theory and its related tools, such as precision and machine-checkable proofs. The approach is being investigated through a number of case studies. In each case study, the relevant domain-specific specification languages and logic are formalized in Plastic. The relevant reasoning system is designed and customized for the users of the corresponding specific domain. The corresponding lemmas are proved in Plastic. We analyze the advantages and shortcomings of this approach, define some new concepts related to the approach, especially discuss issues arising from the translation between the different levels. A prototype implementation is developed. We illustrate the approach through many concrete examples in the prototype implementation. The study of this thesis shows that the approach is feasible and promising, the relevant methods and technologies are useful and effective

Translator Attitudes towards Translator-Computer Interaction – Findings from a Workplace Study

Today technology is part and parcel of professional translation, and translation has therefore been characterised as Translator-Computer Interaction (TCI) (O’Brien 2012). Translation is increasingly carried out using Translation Memory (TM) systems which incorporate machine translation (MT), referred to as MT-assisted TM translation, and in this type of tool, translators switch between editing TM matches and post-editing MT matches. It is generally assumed that translators’ attitudes towards technology impact on this interaction with the technology. Drawing on Eagly/Chaiken’s (1995) definition of attitudes as evaluations of entities with favour or disfavour and on qualitative data from a workplace study of TCI, conducted as part of a PhD dissertation (Bundgaard 2017) and partly reported on in Bundgaard et al. (2016), this paper explores translator attitudes towards TCI in the form of MT-assisted TM translation. In doing so, the paper has a particular focus on the disfavour towards TCI expressed by translators. Moreover, inspired by Olohan (2011), who applies Pickering’s “mangle of practice” theory and analyses resistance and accommodation in TCI, the paper focuses on how translators accommodate resistances offered by the tool. The study shows that the translators express disfavour towards MT in many respects, but also acknowledge positive aspects of the technology and expect MT to play a significant role in their future working lives. The translators do not make many positive or negative comments about TM which might indicate that TM is a completely integrated part of their processes. The translators seem to have a flexible and pragmatic attitude towards TCI, adapting to the tool’s imperfections and accommodating its resistances

Anaphora and the Logic of Change

This paper shows how the dynamic interpretation of natural language introduced in work by Hans Kamp and Irene Heim can be modeled in classical type logic. This provides a synthesis between Richard Montague's theory of natural language semantics and the work by Kamp and Heim

Translationese and post-editese : how comparable is comparable quality?

Whereas post-edited texts have been shown to be either of comparable quality to human translations or better, one study shows that people still seem to prefer human-translated texts. The idea of texts being inherently different despite being of high quality is not new. Translated texts, for example,are also different from original texts, a phenomenon referred to as ‘Translationese’. Research into Translationese has shown that, whereas humans cannot distinguish between translated and original text,computers have been trained to detect Translationesesuccessfully. It remains to be seen whether the same can be done for what we call Post-editese. We first establish whether humans are capable of distinguishing post-edited texts from human translations, and then establish whether it is possible to build a supervised machine-learning model that can distinguish between translated and post-edited text