A System for Simultaneous Translation of Lectures and Speeches

This thesis realizes the first existing automatic system for simultaneous speech-to-speech translation. The focus of this system is the automatic translation of (technical oriented) lectures and speeches from English to Spanish, but the different aspects described in this thesis will also be helpful for developing simultaneous translation systems for other domains or languages

Corpus-based Interpreting Studies : early Work and Future Prospects

Aquest article fa una revisió dels projectes de recerca realitzats en el passat i en el present dins del camp dels Estudis d'Interpretació basats en Corpus (EIC). S'analitzen breument els obstacles generals que apareixen en la creació de còrpora electrònics destinats a l’estudi de la interpretació. Es subratllen també les principals raons per les quals el desenvolupament dels Estudis d'Interpretació basats en Corpus es troba encara en un estat menys avançat que el dels Estudis de Traducció basats en Corpus (ETC). Allò que es pot aprendre de les experiències passades i presents en el desenvolupament de còrpora d'interpretació pot suggerir maneres de salvar gradualment l'escull actual entre EIC i ETC.Este artículo hace una revisión de los proyectos de investigación realizados en el pasado y en el presente dentro del campo de los Estudios de Interpretación basados en Corpus (EIC). Se analizan brevemente los obstáculos generales que aparecen en la creación de corpus electrónicos destinados al estudio de la interpretación. Además, se hace hincapié en las principales razones por las que el desarrollo de los Estudios de Interpretación basados en Corpus se encuentra aún en un estado menos avanzado que el de los Estudios de Traducción basados en Corpus (ETC). Todo lo que podemos aprender de las experiencias pasadas y presentes en el desarrollo de corpus de interpretación puede sugerir maneras de salvar el desnivel entre EIC y ETC.The present paper offers an overview of past and ongoing research projects within the field of Corpus-based Interpreting Studies (CIS). General obstacles to the creation of machine-readable corpora to study interpreting are briefly discussed, highlighting the main reasons why the development of Corpus-based Interpreting Studies is still at a less advanced stage than that of Corpus-based Translation Studies (CTS). What can be learnt from past and current experiences in developing interpreting corpora may suggest ways to gradually bridge the existing gap between CIS and CTS

Learning to Translate in Real-time with Neural Machine Translation

Translating in real-time, a.k.a. simultaneous translation, outputs translation words before the input sentence ends, which is a challenging problem for conventional machine translation methods. We propose a neural machine translation (NMT) framework for simultaneous translation in which an agent learns to make decisions on when to translate from the interaction with a pre-trained NMT environment. To trade off quality and delay, we extensively explore various targets for delay and design a method for beam-search applicable in the simultaneous MT setting. Experiments against state-of-the-art baselines on two language pairs demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed framework both quantitatively and qualitatively.Comment: 10 pages, camera read

Corpus-based Interpreting Studies : early Work and Future Prospects

Aquest article fa una revisió dels projectes de recerca realitzats en el passat i en el present dins del camp dels Estudis d'Interpretació basats en Corpus (EIC). S'analitzen breument els obstacles generals que apareixen en la creació de còrpora electrònics destinats a l'estudi de la interpretació. Es subratllen també les principals raons per les quals el desenvolupament dels Estudis d'Interpretació basats en Corpus es troba encara en un estat menys avançat que el dels Estudis de Traducció basats en Corpus (ETC). Allò que es pot aprendre de les experiències passades i presents en el desenvolupament de còrpora d'interpretació pot suggerir maneres de salvar gradualment l'escull actual entre EIC i ETC.Este artículo hace una revisión de los proyectos de investigación realizados en el pasado y en el presente dentro del campo de los Estudios de Interpretación basados en Corpus (EIC). Se analizan brevemente los obstáculos generales que aparecen en la creación de corpus electrónicos destinados al estudio de la interpretación. Además, se hace hincapié en las principales razones por las que el desarrollo de los Estudios de Interpretación basados en Corpus se encuentra aún en un estado menos avanzado que el de los Estudios de Traducción basados en Corpus (ETC). Todo lo que podemos aprender de las experiencias pasadas y presentes en el desarrollo de corpus de interpretación puede sugerir maneras de salvar el desnivel entre EIC y ETC.The present paper offers an overview of past and ongoing research projects within the field of Corpus-based Interpreting Studies (CIS). General obstacles to the creation of machine-readable corpora to study interpreting are briefly discussed, highlighting the main reasons why the development of Corpus-based Interpreting Studies is still at a less advanced stage than that of Corpus-based Translation Studies (CTS). What can be learnt from past and current experiences in developing interpreting corpora may suggest ways to gradually bridge the existing gap between CIS and CTS

Incremental Unsupervised Training for University Lecture Recognition

In this paper we describe our work on unsupervised adaptation of the acoustic model of our simultaneous lecture translation system. We trained a speaker independent acoustic model, with which we produce automatic transcriptions of new lectures in order to improve the system for a specific lecturer. We compare our results against a model that was trained in a supervised way on an exact manual transcription. We examine four different ways of processing the decoder outputs of the automatic transcription with respect to the treatment of pronunciation variants and noise words. We will show that, instead of fixating the latter informations in the transcriptions, it is of advantage to let the Viterbi algorithm during training decide which pronunciations to use and where to insert which noise words. Further, we utilize word level posterior probabilities obtained during decoding by weighting and thresholding the words of a transcription

Suulise tõlke areng Eesti riikluse kujunemisel

Väitekiri on esimene terviklik uurimus suulise tõlke arengu ajaloost Eestis, hõlmates kahte perioodi: iseseisvat Eesti Vabariiki (1918–1940), ja Nõukogude Eestit (1944–1991). Autori tõestab, et tõlkimist on kasutatud riigi toimimise esimestest päevadest alates, hoolimata murrangulistest poliitilistest, majanduslikest ja ühiskondlikest sündmustest. Väitekiri annab põhjaliku ülevaate suulise tõlke erisustest eri perioodidel, esitab varaseid fakte järel- ja sünkroontõlke ning varaseimate dateeritud tõlgi kasutamiste kohta Eesti Vabariigis. Suulise tõlke uurimist raskendab aga terminoloogiline segadus: sageli ei tehta vahet mõistetel tõlk ja tõlkija. Audiovisuaalsed ja dokumentaalsed allikad, mälestused, arhiividokumendid, ajalehed ja ülemnõukogu istungite stenogrammid võimaldasid koguda usaldusväärse andmestiku. Autor leidis tõlkimise kohta sõjaeelsest perioodist 364 ajaleheartiklit: 278 artiklis oli mainitud tõlkimist Eestis ja 86 artiklis välismaal. Aastate 1944–1991 kohta kogus autor 145 filmikroonikalõiku ja 524 fotot, mis tõendasid suulist tõlkimist nõukogude perioodil ning intervjueeris 69 tõlki ja tõlke värvanud ning tõlget kasutanud inimest. Juba riikluse kujunemise algul, Venemaaga peetud läbirääkimistel kasutati Eesti Vabariigi riigikeelt koos tõlkega vene keelde. Laiendades Pierre Bourdieu sümboolse kapitali mõistet üksikisikult riigile, näitab autor, et eesti keele kasutamine oli otseselt seotud riigi prestiižiga ning osutas riigi sümboolse kapitali kasvule. Diplomaatilist tõlget käsitletakse kui mõjufaktoreid riigi sümboolse kapitali akumuleerimisel. Peale teist maailmasõda muutus Eestis mitte ainult riigikord, vaid ka keelekeskkond. Muutused ühiskonnas avaldasid mõju ka suulisele tõlkele: suuline tõlge eesti keelest vene keelde võimaldas jätkata eesti keele kasutamist ka avalikel ametlikel üritustel, ajal, mil vene keelt suruti peale rahvastevahelise suhtluse keelena. Autor käsitleb suulist tõlget kui eesti keele kasutamist domineeriva võõrkeele keskkonnas.The present dissertation is the first to explore the evolution of interpreting in the Republic of Estonia over two different periods: the Republic of Estonia (1918–1940) and Soviet Estonia (1944–1991). The author provides factual evidence that interpreting has been used in Estonia, despite different political orders and throughout periods of profound political, economic and social transformation. The research provides a comprehensive overview on interpretation in Estonia, maps the factual evidence, identifies interpreters and finds the potentially earliest cases (since independence in 1918) of consecutive and simultaneous interpretation in the country. The authentic material gathered comprises archival, audiovisual and documentary sources, memoirs, 69 interviews, newspapers and verbatim reports. To cover the first period the author’s search yielded 364 newspaper articles: 278 referred to interpretation being used in Estonia and 86 informed readers about international events. For the second period, 145 film clips and 524 photos retrieved are informative. This dissertation is, to the author's knowledge, the first to associate interpreting in Estonia with the creation of symbolic capital for the state. Expanding upon Pierre Bourdieu’s approach to symbolic capital, the author applied it not just to individuals but to states. The use of the state language (and interpretation) was directly linked with the prestige of the state and enhanced the state’s symbolic capital. After World War II not only the political order but also the linguistic environment changed in Estonia, and with an influx of Russian-speaking population there was obviously the need to ensure communication between the two population groups. In post-war Estonia the use of interpreting became highly contextualized: the dominant Soviet ideology aimed at expanding the use of Russian, whereas interpreting into Russian allowed Estonian to be used in the conference room, as well