22 research outputs found
Novel statistical approaches to text classification, machine translation and computer-assisted translation
Esta tesis presenta diversas contribuciones en los campos de la
clasificación automática de texto, traducción automática y traducción
asistida por ordenador bajo el marco estadístico.
En clasificación automática de texto, se propone una nueva aplicación
llamada clasificación de texto bilingüe junto con una serie de modelos
orientados a capturar dicha información bilingüe. Con tal fin se
presentan dos aproximaciones a esta aplicación; la primera de ellas se
basa en una asunción naive que contempla la independencia entre las
dos lenguas involucradas, mientras que la segunda, más sofisticada,
considera la existencia de una correlación entre palabras en
diferentes lenguas. La primera aproximación dió lugar al desarrollo de
cinco modelos basados en modelos de unigrama y modelos de n-gramas
suavizados. Estos modelos fueron evaluados en tres tareas de
complejidad creciente, siendo la más compleja de estas tareas
analizada desde el punto de vista de un sistema de ayuda a la
indexación de documentos. La segunda aproximación se caracteriza por
modelos de traducción capaces de capturar correlación entre palabras
en diferentes lenguas. En nuestro caso, el modelo de traducción
elegido fue el modelo M1 junto con un modelo de unigramas. Este
modelo fue evaluado en dos de las tareas más simples superando la
aproximación naive, que asume la independencia entre palabras en
differentes lenguas procedentes de textos bilingües.
En traducción automática, los modelos estadísticos de traducción
basados en palabras M1, M2 y HMM son extendidos bajo el marco de la
modelización mediante mixturas, con el objetivo de definir modelos de
traducción dependientes del contexto. Asimismo se extiende un
algoritmo iterativo de búsqueda basado en programación dinámica,
originalmente diseñado para el modelo M2, para el caso de mixturas de
modelos M2. Este algoritmo de búsqueda nCivera Saiz, J. (2008). Novel statistical approaches to text classification, machine translation and computer-assisted translation [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/2502Palanci
User Evaluation of Advanced Interaction Features for a Computer-Assisted Translation Workbench
This paper reports on the results of a user
satisfaction survey carried out among 16
translators using a new computer-assisted
translation workbench. Participants were
asked to provide feedback after performing
different post-editing tasks on different
configurations of the workbench, using
different features and tools. Resulting
from the feedback provided, we report on
the utility of each of the features, identifying
new ways of implementing them according
to the users’ suggestions
Evaluating the Learning Curve of Domain Adaptive Statistical Machine Translation Systems
The new frontier of computer assisted translation technology is the effective integration of statistical MT within the translation workflow. In this respect, the SMT ability of incrementally learning from the translations produced by users plays a central role. A still open problem is the evaluation of SMT systems that evolve over time. In this paper, we propose a new metric for assessing the quality of
an adaptive MT component that is derived from the theory of learning curves: the percentage slope
On the effective deployment of current machine translation technology
Machine translation is a fundamental technology that is gaining more importance
each day in our multilingual society. Companies and particulars are
turning their attention to machine translation since it dramatically cuts down
their expenses on translation and interpreting. However, the output of current
machine translation systems is still far from the quality of translations generated
by human experts. The overall goal of this thesis is to narrow down
this quality gap by developing new methodologies and tools that improve the
broader and more efficient deployment of machine translation technology.
We start by proposing a new technique to improve the quality of the
translations generated by fully-automatic machine translation systems. The
key insight of our approach is that different translation systems, implementing
different approaches and technologies, can exhibit different strengths and
limitations. Therefore, a proper combination of the outputs of such different
systems has the potential to produce translations of improved quality.
We present minimum Bayes¿ risk system combination, an automatic approach
that detects the best parts of the candidate translations and combines them
to generate a consensus translation that is optimal with respect to a particular
performance metric. We thoroughly describe the formalization of our
approach as a weighted ensemble of probability distributions and provide efficient
algorithms to obtain the optimal consensus translation according to the
widespread BLEU score. Empirical results show that the proposed approach
is indeed able to generate statistically better translations than the provided
candidates. Compared to other state-of-the-art systems combination methods,
our approach reports similar performance not requiring any additional data
but the candidate translations.
Then, we focus our attention on how to improve the utility of automatic
translations for the end-user of the system. Since automatic translations are
not perfect, a desirable feature of machine translation systems is the ability
to predict at run-time the quality of the generated translations. Quality estimation
is usually addressed as a regression problem where a quality score
is predicted from a set of features that represents the translation. However, although the concept of translation quality is intuitively clear, there is no
consensus on which are the features that actually account for it. As a consequence,
quality estimation systems for machine translation have to utilize
a large number of weak features to predict translation quality. This involves
several learning problems related to feature collinearity and ambiguity, and
due to the ¿curse¿ of dimensionality. We address these challenges by adopting
a two-step training methodology. First, a dimensionality reduction method
computes, from the original features, the reduced set of features that better
explains translation quality. Then, a prediction model is built from this
reduced set to finally predict the quality score. We study various reduction
methods previously used in the literature and propose two new ones based on
statistical multivariate analysis techniques. More specifically, the proposed dimensionality
reduction methods are based on partial least squares regression.
The results of a thorough experimentation show that the quality estimation
systems estimated following the proposed two-step methodology obtain better
prediction accuracy that systems estimated using all the original features.
Moreover, one of the proposed dimensionality reduction methods obtained the
best prediction accuracy with only a fraction of the original features. This
feature reduction ratio is important because it implies a dramatic reduction
of the operating times of the quality estimation system.
An alternative use of current machine translation systems is to embed them
within an interactive editing environment where the system and a human expert
collaborate to generate error-free translations. This interactive machine
translation approach have shown to reduce supervision effort of the user in
comparison to the conventional decoupled post-edition approach. However,
interactive machine translation considers the translation system as a passive
agent in the interaction process. In other words, the system only suggests translations
to the user, who then makes the necessary supervision decisions. As
a result, the user is bound to exhaustively supervise every suggested translation.
This passive approach ensures error-free translations but it also demands
a large amount of supervision effort from the user.
Finally, we study different techniques to improve the productivity of current
interactive machine translation systems. Specifically, we focus on the development
of alternative approaches where the system becomes an active agent
in the interaction process. We propose two different active approaches. On the
one hand, we describe an active interaction approach where the system informs
the user about the reliability of the suggested translations. The hope is that
this information may help the user to locate translation errors thus improving
the overall translation productivity. We propose different scores to measure translation reliability at the word and sentence levels and study the influence
of such information in the productivity of an interactive machine translation
system. Empirical results show that the proposed active interaction protocol
is able to achieve a large reduction in supervision effort while still generating
translations of very high quality. On the other hand, we study an active learning
framework for interactive machine translation. In this case, the system is
not only able to inform the user of which suggested translations should be
supervised, but it is also able to learn from the user-supervised translations to
improve its future suggestions. We develop a value-of-information criterion to
select which automatic translations undergo user supervision. However, given
its high computational complexity, in practice we study different selection
strategies that approximate this optimal criterion. Results of a large scale experimentation
show that the proposed active learning framework is able to
obtain better compromises between the quality of the generated translations
and the human effort required to obtain them. Moreover, in comparison to
a conventional interactive machine translation system, our proposal obtained
translations of twice the quality with the same supervision effort.González Rubio, J. (2014). On the effective deployment of current machine translation technology [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/37888TESI
Interactive Pattern Recognition applied to Natural Language Processing
This thesis is about Pattern Recognition. In the last decades, huge efforts have been
made to develop automatic systems able to rival human capabilities in this field. Although
these systems achieve high productivity rates, they are not precise enough in
most situations. Humans, on the contrary, are very accurate but comparatively quite
slower. This poses an interesting question: the possibility of benefiting from both
worlds by constructing cooperative systems.
This thesis presents diverse contributions to this kind of collaborative approach.
The point is to improve the Pattern Recognition systems by properly introducing a
human operator into the system. We call this Interactive Pattern Recognition (IPR).
Firstly, a general proposal for IPR will be stated. The aim is to develop a framework
to easily derive new applications in this area. Some interesting IPR issues are
also introduced. Multi-modality or adaptive learning are examples of extensions that
can naturally fit into IPR.
In the second place, we will focus on a specific application. A novel method to
obtain high quality speech transcriptions (CAST, Computer Assisted Speech Transcription).
We will start by proposing a CAST formalization and, next, we will cope
with different implementation alternatives. Practical issues, as the system response
time, will be also taken into account, in order to allow for a practical implementation
of CAST. Word graphs and probabilistic error correcting parsing are tools that will
be used to reach an alternative formulation that allows for the use of CAST in a real
scenario.
Afterwards, a special application within the general IPR framework will be discussed.
This is intended to test the IPR capabilities in an extreme environment, where
no input pattern is available and the system only has access to the user actions to produce
a hypothesis. Specifically, we will focus here on providing assistance in the
problem of text generation.Rodríguez Ruiz, L. (2010). Interactive Pattern Recognition applied to Natural Language Processing [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/8479Palanci
Multi-modal post-editing of machine translation
As MT quality continues to improve, more and more translators switch from traditional translation from scratch to PE of MT output, which has been shown to save time and reduce errors. Instead of mainly generating text, translators are now asked to correct errors within otherwise helpful translation proposals, where repetitive MT errors make the process tiresome, while hard-to-spot errors make PE a cognitively demanding activity. Our contribution is three-fold: first, we explore whether interaction modalities other than mouse and keyboard could well support PE by creating and testing the MMPE translation environment. MMPE allows translators to cross out or hand-write text, drag and drop words for reordering, use spoken commands or hand gestures to manipulate text, or to combine any of these input modalities. Second, our interviews revealed that translators see value in automatically receiving additional translation support when a high CL is detected during PE. We therefore developed a sensor framework using a wide range of physiological and behavioral data to estimate perceived CL and tested it in three studies, showing that multi-modal, eye, heart, and skin measures can be used to make translation environments cognition-aware. Third, we present two multi-encoder Transformer architectures for APE and discuss how these can adapt MT output to a domain and thereby avoid correcting repetitive MT errors.Angesichts der stetig steigenden Qualität maschineller Übersetzungssysteme (MÜ) post-editieren (PE) immer mehr Übersetzer die MÜ-Ausgabe, was im Vergleich zur herkömmlichen Übersetzung Zeit spart und Fehler reduziert. Anstatt primär Text zu generieren, müssen Übersetzer nun Fehler in ansonsten hilfreichen Übersetzungsvorschlägen korrigieren. Dennoch bleibt die Arbeit durch wiederkehrende MÜ-Fehler mühsam und schwer zu erkennende Fehler fordern die Übersetzer kognitiv. Wir tragen auf drei Ebenen zur Verbesserung des PE bei: Erstens untersuchen wir, ob andere Interaktionsmodalitäten als Maus und Tastatur das PE unterstützen können, indem wir die Übersetzungsumgebung MMPE entwickeln und testen. MMPE ermöglicht es, Text handschriftlich, per Sprache oder über Handgesten zu verändern, Wörter per Drag & Drop neu anzuordnen oder all diese Eingabemodalitäten zu kombinieren. Zweitens stellen wir ein Sensor-Framework vor, das eine Vielzahl physiologischer und verhaltensbezogener Messwerte verwendet, um die kognitive Last (KL) abzuschätzen. In drei Studien konnten wir zeigen, dass multimodale Messung von Augen-, Herz- und Hautmerkmalen verwendet werden kann, um Übersetzungsumgebungen an die KL der Übersetzer anzupassen. Drittens stellen wir zwei Multi-Encoder-Transformer-Architekturen für das automatische Post-Editieren (APE) vor und erörtern, wie diese die MÜ-Ausgabe an eine Domäne anpassen und dadurch die Korrektur von sich wiederholenden MÜ-Fehlern vermeiden können.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Projekt MMP
TransSearch: from a bilingual concordancer to a translation finder
Abstract As basic as bilingual concordancers may appear, they are some of the most widely used computer-assisted translation tools among professional translators. Nevertheless, they still do not benefit from recent breakthroughs in machine translation. This paper describes the improvement of the commercial bilingual concordancer TransSearch in order to embed a word alignment feature. The use of statistical word alignment methods allows the system to spot user query translations, and thus the tool is transformed into a translation search engine. We describe several translation identification and postprocessing algorithms that enhance the application. The excellent results obtained using a large translation memory consisting of 8.3 million sentence pairs are confirmed via human evaluation
Progress report on user interface studies, cognitive and user modelling
This WP presents the empirical foundations for the development of the CasMaCat workbench.
A series of experiments are being run to establish basic facts about translator behaviour in
computer-aided translation, focusing on the use of visualization options and input modalities
while post-editing machine translation (sections 1 and 2). Another series of studies deals with
cognitive modelling and individual di erences in translation production, in particular translator
types and translation/post-editing styles (sections 3 and 4).
This deliverable, D1.2, is a progress report on user interface studies, cognitive and user
modelling. It reports on post-editing and interactive translation experiments, as well as cognitive
modelling covering Tasks 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.5. It also addresses the issues that were raised in
the last review report for the project period M1 to M12, in particular:
the basic facts about the translator behaviour in CAT (sections 1 and 4) highlighting
usage of visualization and input modalities (see also D5.3).
the individual di erences in translator types and translation styles, (section 3, see also
terminology, section A.1)
the results and conclusions of preliminary studies conducted to investigate post-editing
and translation styles (section 2 and 5)
From the experiments and analyses so far, it is clear that the data collected in the CRITT
TPR-DB (Translation Process Research database) is an essential resource to achieve the Cas-
MaCat project goals. It allows for large-scale in depth studies of human translation processes
and thus serves as a basis of information to empirically grounded future development of the
CasMaCat workbench. It attracts an international research community to investigate human
translation processes under various conditions and to arrive at a more advanced level of understanding.
Additional language pairs and more data increase the chances to better underpin the
conclusions needed, as will be shown in this report, and as concluded in section 5
Diverse Contributions to Implicit Human-Computer Interaction
Cuando las personas interactúan con los ordenadores, hay mucha
información que no se proporciona a propósito. Mediante el estudio de estas
interacciones implícitas es posible entender qué características de la interfaz
de usuario son beneficiosas (o no), derivando así en implicaciones para el
diseño de futuros sistemas interactivos.
La principal ventaja de aprovechar datos implícitos del usuario en
aplicaciones informáticas es que cualquier interacción con el sistema puede
contribuir a mejorar su utilidad. Además, dichos datos eliminan el coste de
tener que interrumpir al usuario para que envíe información explícitamente
sobre un tema que en principio no tiene por qué guardar relación con la
intención de utilizar el sistema. Por el contrario, en ocasiones las
interacciones implícitas no proporcionan datos claros y concretos. Por ello,
hay que prestar especial atención a la manera de gestionar esta fuente de
información.
El propósito de esta investigación es doble: 1) aplicar una nueva visión tanto
al diseño como al desarrollo de aplicaciones que puedan reaccionar
consecuentemente a las interacciones implícitas del usuario, y 2)
proporcionar una serie de metodologías para la evaluación de dichos
sistemas interactivos. Cinco escenarios sirven para ilustrar la viabilidad y la
adecuación del marco de trabajo de la tesis. Resultados empíricos con
usuarios reales demuestran que aprovechar la interacción implícita es un
medio tanto adecuado como conveniente para mejorar de múltiples maneras
los sistemas interactivos.Leiva Torres, LA. (2012). Diverse Contributions to Implicit Human-Computer Interaction [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/17803Palanci
Mitigating the problems of SMT using EBMT
Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) typically has difficulties with less-resourced languages even with homogeneous data. In this thesis we address the application of Example-Based Machine Translation (EBMT) methods to overcome some of these difficulties. We adopt three alternative approaches to tackle these problems focusing
on two poorly-resourced translation tasks (English–Bangla and English–Turkish). First, we adopt a runtime approach to EBMT using proportional analogy. In addition to the translation task, we have tested the EBMT system using proportional analogy for named entity transliteration. In the second attempt, we use a compiled approach to EBMT. Finally, we present a novel way of integrating Translation Memory (TM) into an EBMT system. We discuss the development of these three different EBMT systems and the experiments we have performed. In addition, we present an approach to augment the output quality by strategically combining EBMT systems and SMT systems. The hybrid system shows significant improvement for different language pairs.
Runtime EBMT systems in general have significant time complexity issues especially for large example-base. We explore two methods to address this issue in our system by making the system scalable at runtime for a large example-base (English–French). First, we use a heuristic-based approach. Secondly we use an IR-based indexing technique to speed up the time-consuming matching procedure of the EBMT system. The index-based matching procedure substantially improves run-time speed without affecting translation quality