Stylistic Means of Verbalizing Images of the Russian-Ukrainian War

Purpose: The paper aims at considering the ways of verbalizing the stylistic devices used to describe the images of the Russian-Ukrainian war in the selected Ukrainian and British mass media

Experience and Emotion in Empirical Translation Research with Think-Aloud and Retrospection

In empirical process-oriented translation research with different kinds of introspection, two important questions are raised repeatedly: 1. Does concurrent verbalization, like Think-aloud, have an influence on the translation process and 2. What do we actually learn from introspective methods like think-aloud and retrospection? Based on ideas from modern psychology and brain research, it is argued that think-aloud must have an impact on the translation process. Furthermore, it is suggested that it is not only spontaneous, unmodified thoughts about the actual task that are verbalized, but also memories, reflections, justifications, explanations, emotions and experiences.Deux questions importantes se posent sans cesse dans la recherche empirique orientée processus sur la traduction : 1. Une verbalisation se déroulant en même temps que la traduction, par exemple dans les protocoles de verbalisation à voix haute (TAP), influe-t-elle sur le processus de traduction sous-jacent ? 2. Qu’apprend-on réellement par le biais de méthodes introspectives telles que les TAP et la rétrospection ? Sur la base d’idées développées dans la psychologie moderne et dans la recherche sur le cerveau, on affirme ici que la verbalisation à voix haute doit affecter le processus de traduction. Par ailleurs, on affirme qu’elle produit non seulement des pensées spontanées et non modifiées relatives à la tâche en cours, mais aussi des verbalisations de souvenirs, de réflexions, de justifications, d’explications, d’émotions et d’expériences

Image captioning for effective use of language models in knowledge-based visual question answering

Integrating outside knowledge for reasoning in visio-linguistic tasks such as visual question answering (VQA) is an open problem. Given that pretrained language models have been shown to include world knowledge, we propose to use a unimodal (text-only) train and inference procedure based on automatic off-the-shelf captioning of images and pretrained language models. More specifically, we verbalize the image contents and allow language models to better leverage their implicit knowledge to solve knowledge-intensive tasks. Focusing on a visual question answering task which requires external knowledge (OK-VQA), our contributions are: (i) a text-only model that outperforms pretrained multimodal (image-text) models of comparable number of parameters; (ii) confirmation that our text-only method is specially effective for tasks requiring external knowledge, as it is less effective in standard a VQA task (VQA 2.0); and (iii) our method attains results in the state-of-the-art when increasing the size of the language model. We also significantly outperform current multimodal systems, even though augmented with external knowledge. Our qualitative analysis on OK-VQA reveals that automatic captions often fail to capture relevant information in the images, which seems to be balanced by the better inference ability of the text-only language models. Our work opens up possibilities to further improve inference in visio-linguistic tasks.Ander is funded by a PhD grant from the Basque Government (PRE_2021_2_0143). This work is based upon work partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Spanish Government (DeepKnowledge project PID2021-127777OB-C21), and the Basque Government (IXA excellence research group IT1570-22)

Producing Informative Text Alternatives for Images

A picture may be worth a thousand words but what might those words be? How do we go about finding those words? Images are often used to convey information, supplement textual content, and/or add visual appeal to documents. Unless the user can see the image and properly interpret it, the user may not receive the same information. While containers exist for providing text alternatives in various types of electronic documents (including Web pages), they are rarely used. When they are used, the text alternatives are not informative. While guidance currently exists regarding which containers to use in order to provide text alternatives, there is little guidance available regarding what information to include in these containers and how to compose text alternatives. The purpose of this work is to establish a procedure for identifying the information being communicated within an image and provide guidance on how to produce informative text alternatives. Based on related information in the areas of Web accessibility, library cataloguing, captioning and audio description, image retrieval and indexing, art description, and tactile representation, important information communicated by an image were identified and a procedure for producing informative text alternatives using that information was developed. Studies were conducted to determine the effectiveness of the procedure to identify important information about an image. Study 1 determined the information identified about an image when the procedure was not available. It also suggested reasons why people would opt to not provide a text alternative for an image. Study 2 determined the information that people would identify when they were given the procedure and a set of questions to help identify information about an image. Study 3 determined the information people identified when they were required to consider all of the different types of information that may be important in an image. The results from these three studies were compared to determine the effectiveness of the procedure to identify important information about the image. Study 4 presented the information identified in the previous three studies to sighted and visually impaired users to evaluate the importance of such information. This study determined the quality of the information identified in the first three studies and the ability of the procedure to identify important information for a wide set of images. The results of these studies showed that the procedure was effective in identifying a greater amount of important information than without the procedure. Additional guidance was also identified to further help people create informative and useful text alternatives. The studies also showed that the procedure could be applied by different user groups to a wide range of images. The procedure was submitted to the International Standards Organization to become a technical specification, which will be available to people around the world

Lived Experiences of Orthodox Jewish Professionals Working with At-Risk Youth in the Orthodox Community

A phenomenological approach was used to explore the lived experience of Orthodox Jewish professionals (mental health practitioner, high school rabbi, mentor) trying to break the resistance and connect with the at-risk youth in the Orthodox Jewish community (OJC). OJC at-risk youth was defined as a) youth experiencing life disruptions (in family, school, community, and/or religious contexts) related to psychological issues and reflected in externalizing (e.g., delinquent ) or internalizing (e.g., depression) behaviors, and b) excluding a youth experiencing life disruptions due to non-compliance with parental and societal expectations (i.e., religious obligations) when devoid of a significant psychological component. Thirteen textural narratives illustrate the culture-specific manifestations of successful and unsuccessful attempts to connect with at-risk youth. In addition, four structural narratives offer insights into the essential components of the connection phenomenon, including, 1) Being non-judgmental, 2) Not taking it personally, 3) Being real, and 4) Focusing on well-being, not religion. The study concludes with reflections on the findings together with communal recommendations to help the OJC address its at-risk youth phenomenon

Data Loam: Sometimes Hard, Usually Soft. The Future of Knowledge Systems

Data Loam: Sometimes Hard, Usually Soft. The Future of Knowledge Systems is a landmark work. It details the wild proliferation of data and its profound methodological implications for arts and humanities, now enlivened by their ‘sticky cohesions’ with the knowledge systems of science, technology, engineering and maths. Vibrant and disruptive both as segment and infinite plane, the loam names a dynamic multiversal discourse, closer to a living, shape-shifting mesh. Its connections are self-organising complexities requiring the practical activities of distributed intelligences. We reclaim this as nothing less than art

An Empirical Study of Thinking Aloud Usability Testing from a Cultural Perspective

Usability evaluation methods are widely used to assess and improve the user interface design. This dissertation investigates the thinking aloud usability testing from a cultural perspective. In a test situation, representative users are required to verbalize their thoughts as they perform their tasks while using the system, and an evaluator observes the user’s task performance and comes up with usability problems. The primary goal of a usability test is to find a list of usability problems. In this research, the impacts of evaluators’ and users’ cultural backgrounds on both the result and the process of the thinking aloud usability testing were investigated. Regarding the results of the usability testing, the identified usability problem was the main focus, whereas for the process of testing, the communication between users and evaluators was the main focus. In this dissertation, culture was regarded as cognitive styles and communication orientations. For the theories of thinking aloud, both Ericsson and Simon’s classic model, and Boren and Ramey’s revised model for usability testing were taken into account. Based on the culture theories and thinking aloud models, hypotheses were developed to investigate the evaluators’ identified usability problems in different cultural settings, and themes were put forward to investigate the evaluators’ and users’ communications. In order to investigate the hypotheses and themes, an experimental study was conducted. The experimental design consisted of four independent groups with evaluators and users from similar or different cultures (Danish and Chinese). Empirical data were collected by using background questionnaires, usability problem forms, usability problem lists, video recordings of the testing and interviews. The usability testing software “Morae” was used to record the whole testing, including the faces of the evaluators and users, the screen and keyboard activities. Evaluators’ and users’ communications were analyzed by the behavioural coding and analysis software “Observer XT 8.0” with a well defined coding system. The results of the systematic study of the thinking aloud usability testing in the context of the intra- and inter-cultural usability engineering show that the evaluators’ cultural backgrounds do have some influences on the usability testing; however, the influences are different for the tests with Western and East Asian users. The main findings of this research have implications for both usability research and practice. The methodological approach also gives inspiration for usability evaluation studie

Gained in translation : the effects of translators' gender on English-language children's literature as translated in China and Taiwan

This thesis explores how translators’ gender affects their reading and interpretation of foreign children’s literature, particularly from source texts by British male authors to target texts by Taiwanese female translators. It argues that masculine voices characteristic of British texts and Chinese translations from the early twentieth century have been changed both by modern liberal authors and regulated by emerging female translators working with female editors. The study examines ways in which translators reproduce social and gender norms from both the source and the target cultures. It also investigates how gender identity affects translators’ use of language and their attitudes toward the target texts of different groups of readers. The thesis provides historical background and an overview of the children’s publishing business and infrastructure in Taiwan before discussing polysystem theory and feminist criticism in relation to translation. It uses a combination of close reading and comparative analysis across a large sample of texts to identify instances where gender appears to have affected the translation. The analysis begins with classics – such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) – that have been translated both by male and female translators. It then considers a selection of contemporary novels, most translated by women, as usual for translations of children’s books in Taiwan. Finally, a number of translated picturebooks are analyzed, revealing a set of highly feminized translation practices related to equally feminine paratexts. Works by the following writers are discussed: David Almond, J.M. Barrie, Quentin Blake, Anthony Brown, John Burningham, Lewis Carroll, Aidan Chambers, Alan Garner, Kenneth Grahame, Charles Keeping, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, David Mckee, Mark Haddon, Davod Merling, China Miéville, Michael Morpurgo, Philip Pullman, R.L. Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo