Translation and the Internet : evaluating the Quality of Free Online Machine Translators

The late 1990s saw the advent of free online machine translators such as Babelfish, Google Translate and Transtext. Professional opinion regarding the quality of the translations provided by them, oscillates wildly from the «laughably bad» (Ali, 2007) to «a tremendous success» (Yang and Lange, 1998). While the literature on commercial machine translators is vast, there are only a handful of studies, mostly in blog format, that evaluate and rank free online machine translators. This paper offers a review of the most significant contributions in that field with an emphasis on two key issues: (i) the need for a ranking system; (ii) the results of a ranking system devised by the authors of this paper. Our small-scale evaluation of the performance of ten free machine translators (FMTs) in «league table» format shows what a user can expect from an individual FMT in terms of translation quality. Our rankings are a first tentative step towards allowing the user to make an informed choice as to the most appropriate FMT for his/her source text and thus produce higher FMT target text quality.Durant la darrera dècada del segle xx s'introdueixen els traductors online gratuïts (TOG), com poden ser Babelfish, Google Translate o Transtext. L'opinió per part de la crítica professional sobre aquestes traduccions es mou des d'una ingrata ridiculització (Ali, 2007) a l'acceptació més incondicional (Yang y Lange, 1998). Actualment, els estudis valoratius sobre els TOG són realment escassos, la majoria en format blog, mentre que la literatura sobre els traductors comercials és enorme. L'article que plantegem aporta una revisió de les principals contribucions i posa l'èmfasi bàsicament en dues qüestions: (i) necessitat d'un sistema de classificació (un rànquing) i (ii) descripció dels resultats obtinguts pel sistema de classificació ideat pels autors d'aquest article. L'avaluació que realitzem a petita escala es basa en l'anàlisi de l'actuació de deu TOG en un rànquing que posa de manifest les expectatives que en termes de qualitat de traducció pot esperar l'usuari. El resultat del rànquing ofereix a l'usuari els criteris que millor s'ajusten a cada cas, per tal d'utilitzar un traductor o un altre en funció del text original, i obtenir com a resultat una traducció de qualitat considerable

Results of seed tests for 1915, Bulletin, no. 177

The Bulletin is a publication of the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station, College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire

Results of seed tests for 1917, Bulletin, no. 186

The Bulletin is a publication of the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station, College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire

Results of seed tests for 1916, Bulletin, no. 180

The Bulletin is a publication of the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station, College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire

Pasture top-dressing in New Hampshire, Bulletin, no. 320

The Bulletin is a publication of the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station, College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire

Experiments with grass hay, Bulletin, no. 306

The Bulletin is a publication of the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station, College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire

The interview as narrative ethnography : seeking and shaping connections in qualitative research.

Acts of counter-subjectification in qualitative research are always present but are often submerged in accounts that seek to locate the power of subjectification entirely with the researcher. This is particularly so when talking to people about sensitive issues. Based on an interview-based study of infertility and reproductive disruption among British Pakistanis in Northeast England, we explore how we, as researchers, sought and were drawn into various kinds of connections with the study participants; connections that were actively and performatively constructed through time. The three of us that conducted interviews are all female academics with Ph.Ds in anthropology, but thereafter our backgrounds, life stories and experiences diverge in ways that intersected with those of our informants in complex and shifting ways. We describe how these processes shaped the production of narrative accounts and consider some of the associated analytical and ethical implications

Turning round the telescope. Centre-right parties and immigration and integration policy in Europe

This is an Author's Original Manuscript of 'Turning round the telescope. Centre-right parties and immigration and integration policy in Europe', whose final and definitive form, the Version of Record, has been published in the Journal of European Public Policy 15(3):315-330, 2008 [copyright Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi.org/10.1080/13501760701847341

Nonprofit governance: Improving performance in troubled economic times

Nonprofit management is currently pressured to perform effectively in a weak economy. Yet, nonprofit governance continues to suffer from unclear conceptions of the division of labor between board of directors and executive directors. This online survey of 114 executive directors aims to provide clarification and recommendations for social administration

“Making voices heard…”: Index on Censorship as Advocacy Journalism

The magazine Index on Censorship has sought, since its launch in 1972, to provide a space where censorship and abuses against freedom of expression have been identified, highlighted and challenged. Originally set up by a collection of writers and intellectuals who were concerned at the levels of state censorship and repression of artists in and under the influence of the Soviet Union and elsewhere, ‘Index’ has provided those championing the values of freedom of expression with a platform for highlighting human rights abuses, curtailment of civil liberties and formal and informal censorship globally. Charting its inception and development between 1971 and 1974, the paper is the first to situate the journal within the specific academic literature on activist media (Janowitz, 1975; Waisbord, 2009; Fisher, 2016). In doing so the paper advances an argument which draws on the drivers and motivations behind the publication’s launch to signal the development of a particular justification or ‘advocacy’ of a left-libertarian civic model of freedom of speech