Machine translation and fair access to information

This article contributes to the discussion on fairness and ethics in MT by highlighting efforts that have been made to use MT for the humanitarian purpose of increasing access to information for groups that are underserved. The article provides an overview of example projects in which MT has been implemented for this purpose in three contexts: civic participation, public health and safety, and media and culture. In addition, the article examines some of the ethical issues surrounding efforts to use MT for accessibility, including issues of quality, acceptability, and the need to involve stakeholders in development.Peer reviewe

Literary Post-editing and the Question of Copyright

Translation poses a challenge to copyright laws, which extend protection to works based on the originality of expression rather than the ideas expressed, because translations convey the ideas of the original in a different language and therefore also use different expressions. Technologization of translation has further increased this complexity, as tools such as translation memories and machine translation and post-editing practices are starting to also emerge in literary translation, calling for a more detailed investigation of the literary post-editor’s role and ownership of the text. Post-editing of machine-translated output could give rise to copyright protection, but this depends on the level of intervention and whether the post-edited translation is deemed sufficiently original. This article aims to investigate questions of originality, creativity and textual ownership in literary post-editing. We examine two cases where a literary text was machine translated, post-edited and then published. Our research materials consist of the peritexts surrounding the published translations and three epitexts: one publisher’s website, a research article written by one of the post-editors to describe the experience, and an interview with the other post-editor. Through a qualitative content analysis of these materials, we examine how they reflect the post-editors’ approach to post-editing, personal input in the process and textual ownership of the post-edited target text. The findings suggest that the two post-editors have different approaches to post-editing, leading them to differing perceptions of their own creative input and relationship with the final text.

Machine Translation Post-editing and Effort : Empirical Studies on the Post-editing Process

This dissertation investigates the practice of machine translation post-editing and the various aspects of effort involved in post-editing work. Through analyses of edits made by post-editors, the work described here examines three main questions: 1) what types of machine translation errors or source text features cause particular effort in post-editing, 2) what types of errors can or cannot be corrected without the help of the source text, and 3) how different indicators of effort vary between different post-editors. The dissertation consists of six previously published articles, and an introductory summary. Five of the articles report original research, and involve analyses of post-editing data to examine questions related to post-editing effort as well as differences between post-editors. The sixth article is a survey presenting an overview of the research literature. The research reported is based on multiple datasets consisting of machine translations and their post-edited versions, as well as process and evaluation data related to post-editing effort. The dissertation presents a mixed methods study combining qualitative and quantitative approaches, as well as theoretical and analytical tools from the fields of language technology and translation studies. Data on edits performed by post-editors, post-editing time, keylogging data, and subjective evaluations of effort are combined with error analyses of the machine translations in question, and compared for various post-editors. The results of this dissertation provide evidence that, in addition to the number of edits performed, post-editing effort is affected by the type of edits as well as source text features. Secondly, the results show that while certain language errors can be corrected even without access to the source text, certain other types that more severely affect the meaning cannot. Thirdly, the results show that post-editors' speed and the amount of editing they perform differ, and that various profiles can be identified in terms of how the edits are planned and carried out by the post-editors. The results of this work may have both theoretical and practical implications for the measurement and estimation of post-editing effort.Väitöskirjani tutkimuskohteena on konekäännösten jälkieditointi ja editoinnin työläys. Konekäännöksen jälkieditoinnilla tarkoitetaan, että kääntimellä tuotetaan raakakäännös, jota kääntäjä muokkaa. Tällainen konekäännösten käyttö on viime vuosina yleistynyt, joskin Suomessa se on vielä vähäistä. Raakakäännöksen käytöstä on hyötyä käännösprosessissa vain, jos jälkieditointi on vähemmän työlästä kuin kääntäminen ilman raakakäännöstä. Siksi tarvitaan tietoa, miten konekäännöksen virheet vaikuttavat editointiin, milloin editointi on mielekästä ja milloin virheet tekevät raakakäännöksen käytön liian työlääksi. Tutkimuksessa tarkastelen editoijien tekemiä muutoksia ja analysoin, millaiset konekäännöksissä esiintyvät virheet tai lähtötekstien piirteet tekevät editoinnista erityisen työlästä. Tutkin, onnistuuko virheiden korjaaminen joissakin tilanteissa jopa ilman lähtötekstiä. Tarkastelen myös, miten työläys näkyy eri editoijien tekemien korjausten määrässä, editointinopeudessa ja editointitavoissa. Analyysi pohjautuu englanti-suomi- ja englanti-espanja-konekäännöksiin ja niiden jälkieditoituihin versioihin. Editoijien tekemien muutosten perusteella analysoin, millaisia virheitä he konekäännöksestä korjasivat ja millaisia virheitä ei pystytty korjaamaan, jos lähtötekstiä ei ollut käytettävissä. Virheanalyysiin yhdistin aineistoa editointiin kuluneesta ajasta ja tietokoneen näppäimistön käytöstä editoinnin aikana, sekä konekäännöstä arvioineiden henkilöiden subjektiivisia arvioita, kuinka työlääksi editointi koettiin. Analyysi yhdistää sekä laadullisia että määrällisiä menetelmiä. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että konekäännökseen tehtyjen muutosten lukumäärän lisäksi myös muut tekijät, kuten virheiden tyyppi ja editoitavan virkkeen pituus, vaikuttavat sekä editointiaikaan että subjektiivisesti koettuun työläyteen. Tulokset myös viittaavat siihen, että tietyntyyppisten kielellisten virheiden korjaaminen onnistuu jopa ilman lähtötekstiä mutta vakavammin merkityksen välittymistä haittaavat virheet voivat tehdä korjaamisesta mahdotonta. Eri editoijien prosessien vertailu osoittaa myös, että editointinopeus ja korjausten määrä vaihtelee samaakin tekstiä editoitaessa, ja eri editoijat toteuttavat korjauksensa eri tavoin. Tutkimuksen tuloksia voidaan hyödyntää sekä konekääntimien että editointiprosessien kehittämisessä ja editoinnin työläyden arvioinnissa

Post-editing quality: Analysing the correctness and necessity of post-editor corrections

Post-editing (PE) machine translations (MT) has become an increasingly common practice in the translation field in recent years. Research has investigated, among other issues, the types of error corrected by post-editors, but less emphasis has been placed on the corrections themselves and how they reflect MT errors. This article presents a pilot study analysing the edits made by five student post-editors in an English–Finnish post-editing task. We analyse the correctness and necessity of the edits. Our results show that, whereas most edits performed in the task are correct, a significant number of them (34%) are unnecessary. The findings suggest that specific types of edit, such as word-order changes and deletions of personal pronouns, are generally unnecessary for this language pair, which may have implications for post-editing practice and training.</p

MT for subtitling : User evaluation of post-editing productivity

This paper presents a user evaluation of machine translation and post-editing for TV subtitles. Based on a process study where 12 professional subtitlers translated and post-edited subtitles, we compare effort in terms of task time and number of keystrokes. We also discuss examples of specific subtitling features like condensation, and how these features may have affected the post-editing results. In addition to overall MT quality, segmentation and timing of the subtitles are found to be important issues to be addressed in future work.Peer reviewe

MT for Subtitling : Investigating professional translators’ user experience and feedback

This paper presents a study of machine translation and post-editing in the field of audiovisual translation. We analyse user experience data collected from post-editing tasks completed by twelve translators in four language pairs. We also present feedback provided by the translators in semi-structured interviews. The results of the user experience survey and thematic analysis of interviews shows that the translators’ impression of post-editing subtitles was on average neutral to somewhat negative, with segmentation and timing of subtitles identified as a key factor. Finally, we discuss the implications of the issues arising from the user experience survey and interviews for the future development of automatic subtitle translation

On the correctness of machine translation

Machine translated texts are increasingly used for quickly obtaining an idea of the content of a text and as a basis for editing the text for publication. This paper presents a study examining how well a machine-translated text can convey the intended meaning to the reader. In the experiment described, test subjects edited machine-translated texts from English into Finnish. In order to observe how well it would be possible for the test subjects to decipher the meaning of the source text based on the machine translation alone, they had no access to the source text. Their edits were assessed by the authors of the paper for the correctness of meaning (compared to the source text) and language (compared to the target language norms and conventions). The results show that the test subjects were successful at deducing the correct meaning without the source text for about half of the edited sentences. The results also suggest that errors in word forms and mangled relations that can be deduced based on context are the kind of machine translation errors that are easier to recover from, while mistranslated idioms and missing content seem to be more critical to understand the meaning.</p

Machine translation and fair access to information

This article contributes to the discussion on fairness and ethics in MT by highlighting efforts that have been made to use MT for the humanitarian purpose of increasing access to information for groups that are underserved. The article provides an overview of example projects in which MT has been implemented for this purpose in three contexts: civic participation, public health and safety, and media and culture. In addition, the article examines some of the ethical issues surrounding efforts to use MT for accessibility, including issues of quality, acceptability, and the need to involve stakeholders in development.</p