CONTRASTING POST-EDITING AND HUMAN TRANSLATION

Oliver Čulo, Jean NitzkeUniversität Mainz

culo@uni-mainz.deMT @ work, BrusselsDecember 5th, 2014

CRITT TPR DATABASE

translation process database with key-logging and eye-tracking data

coordinator: Copenhagen Business School

English-German data collection at FTSK in Germersheim

First run: 6 source texts (newspaper) with different complexity levels, 12

professional translators, 12 semi-professional translators,

translation vs. post-editing vs. monolingual editing

Second run: 6 source texts (3 manuals, 3 package leaflets), 12 semi-

professional translators, translation vs. full post-editing vs. light post editing

MT system: Google Translate

eye-tracking (Tobii TX 300), key-logging (Translog II),

retrospective questionnaires

FIRST RUN: RESEARCH BEHAVIOUR AND EXEMPLARY OBSERVATIONS

WEBSITE USAGE: PROPORTIONS

Monolingual Editing bilingual dictionarymonolingual dictionarysynonymsmachine translationencyclopidiasearch enginenews

encyclopedia

Post-Editing Human Transla-tion

All Tasks

WEBSITE USAGE: TOTALS

Monolinguales Post-Editing

Post-Editing Human Translation0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

Website Use per Task

Monolingual Post-Editing

Post-Editing Human Translation0

50

100

150

200

250

Website Use per Task - Status

ProfessinalsStudents

SEMANTIC ERRORS THROUGH ‘BLIND’ (MONOLINGUAL) EDITING

EO: Increasing mobility and technological advances resulted in the increasing exposure of people to cultures and societies different from their own.

MT: Zunehmende Mobilität und der technologische Fortschritt führte zu der zunehmenden Gefährdung von Personen... Lit.: `... led to the increasing endangerment of people.`

HT(8) ME(8) PE(7)

Incorrect translation (Gefährdung) 0 4 0

Incorrect translation (other) 0 2 0

correct 8 2 7

LACK OF CONSISTENCY (1)

EO: Killer nurse receives four life sentences. Hospital nurse C.N. was imprisoned for life today for the killing of four of his patients.

PE: Killer-Krankenschwester zu viermal lebenslanger Haft verurteilt. Der Krankenpfleger C.N. wurde heute auf Lebenszeit eingesperrt für die Tötung von vier seiner Patienten.

‘Killer-nurse.FEM to four times lifetime imprisonment sentenced. The nurse.MASC C.N. was today on lifetime imprisoned for the killing of four his.MASC patients.

HT(7) ED(7) PE(8)

nurse-incons. 0 0 4

SECOND RUN: EXEMPLARY OBSERVATIONS

LACK OF CONSISTENCY(2)

EO: 5x dish washer

MT: 1x Geschirrspülmaschine 2x Geschirrspüler 2x Spülmaschine

HT(3) LPE(3) FPE(3)

dish washer inconsistency

1 3 2

LACK OF CONSISTENCY?EO: Locate sharp items MT: Suchen Sie scharfer Gegenstände

Look-for you sharp items HT: Scharfe Gegenstände so positionieren

Sharp items so positionFPE: Plazieren Sie scharfe Gegenstände so

Place you sharp items such-that

HT MT LPE FPE

polite imperative (13)

P08: 6P12: 8P17: 6P25: 11

11 P10: 12P16: 12P22: 12P30: 12

P09: 12P14: 11P21: 12P29: 11

PRIMING- strong indicators for syntactic priming in post-editing

(Bangalore et al. submitted)- indicators for lexical priming

- no. of lexical types (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs) realised in the second run: HT > FPE > LPE > MT

- further statistical texts based on word alignment

type of translation no. of lexical types

MT 277

LPE 330

FPE 384

HT 488

Bangalore, Srinivas, Bergljot Behrens, Michael Carl, Maheshwar Gankhot, Arndt Heilmann, Jean Nitzke, Moritz Schaeffer, Annegret Sturm. submitted. The role of syntactic choices in translation and post-editing.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

OPEN QUESTIONS• somehow, translators ‘forget’ about lexical consistency – cognitive

load problem? taking over more than they admit (or realise)? i.e. lexical priming (besides syntactic priming)?

• post-editing has to be approached and probably taught differently, but exactly how is a matter of future research

• will productivity gains hold if we make post-edited texts comparable to human translations?

• if we produce more post-edited material and feed it into MT systems, will we run into a garbage-in-garbage-out problem over time?

• Ottmann & Canfora1 propose to make a risk assessment for every scenario and then to decide whether to send a translation through an MT or a human process

1 http://tagungen.tekom.de/fileadmin/tx_doccon/slides/ 351_Auf_eigenes_Risiko_Wie_Sie_durch_Risikoanalysen_gute_bersetzungen_bekommen.pdf