Machine Translation (Level 2) Anna Sågvall Hein GSLT Course, January 2003

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Translation ”substitute the text material of one language (SL) by the equivalent text material of another language (TL)” (Catford 1965: 20) ”Translation consists in producing in the target language the closest natural equivalent of the text material of the source language, in the first hand concerning meaning, in the second hand concerning style (Nida 1975: 32) ”Translation is in theory impossible, but in practice fairly possible” Mounin 1967) Catford, J. C. (1965), A Linguistic Theory of Translation, Oxford Press, England. Mounin, G. (1967) Les problèmes théotitiques de la traduction. Paris Nida, E. (1975), A Framework for the Analysis and Evaluation of Theories of Translation, in Brislin, R. W. (ed) (1975), Translation Application and Research, Gardner Press, New York.

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Equivalence form meaning style effect

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Formal and dynamic equivalence Formal equivalence focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content. It aims to allow the reader to understand as much of the SL context as possible. Dynamic equivalence is based on the principle of equivalent effect, i.e. that the relationship between receiver and message should aim at being the same as that between the original receivers and the SL message. (Nida 75)

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Can computers translate? Not a simple yes or no; it depends on the purpose of the translation and the required quality.

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Classical problems with MT unrealistic expectations bad translations difficulties in integrating MT in the work flow –the Ericsson case

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Feasibility of machine translation Quality in relation to purpose Sublanguage Spell checked and grammar checked SL Controlled language Human machine interaction Re-use of translations Evalution data

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Translation related tasks translation browsing gisting drafting message dissemination cross-language information searches cross-language interchanges

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 MT as a cross-language communication tool MT is used not only for pure translation purposes but also for writing in a foreign language and for browsing (Hutchins 2001) Hutchins, J., 2001, Towards a new vision for MT, Introductory speech at MT Summit VIII conference, September 2001 ( TS-2001.htm) TS-2001.htm

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 What is MT proper? To be considered as MT, a system should provide mininally correct morphology minimal syntactic processing minimal semantic processing handle and produce full sentences Hutchins, J., 2000, The IAMT Certification initiative and defining translation system categories ( tm) tm

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Sublanguage domain text type

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Spell checking and grammar checking If there are spelling errors or typos in the SL dictionary search will fail If there are grammatical errors in the SL grammatical analysis will fail Where and how should spell and grammar checking be accounted for? Before or in the process?

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Controlled language controlled vocabulary –full lexical coverage, e.g. Scania Swedish controlled grammar –full grammatical coverage language checker –e.g. Scania Checker

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Human intervention before –language checking during –e.g. ambiguity resolution after –post-editing

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Re-use of translations translation memories translation dictionaries incl. terminologies statistical machine translation example-based translation

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Evaluation of MT coverage (recall) quality (precision)

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Why machine translation? cheaper faster more consequent

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Examples of MT products Systran ( Metal –Power Translator Pro (L&H) –Lantmark –Comprendium ESTeam See further: m-4.pdf, m-4.pdfhttp://

Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003 Basic strategies direct translation rule-based translation –transfer –lexicalistic approach –interlingua example-based translation statistical translation hybrids