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Machine Translation (Level 2). Anna Sågvall Hein GSLT Course, January 2003. Translation. ”substitute the text material of one language (SL) by the equivalent text material of another language (TL)” (Catford 1965: 20)
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Machine Translation (Level 2) Anna Sågvall Hein GSLT Course, 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, 18-22 September 2001 (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/WJHutchins/MTS-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 (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/WJHutchins/IAMTcert.htm) 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 (http://babelfish.altavista.com/) • Metal • Power Translator Pro (L&H) • Lantmark • Comprendium • ESTeam See further: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/WJHutchins/Compendium-4.pdf , http://www.foreignword.com/Technology/mt/mt.htm Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003
Basic strategies • direct translation • rule-based translation • transfer • lexicalistic approach • interlingua • example-based translation • statistical translation • hybrids Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003