1 / 13

Direct translation

Direct translation. no intermediary sentence structure translation proceeds in a number of steps, each step dedicated to a specific task the most important component is the bilingual dictionary typically general language problems with ambiguity inflection

dwight
Download Presentation

Direct translation

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Direct translation • no intermediary sentence structure • translation proceeds in a number of steps, each step dedicated to a specific task • the most important component is the bilingual dictionary • typically general language • problems with • ambiguity • inflection • word order and other structural shifts Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  2. Simplistic approach • sentence splitting • tokenisation • handling capital letters • dictionary look-up and lexical substitution • copying unknown words, digits, signs of punctuation etc. • formal editing Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  3. Advanced classical approach (Tucker 1987) • Source text dictionary lookups and morphological analysis • Identification of homographs • Identification of compound nouns • Identification of nouns and verb phrases • Processing of idioms Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  4. Advanced approach, cont. • processing of prepositions • subject-predicate identification • syntactic ambiguity identification • synthesis and morphological processing of target text • rearrangement of words and phrases in target text Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  5. Feasibility of the direct translation strategy Is it possible to carry out the direct translation steps as suggested by Tucker with sufficient precision without relying on a sentence grammar and an intermediary structure? Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  6. Example, 1 Sv. Ytterst handlar kampen för sysselsättning om att hålla samman Sverige. En. Ultimately, the fight for full employment concerns the cohesion of Swedish society. (from Statement of Government Policy 1996) Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  7. Assignment 1: Hable Con Ella (en-sv) • Make a general quality assessment of the translation. • Suggest a possible use of a translation of this kind. • Identify the steps that were taken in the translation. • Specify the translation errors that were made and discuss them. • Suggest improvements in the framework of the direct translation strategy. • Motivate them. • Formalise them in a framework of your own choice. • Discuss their general adequacy in the translation of Swedish to English. Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  8. Current trends in direct translation • re-use of translations • translation memories of sentences and sub-sentence units such as words, phrases and larger units • example-based translation • statistical translation Will re-use of translations overcome the problems with the direct translation approach that were discussed above? If so, how can they be handled? Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  9. Systran • System Translation • developped in the US by Peter Toma • first version 1969 (Ru-En) • EC bought the rights of Systran in 1976 • currently 18 language pairs • no Swedish • http://babelfish.altavista.com/) Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  10. Systran, cont. • more than 1,600,000 dictionary units • 20 domain dictionaries • daily use by EC translators, administrators of the European institutions • originally a direct translation strategy • see H&S • to-day more of a transfer-based strategy Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  11. Motivations for transfer-based translation • lexical ambiguity • structural differences See further Ingo 91 (6), Wikholm (89) Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  12. Example, 2 Sv. Fyll på olja i växellådan.  En. Fill gearbox with oil. (from the Scania corpus) • fyll på  fill • obj  adv • adv  obj Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

  13. Example, 3 Sv. I oljefilterhållaren sitter en överströmningsventil.  En. The oil filter retainer has an overflow valve. (from the Scania corpus) • sitter  has • adv  subj • subj  obj Anna Sågvall Hein, GSLT, January 2003

More Related