Anna Zaretskaya, ESR1

Location: University of Malaga, Spain

Project Title: Investigation of translators’ requirements from translation technologies

Project Description: 

My project is about user perspective on translation technologies. I study tools and resources used in translation industry and try to find out how they can be improved to satisfy the requirements of professional translators.

I distributed an online questionnaire among professional translators, which contained questions on their use of machine translation (MT), computer aided translation (CAT) tools, textual corpora, terminology extraction and management tools, among others. This survey was aimed at better understanding of translators’ attitudes towards MT, how popular it is among different translator groups (e.g. freelancers and in-house translators), and which environment they prefer to use it in. In this relation, I also studied how common it is for translators to use MT integrated in their CAT tool, whether they are aware of different kinds of such integration and whether they find it useful.

The survey also studies translators’ preferences regarding different features of CAT tools, which of them are more useful and which are less important. Finally, it also covers the subject of corpora in the translation process and tools for compiling corpora.

In addition, I am interested in methodologies for evaluation of translation technologies. I conducted a case study in which I evaluated functionality of a number of popular CAT tools based on user preferences. Apart from that I am working on MT evaluation and post-editing. Currently I am preparing an experiment in order to study how post-editing time and effort differ depending on the types of errors made by MT systems.

 

Publication list

  1. Costa, H., Zaretskaya, A., Corpas Pastor, G., and Seghiri, M. (2016). Nine Terminology Extraction Tools: Are they useful for translators? Multilingual 159, vol. 27, nº 3, April/May, 2016. pp.14–20

  2. Zaretskaya, A. (2015). The use of machine translation among professional translators. In Proceedings of the EXPERT Scientific and Technological Workshop. Malaga, Spain

  3. Zaretskaya, A. (2015). D2.1: User requirement analysis. Technical report. EXPERT: EXPloiting Empirical appRoaches to Translation.

    http://expert-itn.eu/sites/default/files/outputs/expert_d2.1_20150210.pdf

  4. Zaretskaya, A., Corpas Pastor, G., and Seghiri, M. (2015). Translators’ requirements for translation technologies: Results of a user survey. In Proceedings of the AIETI7 Conference. New Horizons is Translation and Interpreting Studies (AIETI). Malaga, Spain

  5. Zaretskaya, A., Corpas Pastor, G., and Seghiri, M. (2015). Integration of machine translation in CAT tools: State of the art, evaluation and user attitudes. SKASE Journal for Translation and Interpretation, 8(1): 76–88

  6. Zaretskaya, A. (2016). A quantitative method for evaluation of CAT tools based on user preferences. In Litzler, M. F., García Laborda, J. and Tejedor Martínez, C., editors, Beyond the universe of Languages for Specific Purposes: The 21st century perspective. In Proceedings of the AELFE XV International Conference. University of Alcalá, June 2016, pp.153–158

  7. Zaretskaya, A., Corpas-Pastor, G., and Seghiri-Domínguez, M. (2016). A quality evaluation template for machine translation. Translation Journal, 19(1).

  8. Zaretskaya, A., Corpas Pastor, G., and Seghiri, M. (2016/In press). Corpora in computer-assisted translation: a users view. In Corpas Pastor, G. and Seghiri, M., editors, Corpus-based Approaches to Translation and Interpreting: from theory to applications. Peter Lang, Frankfurt.

  9. Zaretskaya, A., Vela, M., Corpas Pastor, G., and Seghiri, M. (2016). Measuring Post-editing Time and Effort for Different Types of Machine Translation Errors. New Voices in Translation Studies, 15 (2016).

  10. Zaretskaya, A., Vela, M., Corpas Pastor, G., and Seghiri, M. (2016). Comparing Post-Editing Difficulty of Different Machine Translation Errors in Spanish and German Translations from English. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 3(3).

  11. Zaretskaya, A., Corpas Pastor, G., and Seghiri, M. (2016). User Perspective on Translation Tools: Findings of a User Survey. In Trends in e-tools and resources for translators and interpreters. Brill.

Resources