Language translation by computer has been proposed as a solution to the backlog of training and operational manuals awaiting translation by more conventional means. This study reports one of a series of experiments to assess the quality of translations produced by human translators and computers. The type of material under study was technical text (i.e., maintenance manuals) and the translation was from English to Vietnamese.
Utility or readability of the translations was assessed by reading comprehension tests, the cloze procedure (in which readers filled in blanks where words had been systematically deleted) and a rating scale for judging clarity. Time to perform each of these tasks was also measured. The subjects were 141 Vietnamese Navy officer candidates and a control group of 57 U.S. Navy officer candidates. A 500-word passage, from a U.S. Navy casualty control instruction, was translated by computer into a rough (un-edited) and a finished (post-edited) version; also, highly competent human translators prepared a Vietnamese text. Some Vietnamese subjects served as controls and took all tests based on the English, or untranslated, version.
Major conclusions were: (1) Translations produced by highly qualified humans were consistently more comprehensible than those produced by computer, whether edited or un-edited; post-edited versions of computer produced text were more comprehensible than unedited ones; most differences were not statistically significant; (2) Vietnamese Navy officer candidates were able to read text in English as well as its best Vietnamese version and their test scores were about as high as those of American control subjects. Reading speed was not affected by mode of translation.
2004. A Methodology for Evaluating Arabic Machine Translation Systems. Machine Translation 18:4 ► pp. 299 ff.
Zantout, Rached & Ahmed Guessoum
2000. Arabic Machine Translation: A Strategic Choice for the Arab World. Journal of King Saud University - Computer and Information Sciences 12 ► pp. 117 ff.
Zachary, Wayne W.
1979. A survey of approaches and issues in machine-aided translation systems. Computers and the Humanities 13:1 ► pp. 17 ff.
HUTCHINS, W.J.
1978. MACHINE TRANSLATION AND MACHINE‐AIDED TRANSLATION. Journal of Documentation 34:2 ► pp. 119 ff.
Mel'chuk, I. A.
1977. Research in machine translation (1970?1974). Journal of Soviet Mathematics 7:2 ► pp. 272 ff.
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