Moses, time, and crisis translation
Training translators to react to sudden emergencies is a challenge. This article presents the results of a training experiment
testing the speed of acquisition of the skills necessary to operate the open-source Moses statistical machine translation (SMT)
system. A task-based approach was used with trainee translators who had no experience working with MT technology. The experiment
is a feasibility study to ascertain whether training on Moses SMT could be considered for long-lasting crisis scenarios. The
article reports its findings in four sections. The first section discusses the research context in which ‘crisis translation’ is
defined; the second section illustrates the rationale of the experiment; the third section looks at the results of the training
experiment; and the fourth at the trainees’ perceptions of their learning processes. The conclusion reflects on the viability of
using Moses and on the next phases needed to refine the findings of this first experiment.
Article outline
- Crisis communication and the position of translation
- Moses SMT and training experiment
- Trainee translators in a task-based learning process
- Participants’ self-reflective approach
- Concluding remarks
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
References (62)
References
Alexander, David E. 2016. How to Write an Emergency Plan. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press.
Al Sharou, Khetam. 2018. English-Arabic Translation through Moses SMT: Intensive Course on Open Source Technologies in Postgraduate Translation Programmes. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. London: University College London.
Bandura, Albert. 1977. “Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change.” Psychological Review 84(2): 191–215.
Bulut, Alev and Turgay Kurultay. 2001. “Interpreters-in-aid at disasters: Community interpreting in the process of disaster management.” The Translator 7(2): 249–263.
Bernacki, Matthew L., Timothy J. Nokes-Malach, and Vincent Aleven. 2015. “Examining self-efficacy during learning: Variability and relations to behavior, performance, and learning.” Metacognition and Learning 10(1): 99–117.
Burns, Anne. 2010. Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching: A Guide for Practitioners. New York: Routledge.
Businario, Roberta. 2012. Relief Operations across Language Barriers: The Interpreter Factor. Unpublished MSc Thesis. University College Dublin.
Cadwell, Patrick and Sharon O’Brien. 2016. “Language, culture, and translation in disaster ICT: An ecosystemic model of understanding.” Perspectives 24(4): 557–575.
Cadwell, Patrick and Sharon O’Brien. 2017. “Translation facilitates comprehension of health-related crisis information: Kenya as an example.” JoSTrans 281: 23–51.
CLING. 2011. Guidelines for Using Language and Sign Interpreters – useful tips for Christchurch agencies. [URL]. Last accessed 4 July 2018.
Cohen, Louis, Lawrence Manion, and Keith Morrison. 2013. “Action research.” In Research Methods in Education, 6th edition, ed. by Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion, and Keith Morrison, 344–361. London: Routledge.
Compeau, Deborah R. and Christopher A. Higgins. 1995. “Computer self-efficacy: Development of a measure and initial test.” MIS Quarterly 19(2): 189–211.
Crowley, John and Jennifer Chan. 2011. Disaster Relief 2.0: The future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies. Washington, DC and Berkshire, UK: Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. <[URL]>. Last accessed 4 July 2018.
Doherty, Stephen and Dorothy Kenny. 2014. “The design and evaluation of a statistical machine translation syllabus for translation students.” The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 8(2): 295–315.
Doğan, Aymil. 2016. “‘Anybody down there?’ Emergency and disaster interpreting in Turkey.” In Mediating Emergencies and Conflict. Frontline Translation and Interpreting, ed. by Federico M. Federici, 59–83. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Doğan, Aymil and Rana Kahraman. 2011. “Emergency and disaster interpreting in Turkey: Ten years of a unique endeavour.” Hacettepe University Journal of Faculty of Letters 28(2): 61–76.
Federici, Federico M. 2016. “Introduction: A state of emergency for crisis communication.” In Mediating Emergencies and Conflict. Frontline Translation and Interpreting, ed. by Federico M. Federici, 1–29. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Federici, Federico M. 2010. “Assessing translation skills: Reflective practice on linguistic and cultural awareness.” In Teaching and Testing Interpreting and Translating, ed. by Valerie Pellatt, Kate Griffiths, and Shao-Chuan Wu, 171–192. Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang.
Gaspari, Federico. 2001. “Teaching machine translation to trainee translators: A survey of their knowledge and opinions.” MT Summit VIII Workshop on Teaching Machine Translation, Sep 2001. <[URL]>. Last accessed on 4 July 2018.
Gerbier, Solweig, et al. 2011. “Evaluation of natural language processing from emergency department computerized medical records for intra-hospital syndromic surveillance.” BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 11(1): 50.
Hale, Sandra. 2007. Community Interpreting. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hester, Vaughn, Aaron Shaw, and Lukas Biewald. 2010. “Scalable crisis relief: Crowdsourced SMS translation and categorization with Mission 4636.” Proceedings of the First ACM Symposium on Computing for Development (ACM DEV’10), 1–7. New York: ACM.
Howe, Austin, Murray E. Jennex, George H. Bressler, Eric G. Frost. 2013. “Exercise24: Using social media for crisis response.” In Using Social and Information Technologies for Disaster and Crisis Management, ed. by Murray E. Jennex, 232–250. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Hubscher-Davidson, Séverine. 2008. “A reflection on action research processes in translator training: Project on group work in Level 2 translation classes.” The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 2(1): 75–92.
Hubscher-Davidson, Séverine. 2011. “A discussion of ethnographic research methods and their relevance for translation process research.” Across Languages and Cultures 12(1): 1–18.
Hurtado Albir, Amparo. 2007. “Competence-based curriculum design for training translators.” The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 1(2): 163–195.
Hurtado Albir, Amparo (ed). 1999. Enseñar a traducir. Metodología en la formación de traductores e intérpretes. Madrid: Edelsa.
Jennex, Murray E. 2013. Using Social and Information Technologies for Disaster and Crisis Management. Hershey PA: IGI Global.
Kiraly, Donald C. 2000. A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education: Empowerment from Theory to Practice. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Kiraly, Donald C. 1995. Pathways to Translation: Pedagogy and Process. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press.
Lewis, William, Robert Munro and Stephan Vogel. 2011. “Crisis MT: Developing a cookbook for MT in crisis situations.” Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Statistical Machine Translation: 501–11.
Lewis, William. 2010. “Haitian Creole: How to build and ship an MT engine from scratch in 4 days, 17 hours, & 30 minutes.” Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT 2010). Saint-Raphaël, France.
Moser-Mercer, Barbara, Leïla Kherbiche, and Barbara Class. 2014. “Interpreting conflict: Training challenges in humanitarian field interpreting.” Journal of Human Rights Practice 6(1): 140–58.
Munro, Robert. 2013. “Crowdsourcing and the crisis-affected community: Lessons learned and looking forward from Mission 4636.” Journal of Information Retrieval 16(2): 210–66.
Munro, Robert. 2010. “Crowdsourced translation for emergency response in Haiti: The global collaboration of local knowledge.” AMTA Workshop on Collaborative Crowdsourcing for Translation. Denver, Colorado. 31 October 2010.
Mulder, Femke, Julie Ferguson, Peter Groenewegen, Kees Boersma, and Jeroen Wolbers. 2016. “Questioning big data: Crowdsourcing crisis data towards an inclusive humanitarian response.” Big Data & Society 3(2): 1–13.
Nunan, David. 1993. “Action research in language education.” In Teachers Develop Teachers Research, ed. by Julian Edge and Keith Richards. Oxford: Heinemann.
O’Brien, Sharon. 2016. “Training translators for crisis communication: The translators without borders example.” In Mediating Emergencies and Conflict. Frontline Translation and Interpreting, ed. by Federico M. Federici, 85–111. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pescaroli, Gianluca, et al. 2014. “Pathogenic vulnerabilities and resilient factors in systems and populations experiencing a cascading disaster.” Fortress, FP7 Project Report 2.1. <[URL]>. Last accessed 4 April 2018.
Pescaroli, Gianluca and David E. Alexander. 2015. “A definition of cascading disasters and cascading effects: Going beyond the ‘toppling dominos’ metaphor.” planet @ risk 3(1): 58–67.
Pescaroli, Gianluca and David Alexander. 2016. “Critical infrastructure, panarchies and the vulnerability paths of cascading disasters.” Natural Hazards 82(1): 1–18.
Perry, Ronald W. 2007. “What Is a Disaster?” In Handbook of Disaster Research, ed. by Havidan Rodríguez, Enrico L. Quarantelli, and Russel R. Dynes, 1–15. New York: Springer..
Qadir, Junaid, Anwaar Ali, Raihan ur Rasool, Andrej Zwitter, Arjuna Sathiaseelan, and Jon Crowcroft. 2016. “Crisis analytics: big data-driven crisis response.” Journal of International Humanitarian Action 11: 12.
Quarantelli, Enrico L. (ed.) 2005. What is a Disaster? A Dozen Perspectives on the Question. New York: Routledge.
Samson, Richard. 2005. “Computer-assisted translation.” In Training for the New Millennium: Pedagogies for Translation and Interpreting, ed. by Martha Tennent, 101–126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schön, Donald A. 1995. “The new scholarship requires a new epistemology.” Change 27(6): 27–34.
Shaluf, Ibrahim M., Fakharu’l-razi Ahmadun, and Aini Mat Said. 2003. “A review of disaster and crisis.” Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal 12(1): 24–32.
Shank, Daniel and Shelia Cotten. 2014. “Does technology empower urban youth? The relationship of technology use to self-efficacy.” Computers & Education 701: 184–193.
Smith, R. M., et al. 2012. “Disaster triage after the Haitian earthquake.” Injury 431: 1811–1815.
Sutherlin, Gwyneth. 2013. “A voice in the crowd: Broader implications for crowdsourcing translation during crisis.” Journal of Information Science 391: 397–409.
Taibi, Mustapha and Uldis Ozolins. 2016. “Community translation: Definitions, characteristics and status quo.” In Community Translation, ed. by Mustapha Taibi and Uldis Ozolins, 7–28. London: Bloomsbury.
Tanner, Lydia and Alice Obrecht. 2015. “Words of relief: Translators without Borders. Local language translation for emergencies.” HIF/ALNAP case study. London: ODI/ALNAP.
United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. 2009. UNISDR Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction. Geneva: UNISDR. <[URL]>. Last accessed 4 July 2018.
Valero Garcés, Carmen. 2014. Communicating Across Cultures: A Coursebook on Interpreting and Translating in Public Services and Institutions. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Whittaker, Joshua, Blythe McLennan, and John Handmer. 2015. “A review of informal volunteerism in emergencies and disasters: Definition, opportunities and challenges.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 131: 358–368.
Wright, Stephen, Kristin Perrone-McGovern, Jenelle Boo, and Aarika Vannatter White. 2014. “Influential factors in academic and career self-efficacy: Attachment, supports, and career barriers.” Journal of Counseling and Development 92(1): 36–46.
WHO. 2003. Words are Important. Geneva: World Health Organization. [URL]. Last accessed 4 July 2018.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Moskal, Marta, Giovanna Fassetta, Maria Grazia Imperiale & Jamie Spurway
2024.
‘To translate feelings not words’. Humanitarian interpreting: challenging institutional and professional boundaries in interpreting for refugees.
Language and Intercultural Communication ► pp. 1 ff.
Ruiz Rosendo, Lucía & Maura Radicioni
2022.
Humanitarian Interpreting in the Age of COVID-19. In
Translation and Interpreting in the Age of COVID-19 [
Corpora and Intercultural Studies, 9],
► pp. 165 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.