Chan - The human factor in machine translation

CHAN SIN-WAI

LYNNE BOWKER AND JAIRO BUITRAGO CIRO

SYLVIANE CARDEY

CHAN SIN-WAI

JIANG CHENG AND WANG MIN

QIAN DUOXIU

OLIVIA KWONG OI YEE

KARA WARBURTON

XU BIN

SARAH NDANU M. NGESU

MOZHGAN GHASSEMIAZGHANDI AND TENGKU SEPORA TENGKU MAHADI

CECILIA WONG SHUK MAN

CAO YIXIN

Lynne Bowker is Full Professor at the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa, and is also the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.

Cao Yixin is a PhD candidate at the Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kong. She obtained her BA and MA degrees from Sun Yat-Sen University, China.

Sylviane Cardey is Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France and Tenured Professor of Linguistics and Natural Language Processing in the University of Franche-Comt, Besanon, France.

Chan Sin-wai, is Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. To date, he has published 52 books in 64 volumes.

Jairo Buitrago Ciro is a student on uOttawas Master of Information Studies programme.

Mozhgan Ghassemiazghandi is a PhD candidate in translation studies at the University Sains Malaysia. She works as a freelance translator for a number of international organizations and private clients.

Jiang Cheng, is Director of the Department of English for EST Translation and Vice Director of the MTI Center of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology.

Olivia Kwong Oi Yee is Associate Professor at the Department of Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests span many bilingual and pan-Chinese language processing issues.

Tengku Sepora Tengku Mahadi is Full Professor and Dean of the School of Languages, Literacies and Translation at the University Sains Malaysia. She lectures in translation theories and practice.

Sarah Ndanu Mwangangl Ngesu is Lecturer at the South Eastern Kenya University. She has taught at the South Eastern Kenya University and the Kenyatta University.

Qian Duoxiu is Associate Professor and Vice Dean of the School of Foreign Languages and Head of the Department of Translation and Interpretation of Beihang University, Beijing, China.

Wang Min obtained her BA degree from Nanjing University of Science and Technology in 2011 and MTI degree from University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in 2015.

Kara Warburton was the lead terminologist for IBM for 15 years and is a recognized expert in terminology management. She has taught terminology management in professional workshops and universities.

Cecilia Wong Shuk Man taught at the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the Department of Translation of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (part-time).

Xu Bin is Associate Professor and Director of the English Department of the School of Foreign Languages at Shandong Normal University. He conducts research on translation studies and computer-aided translation.

Chan Sin-wai

Despite the rapid advances of translation technology, the human factor in machine translation is as important as ever. This is very much in evidence when we study all the chapters in this volume.

The first chapter is entitled Localizing Websites using Machine Translation: Exploring Connections between User eXperience and Translatability by Lynne Bowker and Jairo Buitrago Ciro, both of the University of Ottawa, Canada. UX or User eXperience is concerned with the user-centred design of a website: it focuses on the total subjective experience of the user and on whether the site meets the users needs. Questions include whether the site is easy to use, attractive, and appropriate. Since the web is a multimedia platform, UX often focuses on visual aspects of the site (e.g. font, icons, colours, navigation). Yet, much web content is text-based, and there has been some effort to consider text as part UX. For example, some organizations produce style guides for content creators that suggest the particular tone and voice that should be adopted to appeal to site users. While UX guidelines aim to make web content engaging, other types of guidelines may also come into play. For instance, as organizations increasingly engage in website localization, controlled language guidelines may be applied to ensure that text can be more easily translated, typically by a machine translation system. The question of whether UX and translatability guidelines are compatible or in conflict becomes increasingly relevant, particularly when it comes to balancing time, cost, and quality. This chapter reports on a multilingual recipient evaluation of web content that has been created according to two different sets of guidelines, and then translated using machine translation. The results indicate that there are some areas where the two sets of guidelines are compatible, but other areas where they are in conflict.