Translation scholars and machine translation users : can we speak the same language?

Delorme Benites, Alice; Rossi, Caroline; Biros, Camille

Publication type:	Conference other
Type of review:	Peer review (abstract)
Title:	Translation scholars and machine translation users : can we speak the same language?
Authors:	Delorme Benites, Alice Rossi, Caroline Biros, Camille
et. al:	No
Conference details:	10th Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST22), Oslo, Norway, 22-25 June 2022
Issue Date:	23-Jun-2022
Language:	English
Subject (DDC):	410.285: Computational linguistics 418.02: Translating and interpreting
Abstract:	A recent study of the uses of MT by academics and students (Delorme Benites et al, 2021) has shown that they have already become widespread for non-linguists in their every-day professional activities --e.g. writing emails, research presentations, articles, assignments, assessments, etc. Therefore, it becomes necessary for this “lay” public to develop cognitive tools towards MT literacy (Bowker & Ciro, 2019), despite the fact that they do not always have enough linguistic knowledge for an informed criticism of its output. To consider this issue we have set up a study in a specific communicative situation: non-native academics and students required to use English in the field of biotechnology for health. Dealing with such ethically-sensitive issues as gene-editing or cellular manipulation, this is a scientific field where finding the right word is crucial. Will these non-native speakers using MT for professional purposes have the necessary skills to make the best use of MT output and how can we, as translation specialists, help them to acquire those skills? Based on the detailed analysis of a specialized corpus of English MT output on gene-editing (from French source texts, using two free online NMT engines) we designed a short survey to test academics’ and students’ understanding of poorly translated segments. We then organised debriefing sessions with volunteer participants to assess what linguistic skills are necessary to use MT output appropriately. If some problems regarding terms and compounds could be corrected quite easily with a little advice from linguistic professionals, other problems, like languagespecific syntactic structures, might be more challenging to overcome. In our dialogue with two different groups of MT users, we sought to produce simple explanations, doing away with linguistic categories in ways that might be comparable to the basic principles of corpus-based machine translation (Hearne & Way 2011, Forcada 2017). Finally, we argue that one category might be usefully maintained in what could be a shared ontology for translators and MT users, namely translation units (Kenny 2006 : 50-51).
Further description:	Bowker, L., & Ciro, J. B. (2019). Machine translation and global research: Towards improved machine translation literacy in the scholarly community. Emerald Group Publishing. Forcada, M. L. (2017). Making sense of neural machine translation. Translation spaces, 6(2), 291-309. Hearne, M., & Way, A. (2011). Statistical machine translation: a guide for linguists and translators. Language and Linguistics Compass, 5(5), 205-226. Kenny, D. (2006). Corpus-based Translation Studies: A Quantitative or Qualitative Development?. Journal of Translation Studies, 9(1), 43-58.
URI:	https://digitalcollection.zhaw.ch/handle/11475/25228
Fulltext version:	Published version
License (according to publishing contract):	Licence according to publishing contract
Departement:	Applied Linguistics
Organisational Unit:	Institute of Translation and Interpreting (IUED)
Appears in collections:	Publikationen Angewandte Linguistik

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Delorme Benites, A., Rossi, C., & Biros, C. (2022, June 23). Translation scholars and machine translation users : can we speak the same language? 10th Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST22), Oslo, Norway, 22-25 June 2022.

Delorme Benites, A., Rossi, C. and Biros, C. (2022) ‘Translation scholars and machine translation users : can we speak the same language?’, in 10th Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST22), Oslo, Norway, 22-25 June 2022.

A. Delorme Benites, C. Rossi, and C. Biros, “Translation scholars and machine translation users : can we speak the same language?,” in 10th Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST22), Oslo, Norway, 22-25 June 2022, Jun. 2022.

DELORME BENITES, Alice, Caroline ROSSI und Camille BIROS, 2022. Translation scholars and machine translation users : can we speak the same language? In: 10th Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST22), Oslo, Norway, 22-25 June 2022. Conference presentation. 23 Juni 2022

Delorme Benites, Alice, Caroline Rossi, and Camille Biros. 2022. “Translation Scholars and Machine Translation Users : Can We Speak the Same Language?” Conference presentation. In 10th Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST22), Oslo, Norway, 22-25 June 2022.

Delorme Benites, Alice, et al. “Translation Scholars and Machine Translation Users : Can We Speak the Same Language?” 10th Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST22), Oslo, Norway, 22-25 June 2022, 2022.