Towards an Effective Toolkit for Translators

As advances in the eld of machine translation (MT) continue to allow for greater
distribution of multi-lingual information, an increasing number of browser-based
toolkits are being developed in an attempt to empower translators, and decrease
the gap between speed, and quality of output. However, these systems so far have
failed to satisfy the translation community due to a fundamental misunderstanding
of the way translators work. There has been an essential divergence in the study
and implementation of machine translation systems|away from the original goal
of providing perfect target-language texts, towards an attempt to provide output
that can be largely understood for quick dissemination. The realisation that current
methodology in the eld does not allow for such high quality to be attained has
turned researchers’ attentions to the development of systems that act as supporting
processes during several of the traditional stages of translation. Nonetheless, such
e orts have continued on the assumption that high quality translation from the get-
go is the most important factor, rather than assessing how translators’ work
ows
react to poor quality target language text generated by such systems. Our aim has
been to identify techniques that reduce the time that translators spend on the whole
transfer process – by realising that a SMT core can provide much more than a raw
translation, even at this relatively early stage in its development.
Our research evaluates the shortcomings of existing systems, and proposes a new
kind of integrated online toolkit that addresses these limitations based on an under-
standing of the most signi cant and unnecessary struggles between translators and
MT systems. Consequently we believe that with just a handful of changes it is pos-
sible to envisage an arrangement that will allow translators to regularly outperform
non-MT-based working strategies, both in terms of speed and quality.