Seminar Series 2021-22

Technologies for Translation and Interpreting: Challenges and Latest Developments

Please find below details of the Technologies for Translation and Interpreting: Challenges and Latest Developments.  Due to the current world situation these seminars are taking place online, if you would like to join us, please email Dr Amanda Bloore for an invitation.  {A [dot] Bloore [at] wlv.ac.uk}

This vibrant seminar series hosts leading scholars and CEOs of companies to report on their work and vision related to the technology for translators and interpreters covering among other topics translation and interpreting tools and resources and Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence solutions. The seminar series has both strong research and industrial foci and as such serves not only as a forum showcasing latest research, professional practices, software and business developments but also bridging the gap between academia and the industry.

It is strongly advised that all students attend these seminars to enrich their studies. 

This seminar series is hosted by Professor Ruslan Mitkov.

Eduard Barbu, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

27 May 2022

Title: Translation Memory Cleaning at the intersection between industry and Academia

Abstract:

The last years witnessed an increasing interest in the automatic methods for cleaning translation memories. This problem presents a great interest to the industry as many translation memories have not been adequately curated and thus include incorrect translations. We argue that progress in TM cleaning tools should be based on the translators-oriented surveys to understand better what constitutes a good TM unit.

In this talk, I will define the task, discuss its importance for the translation industry and outline the progress made in the last years for providing an automatic solution to this problem. A closely related line of research deals with identifying sentences that do not align in the parallel corpora mined from the web. The similarities between these tasks will be examined. I will argue for sharing tools and algorithms between the two research communities.

The presenter will offer his insights about the pitfalls and the opportunities for collaboration between Academia and the industry based on his experience in Translated company. 

 

Short Bio

Eduard Barbu is a researcher in the language technology group at the University of Tartu. He has a Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of Trento, Italy (2010). Currently, his research interests are in interpreting machine learning output and information extraction.

Eduard has worked in both Academia and industry in four countries: Romania, Italy, Spain, and Estonia. He has experience in many areas of NLP, like ontology building, information extraction, and coreference resolution. Eduard has worked on seven European projects and several national projects having to do with technology transfer. He is the author of NLP tools like the Estonian Coreference System, a coreference system for the Estonian Language, and TM Cleaner, a tool for cleaning translation memories.

 

Dr Adriane Orenha Ottaiano, São Paulo State University

20 May 2022

Title: Corpus-based Phraseology and Phraseography: interface and contributions to Translation and Interpreting

Phraseology and Corpus-based Phraseology have lately been regarded as relevant fields to Translation and Interpreting Studies (Corpas Pastor & Mitkov 2019; Colson 2020 etc.), playing a key role in the translation process of phraseological units, especially collocations. Collocations are pervasive and recurrent combinations and so are found in all types of written or oral texts or discourses. Besides that, they pose a great difficulty for translators and interpreters, mainly for the student or novice ones. Even though they are easily decoded, encoding and translating collocations seem to be a much more complex process. Hence, proposing a more suitable, idiomatic and natural equivalent in the target text may be a challenging task.

Corpus-based Phraseography, in its turn, responsible for the compilation of dictionaries and glossaries of phraseological units, is another field of knowledge that has contributed to the area of Translation and Interpreting in the past few years. Anyhow, there is still a gap that should be filled, considering that most bilingual or multilingual lexicographical or phraseographical works still overlook the specific needs of student or professional translators and interpreters.

In this talk, we will discuss the relevance and contributions of Corpus-based Phraseology and Phraseography to Translation and Interpreting Studies. We will also address the development of a phraseographical methodology and model for an Online Corpus-Based Multilingual Collocations Dictionary Platform” (FAPESP Process 2020/01783-2), targeting at translators and interpreters who work with English, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Chinese languages (Orenha-Ottaiano et al 2021; Orenha-Ottaiano & Olímpio de Oliveira 2021). Taking into account the specificities of the translation practice, the Platform has the aim of increasing student and professional translators’ collocational and phraseological competence as well as meeting their needs in what regards the translation of collocations. The project has the goal of developing a user-friendly and highly informative end-user platform, based on the contributions from the Function Theory of Lexicography (Fuertes Olivera & Tarp 2014; Tarp 2015; Bergenholtz & Tarp 2003).

 

BIODATA

Adriane Orenha-Ottaiano works as a Lecturer and Researcher at the Department of Modern Languages and the Graduate Program in Linguistic Studies from São Paulo State University (UNESP) since 2010. She holds a PostDoctoral Fellowship in Translation from Université de Montréal, Canada (FAPESP scholarship – Process nr. 2018/22943-8). She also holds a PhD in Linguistics Studies, from São Paulo State University (UNESP), a Master’s in Linguistics and English Literary Studies from University of Sao Paulo (USP) and a B.A. in Translation, from UNESP. She is the principal Investigator of the funded project “A phraseographical methodology and model for an Online Corpus-Based Multilingual Collocations Dictionary Platform” (FAPESP Proc nr. 2020/01783-2) as well as the project “Development of a methodology and enhancements of lexicographical resources for an online platform of Academic Collocations Dictionaries in Portuguese and English” (funded by CNPq/ Process ner. 409178/2021-7). She is the founder leader of the CNPq Research Group PHRASCORP – Corpus-based Phraseology and Collocations. She has experience in Corpus-based Phraseology and Phraseography (mainly on collocations), Corpus-based Lexicography, Corpus-Based Translation Studies, Teaching English and Portuguese as a foreign language, and Corpus Linguistics.

Dr Kairit Sirts, University of Tartu

29 April 2022

 

Title: NLP for clinical psychology: opportunities and challenges

 

Abstract:

Language is a fundamental means of communication that can be used to express both external facts and states of the world but also internal states and events. As such, it is only natural to consider NLP methods as a tool to extract psychological meaning and relevant internal events from people’s verbal or written communication. The extracted information can support diagnostic decision-making in clinical psychology. It can be also used to develop interventions to complement psychotherapy.

In this talk, I will focus on some opportunities and challenges related to applying NLP tools and methods to the area of clinical psychology. I will first address the task of diagnostic classification based on text and discuss issues related to the concept of diagnoses of mental health disorders in psychiatry and clinical psychology, and the implications of those issues to the NLP-based systems. Then I will talk about detecting distorted thought patterns as a transdiagnostic factor from the text. In this context, I will also address the issues related to collecting and annotating data necessary for developing NLP-based models. Finally, I will sketch a vision of an NLP-rich self-help system as a roadmap for future work.

Bio:

Kairit Sirts is a Research Fellow in NLP at the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Tartu, Estonia. Her work is focused primarily on automatic text analysis, from low-level tasks such as morphological analysis to information extraction, such as detecting named entities. Additionally, she is currently finishing her master’s studies in clinical psychology at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Tartu. Her research in master’s thesis involves studying the early prediction of the clinically high risk of psychosis. Combining her experience with natural language processing and knowledge from clinical psychology, she is interested in studying text-based methods that could lead to developing applications for the detection and improvement of mental health problems.

Dr Elizaveta Goncharova, National Research University, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (AIRI)

22 April 2022

Title: Incorporating discourse knowledge into the pre-trained transformer-based models for NLP tasks.

 

Abstract: During the talk I will cover the topic of incorporating discourse structure into the pre-trained transformer-based models. It is a known fact that the pre-trained transformers achieve state-of-the-art results on the bunch of NLP benchmarks. However, its pure data-driven paradigm causes some limitations for its performance on such complicated tasks as machine reading comprehension (MRC), summarization, or argumentation mining (AM), for example. Incorporating discourse knowledge about a text into the pre-trained models can be quite useful for such complex NLP tasks. During the talk we will discuss some techniques that can allow the BERT model be more discourse-aware and perform better on the complex NLP tasks than the vanilla BERT model.

 

Short bio: Elizaveta Goncharova is a research fellow in Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (AIRI). The major is computer science, natural language processing, and machine learning. I am specifically interested in NLP domain discovering the techniques for combining linguistic information with modern pre-trained models. My recent interest also lies in the domain of multi-task learning in the NLP field. While most models are able to successfully perform only one task that they have been fine-tuned on, it is a challenging issue to create a model that could be easily adopted for many downstream tasks simultaneously without requiring huge computational resources.

Prof Gloria Corpas, University of Wolverhampton/University of Malaga

8 April, 11.30am BST

Title: Phraseology, constructions and translation: a corpus-based approach Part II

Abstract: 

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic change of paradigm in phraseology research. Traditional methods have given way to various quantitative, distributional, and computational approaches. Particularly relevant to this talk are three emerging theoretical threads (and their corpus-based complementary methodologies): Construction Grammar and Computational Phraseology (Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen [2018], Fellbaum [2019], Goldberg [2019], Corpas Pastor and Colson [2020]).

Construction Grammar has prompted a profound transformation in the way idiomaticity is understood and viewed. Language is now conceived as an idiomatic continuum of which ‘constructions’ are the building blocks (general phrasal patterns and idioms). In this talk I will take an observational stance toward a corpus-based analysis of ‘insanity’ constructions in English and Spanish. Within a constructionist approach to idiomaticity, special emphasis will be laid on equivalent semantic-functional counterparts, potential mismatches, and other translation issues.

Bio:

BA in German Philology (English) from the University of Malaga. PhD in English Philology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1994). Professor in Translation Technology at the Research Institute in Information and Language Processing (RIILP) of the University of Wolverhampton, UK (since 2007). Professor in Translation and Interpreting at the University of Malaga, Spain (since 2008).  Honorary Adjunct Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China (since 2020). Published and cited extensively, member of several international and national editorial and scientific committees. Her research lines cover computational and corpus-based phraseology, lexicography, corpus-based translation, and language technologies applied to translation and interpreting. Spanish delegate for AEN/CTN 174 and CEN/BTTF 138, actively involved in the development of the UNE-EN 15038:2006 and currently involved in various ISO Standards (ISO TC37/SC2-WG6 “Translation and Interpreting”). Extensive experience in evaluation, validation and quality assurance of University degrees (BA, MA, and Doctorate). Chair of the Evaluation and Verification Commission of the Arts and Humanities field for Madri+d. Consultant for the Spanish Ministry of Research and other University programmes evaluation bodies (ANECA, AQU, ACCUEE, DEVA). President of AIETI (Iberian Association of Translation and Interpreting Studies, 2015-2017), Vice-President of AMIT-A (Association of Women in Science and Technology of Andalusia, 2014-2017), Director of the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Malaga (2016-2021), she is currently Board member of the Advisory council of EUROPHRAS (European Society of Phraseology) and member of the Presidential Committee of AIETI, which is an advisory body of the association.

Prof Gloria Corpas, University of Wolverhampton/University of Malaga

1 April, 11.30am BST

Title: Phraseology, constructions and translation: a corpus-based approach Part I

Abstract: 

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic change of paradigm in phraseology research. Traditional methods have given way to various quantitative, distributional, and computational approaches. Particularly relevant to this talk are three emerging theoretical threads (and their corpus-based complementary methodologies): Construction Grammar and Computational Phraseology (Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen [2018], Fellbaum [2019], Goldberg [2019], Corpas Pastor and Colson [2020]).

Construction Grammar has prompted a profound transformation in the way idiomaticity is understood and viewed. Language is now conceived as an idiomatic continuum of which ‘constructions’ are the building blocks (general phrasal patterns and idioms). In this talk I will take an observational stance toward a corpus-based analysis of ‘insanity’ constructions in English and Spanish. Within a constructionist approach to idiomaticity, special emphasis will be laid on equivalent semantic-functional counterparts, potential mismatches, and other translation issues.

Bio:

BA in German Philology (English) from the University of Malaga. PhD in English Philology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1994). Professor in Translation Technology at the Research Institute in Information and Language Processing (RIILP) of the University of Wolverhampton, UK (since 2007). Professor in Translation and Interpreting at the University of Malaga, Spain (since 2008).  Honorary Adjunct Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China (since 2020). Published and cited extensively, member of several international and national editorial and scientific committees. Her research lines cover computational and corpus-based phraseology, lexicography, corpus-based translation, and language technologies applied to translation and interpreting. Spanish delegate for AEN/CTN 174 and CEN/BTTF 138, actively involved in the development of the UNE-EN 15038:2006 and currently involved in various ISO Standards (ISO TC37/SC2-WG6 “Translation and Interpreting”). Extensive experience in evaluation, validation and quality assurance of University degrees (BA, MA, and Doctorate). Chair of the Evaluation and Verification Commission of the Arts and Humanities field for Madri+d. Consultant for the Spanish Ministry of Research and other University programmes evaluation bodies (ANECA, AQU, ACCUEE, DEVA). President of AIETI (Iberian Association of Translation and Interpreting Studies, 2015-2017), Vice-President of AMIT-A (Association of Women in Science and Technology of Andalusia, 2014-2017), Director of the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Malaga (2016-2021), she is currently Board member of the Advisory council of EUROPHRAS (European Society of Phraseology) and member of the Presidential Committee of AIETI, which is an advisory body of the association.

Dr Bianca Prandi, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Friday 4 March, 11am

Title:

Exploring cognition in computer-assisted interpreting – new insights and open questions

Abstract:

Cognitive load (CL) has been at the core of academic discourse on in-process computer-assisted interpreting (CAI). In this respect, two opposite and complementary hypotheses have emerged: on the one hand, it has been postulated that using a CAI tool during interpreting might entail additional CL; on the other hand, it has been suggested that CAI tools may to some extent facilitate the interpreting process by providing targeted support for individual problem triggers such as numerals, specialised terminology, named entities and abbreviations, thus lowering local CL. Assessing the impact of in-process CAI tool use on the CL experienced during interpreting may have major implications for interpreters, both in their choice of CAI tools and in their interaction with said tools, and it may inform interpreter-centric CAI tool development.

Yet, CAI research has thus far mostly focused on assessing the product of CAI, mainly adopting performance measures such as accuracy metrics. What is currently lacking is an empirically validated methodology for the assessment of the impact of CAI tools on CL through the combined collection of product and process data.

In my talk, I will present the methodology I adopted in my doctoral research to address this limitation, discuss the potential implications of process-oriented CAI research for professional practice, interpreter training and CAI tool development, and conclude by identifying open questions and additional approaches which may prove beneficial in the exploration of cognition in interpreting supported by CAI tools.

Biographical note:

Bianca Prandi is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in Interpreting Studies at the University of Innsbruck. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Mainz. Her doctoral work explored the process of computer-assisted interpreting (CAI) through eyetracking and derived its methods from Translation Process Research.

Bianca has been a CAI tool trainer for several years and has taught workshops and seminars on this topic for professional associations and training institutions. She was a guest lecturer for the Certificate Course on Interpreting with new technologies at the Postgraduate Center of the University of Vienna. She’s an active conference interpreter and translator (A: IT, B: EN/DE) and the co-founder of InterpreMY, a research-based interpreter training initiative created in 2020.

 

Francesca Frittella, Shanghai International Studies University

25 February 2022, 11:00-12.30

Title:

Research for interpreter-centred technology— The case of the AI-powered RSI platform SmarTerp.

Abstract

The lack of consideration of interpreters’ (and translators’) needs in the design of new technological tools has been a major concern of professionals in the T&I industry. This concern has been at the heart of SmarTerp — the remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Thanks to the research efforts of an interdisciplinary team, interpreters’ needs and requirements were incorporated into all stages of SmarTerp’s iterative design and development. This talk presents this cutting-edge technology and sheds light into how research made its interpreter-centred development possible. It will conclude with some reflections on the role of research in the increasing technologisation of the interpreting profession.

Bio:

Francesca Maria Frittella is a conference interpreter (ITA A – ENG B – DEU B – ZHO C), trainer and researcher. She conducted user research and developed training solutions within the SmarTerp project to inform its development into an interpreter-centred solution. Her PhD research at Shanghai International Studies University focuses on the training of conference interpreters on how to effectively integrate AI-powered computer-assisted interpreting (CAI) tools into the SI process. Co-founder of Interpremy, Francesca develops e-courses and teaches research-based workshops for interpreting universities and professional associations.

Marie Escribe, University of Wolverhampton

28 January 2022, 11:00-12.30

Title:

Towards Online Adaptation for Automatic Post-Editing Models

Abstract

Despite the increasingly good quality of automatic translations, machine-translated texts require corrections. Automatic post-editing models have been introduced to perform these corrections without human intervention. However, no system has been able to fully automate the post-editing process. Moreover, while numerous translation tools benefit from translators’ input, human-computer interaction has been underexplored in post-editing.
This talk will discuss automatic post-editing models and suggest that they could be improved in more interactive scenarios, as previously done in machine translation. While some attempts were made to update automatic post-editing models incrementally, this was mostly done using synthetic corpora, which is likely to affect the performance. To address this issue and as part of this project, automatic post-editing models trained in a traditional setting were developed and updated in both batch and online modes without using artificial resources, with a view to analysing the performance of incremental adaptations in different systems, domains and language pairs. While the interaction with the translator was simulated, an interactive functionality allowing for dynamic post-editing was included for demonstration purposes. The results showed that none of the models was able to beat the baseline and that the online models systematically yielded a lower performance. Moreover, this study provided a human evaluation of the outputs obtained in both batch and online models, which constitutes a significant contribution, given that online models tend to be examined using automatic metrics only. This evaluation allowed for identifying recurrent error patterns, such as incorrect deletions, insertions and substitutions, as well as errors related to sentence structure and figurative language.
Such outcomes confirm the difficulties faced in automatic post-editing. Based on the results, several recommendations will be put forward for conducting further research, including experiments with more data and different environmental variables.

Bio:

Marie Escribe holds a BA in Applied Foreign Languages from the University of Haute-Alsace and an MA in Translation from London Metropolitan University. She has worked as a freelance translator specialised in scientific and technical fields for more than two years. Since 2019, she has indeed established strong collaborations with several LSPs and has been entrusted with various responsibilities, going from translation and transcreation to post-editing and project management.
Her experience working with machine translation and CAT tools combined with her strong interest in language technologies led her to another Master’s in Computational Linguistics at the Research Group in Computational Linguistics, University of Wolverhampton, which she completed in 2021.
Her research interests revolve around translation technologies and include in particular post-editing, translation memory systems and translation quality evaluation.

Maria Stasimioti, Ionian University

17 December 2021, 11:00-12:30

Title: Investigating post-editing effort: Does directionality play a role?

 

Abstract:

The working environment of translators has changed significantly in recent decades, with post-editing (PE) emerging as a new trend in the human translation workflow, particularly following the advent of neural machine translation (NMT) and the improvement of the quality of the machine translation (MT) raw output especially at the level of fluency. Despite the productivity gains associated with it, PE raises several questions on the cognitive load exerted on translators, as well as on the quality of the final product. The focus of this presentation will be on the cognitive, temporal, and technical effort expended by translators for the full PE of NMT output in L1 (Greek), on the one hand, and the cognitive, temporal, and technical effort expended by translators for the full PE of NMT output in L2 (English), on the other hand, by means of eye-tracking and keystroke logging data, as well as on the quality of the final product. Moreover, the analysis bears on direct as well as inverse PE in an effort to establish whether the directionality axiom holds true in the case of PE.

 

Bio: Maria Stasimioti is a PhD candidate at the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpreting at the Ionian University. She holds a BA in Translation Studies and an MA in Theory and Didactics of Translation from the same university. She has over 10 years experience in the translation industry, serving in a variety of roles, spanning from translator, proofreader, post editor, translation quality manager, up to current position of project manager. She has been teaching Computer-Assisted-Translation at the Ionian University since 2016 and has participated in the EU-funded project TraMOOC (Translation of Massive Open Online Courses, https://tramooc.eu/). Her research interests lie in the areas of Machine Translation (MT), Computer-Assisted-Translation (CAT), Post Editing (PE) and Cognitive Studies.

Lyke Esselink, University of Amsterdam

 

10 December 2021, 11:00-12:30

Title: Text-to-sign translation: making information accessible

Abstract:

Communication between healthcare professionals and deaf patients is challenging, and the current COVID-19 pandemic makes this issue even more acute. Sign language interpreters can often not enter hospitals and face masks make lipreading impossible. To address this urgent problem, SignLab Amsterdam developed a system which allows healthcare professionals to translate sentences that are frequently used in the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 into Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). Translations are displayed by means of videos and avatar animations. The architecture of the system is such that it could be extended to other applications and other sign languages in a relatively straightforward way.

 

In the first part of this talk, I will present an overview of the system created by SignLab Amsterdam. I will provide a background on the problem at hand, explain the basics of sign languages and sign synthesis, and outline our system and the process behind its implementation. The second part of the talk will focus on an extensive evaluation study that we did, of which the results are not yet published. I will cover the methodology of this study, some important lessons that we learned from the process, and unveil some of the results.

 

Bio:

Lyke Esselink is a Master’s student in Artificial Intelligence at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, and completed her bachelor’s degree in AI at the University of Amsterdam. Since the start of 2020, she combined her education with her interest in sign language through research at SignLab Amsterdam, where she has investigated the translation of text to Sign Language of the Netherlands. Research interest areas include Machine Translation, Natural Language Processing and accessibility technologies.

Dr Todor Lazarov, New Bulgarian University/Sofita

3 December 2021, 11:00-12:30

Title: Modern Enterprise Translation Management: Problems, Compliance and Resources

Abstract:

Modern-day LSP companies have extensive translation experience and deep industry know-how. They work with vendors who already use “some” language technology – e.g. certain CAT tools, certain file formats, etc. Companies often own, but unfortunately rarely have full control of their linguistic assets and resources. LSPs benefit from TM usage and leverage, but usually they find it difficult to manage their production process and to effectively manage their linguistic resources. Most probably these statements describe the most common situation for most LSPs! In this presentation the author will outline the most common problems for modern day LSP companies regarding the effective management of internal and external linguistic resources. We will elaborate on compliance problems (such as compliance with the industry specialized ISO 17100) and we will try to construct and describe a system for effective management of linguistic resources and ROI. The current trend is to collect linguistic resources with as much as possible meta-information, but rarely this meta-information is useful for practical business purposes – we will try to elaborate on how converting this “artefacts” into useful “instruments” can benefit the production process and in addition – how the mainstream LSP production process can be used to create resources for different NLP tasks.

 

Bio: 

Dr. Todor Lazarov holds a PhD degree in Computational linguistics and has a diverse background in Linguistics. He has also specialized Artificial Intelligence in the University of Amsterdam. Todor teaches courses in the programmes of the Centre for Computational and Applied Linguistics in New Bulgarian University and he is also working as Research and Development Manager at Sofita Translation Agency. He has a diverse experience with CAT tools and has also established successful collaboration with different commercial MT providers. His research interests include machine translation, modern translation technologies, machine translation evaluation and CAT tools. Todor is also providing subject matter expertise and consultation to different LSP`s in Bulgaria.

Rocío Caro, University of Wolverhampton

26 November 2021, 14:00-15.30

Title: Integration of TM and MT

Abstract:

Translation Memories (TM) and Machine Translation (MT) have been used by translators for a long time, but research has mainly studied them separately until very recently. Nowadays, however, not only academic research is focused on the integration of TM and MT, but many CAT tools include the possibility of working with an MT engine as well. Some companies claim that the integration of the two technologies is beneficial for translators as it may increase their productivity, but there are not comprehensive studies on the topic and very little is known about the efforts, productivity and opinion of translators on using translation tools that integrate TM and MT, and the quality of the final texts. In the first part of the talk, I will present the different ways TM and MT can be integrated, which are divided into two main categories: internal or external integration. In the second part, I will present the project we are currently carrying out to study the post-editing efforts (technical, temporal, and cognitive) of translators working in an external integrated environment (i.e., both TM and MT segments are presented to the translator), the preliminary findings, what we found about the opinion of translators, and the next steps of the project.

Dr Antonio Toral, University of Groningen

19 November 2021, 11:00-12:30

Title: Machine-Aided Literary Translation: State of Affairs in the Early 2020s

Abstract:

To what extent can machine translation be used to translate literary texts? Could such machine translations be of any use to professional literary translators? Could readers benefit in any way from the resulting machine-aided translations?

Through these and other related questions, I aim to present the current state of affairs concerning the application of machine translation to literary texts, focusing on fiction. Taking into account the shortcomings encountered to date, I will then outline potential lines of research that may occupy us in the first half of the 2020s.

 

Bio:

Antonio Toral is an Senior Lecturer in Language Technology at the University of Groningen. He holds a PhD in Computational Linguistics from the University of Alicante and has carried out research in the area of Machine Translation (MT) since 2010. His research interests include the application of MT to literary texts, MT for under-resourced languages and the analysis of translations produced by machines and humans.

Dr Celia Rico, Machine Translation Specialist

12 November 2021, 11:00-12:30

Title: Translation and machines: artefacts, instruments and the evolving role of the translator

Abstract:

The advent of neural machine translation has undoubtedly affected the translation industry, speeding up the digitalization process, taking translator productivity to new heights, and lowering production prices. One of the immediate consequences is the gradual depletion of the traditional role of translators, who see their work reduced to the revision of isolated segments produced by a machine. The risk of translation becoming a marginal activity is high (Pym 2014, 37) if the task is simplified in the mechanical substitution of words and phrases detached from the communicative context in which they originated. We can even think of the subrogation of the essential work of translators, who are forced to leave their main job in the hands of the computer.

This trend, which, on the other hand, is not alien to other production processes or services, can be explored in the light of a tension between “artefacts” versus “instruments” (Alonso and Calvo 2015): an artefact is an isolated object that performs a series of functions without having any relationship with its user, while the instrument is associated to the user as an essential part of a process. From this perspective, we can analyse both the technological object itself and the different ways in which users (or society, by extension) interact with it.

In this talk, I will use this framework to analyse the changes that the latest developments in machine translation have brought to the job profile and workflows of professional translators. My contention is that linear processes of translation that conceive machine translation as an artifact are obsolete, and that only by considering this technology as an instrument can translators remain in control of the process.

Bio:

Celia Rico holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics, an MSc in Machine Translation and an MBA. With an extensive background in Translation Technologies research, Dr. Rico’s publications have concentrated on areas such as translation memory evaluation, machine translation, post-editing, and the impact of new technologies on the translation profession. Her major contributions to this field are to be found in different international publications. She is member of the Expert Committee “Post-editing of Machine Translation Output” at ISO TC37. 

Dr Maria Kunilovskaya, University of Wolverhampton

5 November 2021, 11:00-12:30

Title: Human Translation Quality Estimation and Translationese

Abstract: 

In the first part of the talk I will present a fairly novel NLP task of human translation quality estimation (HTQE) and discuss problems associated with benchmarking human translation quality. How far do human assessors agree on (human) translation quality? What types of labels/scores can be used to reflect quality? What are the existing approaching to predict these labels? If a professional jury in a translation contest manages to achieve agreement on the top-ranking and, especially on bottom-ranking, translations (with possible fine-grained disagreements about the exact ranks) what does it take to teach a machine to distinguish between good and bad translations? Such a model can be applied in educational and certification contexts for filtering out translations that are definitely below the expected standard to reduce the workload for human assessors. The second part of the talk will explore the concept of translationese, and its potential for learning human translation quality. Do you expect good translations to read smoothly and naturally as if originally-written in the target language? Can we use the distance between translations and the expected target language norm to measure translation quality? I will largely draw on the findings reported in our latest publications:

Kunilovskaya, M. and G. Corpas Pastor (2021). Translationese and register variation in English-to-Russian professional translation. In L. Lim, D. Li, and V. Wang (Eds.), New Perspectives on Corpus Translation Studies. Springer.

Kunilovskaya, M., Lapshinova-Koltunski, E., & Mitkov, R. (2021).Translationese in Russian Literary Texts. Proceedings of the 5th Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature. EMNLP.

Dr Laura Mejías Climent, Jaume I University

29 October 2021, 11:00-12:30

Title: A technological approach to audiovisual translation: How to localize a video game

Abstract: 

New technologies have brought about the emergence of modern forms of audiovisual entertainment. In this current and technologized landscape, localization has become a key industry to ensure that all kinds of digital, multimedia and multimodal products reach markets different from the one where the product was originally developed. It is a complex process encompassing the adaptation of the product at different levels, not only the linguistic one but also at technical, legal and aesthetic levels.

Localization is typically used to modify software products, video games and website content. Each group share aspects such as the digital and technological nature of the products and their added interactive dimension. The process of localization in each group is also similar to a certain extent. Nonetheless, some differences can be noticed when analyzing the processes thoroughly.

In this context, this presentation aims to describe the particularities that localization entails when dealing with video games and their audiovisual assets. To do so, the concept of video games as multimodal and technological products will be reviewed, as well as some key aspects of the localization industry, focusing on the adaptation of audiovisual contents requiring some form of audiovisual translation (dubbing or subtitling).  

Bio:

Laura Mejías-Climent holds a PhD in Translation (Universitat Jaume) and works as an Assistant Professor and researcher (group TRAMA) at the same university. She has taught at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide and ISTRAD (both in Sevilla), and teaches at the Universidad Europea (Valencia). She has worked as a translation project manager and a professional translator specialized in audiovisual translation and localization. She has also taught in the USA thanks to a Fulbright scholarship.

In addition to her PhD, she holds a Master’s Degree in audiovisual translation, a Master’s Degree in translation and new technologies, and completed the Master’s Degree in Secondary Education and Languages. Her lines of research focus on Descriptive Translation Studies (translation for dubbing and video game localization), and she is currently involved in a research project combining machine translation and dubbing.

Dora Murgu & Aleks Sandor Milovanovic, Interprefy

15 October 2021, 11:00-12:30

Title: The backstage of a hybrid event – a complex string puppet called RSIBOX 

Abstract:

Hybrid events have been at the core of Interprefy since its creation in 2014 when remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) was only accepted as a sideline to in-person events, where complex language pairs or space restrictions could require expanding the pool of in-person interpreting teams to one that also included remote participation. The real breakthrough came in 2018 when Interprefy won their first UN tender and the International Seabed Authority signed on with Interprefy as the first UN agency to replace onsite interpreters for their major meetings with remote interpreters for a whooping cost savings of almost a million dollars. From there it went strength to strength and culminated at WHA73 which was watched by a total of 800 million people worldwide, being the first world health assembly that was fully online in the history of World Health Organizatio).

At Interprefy we have developed our own plug and play equipment (RSIBOX) which can be used onsite for seamless bridge between AV and Remote setups. The RSIBOX originated from experimentation in hybrid environments and is a piece of hardware that has been used on most football championships, Euro 2020 being the most prominent example.

During this webinar Aleks and Dora will speak about what goes on backstage for a seamless hybrid event and discuss the technology behind our RSIBOX. This webinar is oriented at EM TTI students who have a particular interest in interpreting technology, AV systems and hardware.

Bios:

Dora Murgu. Romanian born and Spanish bred, Dora started her career as a conference interpreter. She soon transitioned into the backstage of interpretation services after creating a pioneering training program for OPI which she later taught at universities across Spain for over six years. She has presented several papers at major industry conferences and published articles on interpreting quality management, interpreter training and OPI service provision in Spain. She has worked for major LSPs and RSI providers for the past 13 years and currently holds the position of Interpreter Engagement Manager at Interprefy, one of the leading RSI platforms on the market. When she’s not immersed in the world of interpreters she threads the waters of the Arabian Gulf with her SUP board in Dubai, where she lives with her family.

Aleks Sandor Milovanovic. Raised in South Africa, Hungarian citizen Aleks Sandor moved to Switzerland in 2014. As one of the most senior members of Interprefy (the 3rd to be precise) he built the original Operations Team for which he was responsible during the first startup phase of the company. Shortly before COVID hit he created the Special Operations Department to more efficiently respond to a high demand of very sensitive clients such as the UN, IMF and UEFA. The innovation that stemmed from his leadership included the Interprefy Gateway solution which was first used at the Google PES 2018 and notably at the UN Hybrid Rooms setup which enabled UN to resume their operations after nearly three months of meetings without interpretation. In his spare time, Aleks enjoys kayaking and cycling around lake Zurich. 

Dr Joss Moorkens, Dublin City University

8 October 2021, 11:00-12:30

Title: Ethics and NMT

Abstract:

Neural MT can facilitate communication in a way that surpasses previous MT paradigms, but there are also consequences of its use. As with the development of any technology, MT is not ethically neutral, but rather reflects the values of those behind its development. This talk considers the ethical issues around MT, beginning with data gathering and reuse and looking at how MT fits with the values and codes of the translator. If machines and systems reflect value systems, can they be explicitly ‘good’ and remove bias from their output? What is the contribution of MT to discussions of sustainability and diversity? Rather than promoting an approach that involves following a set of instructions to implement a technology unthinkingly, this talk will highlight the importance of a conscious decision-making process when designing a data-driven MT workflow.

Bio:

Joss Moorkens is an Associate Professor and Chair of postgraduate translation programmes at the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University. He is also a Funded Investigator with the ADAPT Centre and a member the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies. He has authored over 50 journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers on translation technology, user interaction with and evaluation of machine translation, translator precarity, and translation ethics. He is General Coeditor of the journal Translation Spaces with Prof. Dorothy Kenny, and coedited the book ‘Translation Quality Assessment: From Principles to Practice’, published in 2018 by Springer, and special issues of Machine Translation (2019) and Translation Spaces (2020). He leads the Technology working group (with Prof. Tomas Svoboda of Charles University) as a board member of the European Masters in Translation network and sits on the advisory board of the Journal of Specialised Translation.

Dr Parthena Charalampidou, University of Thessaloniki

1 October 2021, 11:00 – 12:30

Title: Storytelling and multimodal metaphors in technical and operative content of multilingual corporate websites.

Abstract:

Technical Communication constitutes a prerequisite for a product’s safe and efficient usage, as well as an inextricable part of its dissemination processes and branding strategy. It has to be localized, i.e. culturally adapted to the countries in which a company’s products or services are marketed, supporting their respective languages, and optimized for multilingual SEO. Traditionally, Technical Communication was offered in printed form only and took place through written discourse usually accompanied by supporting images. However, with the advent of technology and the development of digital means of communication, Technical Communication has transformed into a multisemiotic and multimodal form of communication. Dynamic pictures and videos have replaced static technical content found in imagetexts. Moreover, interactive elements allow users to share their personal experiences with the product and even become producers of Technical Communication content themselves (Kimball, 2006).

In this context, technical content is no longer isolated from the company’s marketing strategy but is rather very often integrated into it through the hypermodal possibilities offered by the multimedial context in which it occurs. The brand’s storytelling can then take various forms and can become intertwined, through different traversals, with the product’s technical documentation. Thus, although technical content was formally considered mainly informative, new realities reveal that technical content can be both operative and expressive, in line with the marketing story of the brand.

In this talk we will address this new form of multimodal technical content and the development of digital storytelling in localized  and international corporate website versions. We will examine, comparatively and contrastively, the multisemiotic narratives that are being developed in different cultural contexts, in order to appeal to different audiences, either local or international ones. Particular attention will be given to multimodal rhetorical tropes such as multimodal metaphors and the way they contribute to a corporate website’s narrative. Multimodal metaphors’ culture-specificity is expected to unveil discrepancies in different language versions.

Short bio

Parthena Charalampidou holds a BA in English Language and Literature, an MA in Language and Communication Sciences and a PhD in Translation and Website Localization from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her research interests revolve around semiotic, rhetorical and cultural approaches to translation and she is particularly interested in the localization of promotional digital genres (transcreation) and in the application of technology and corpora to translation. Currently, she teaches Localization and Multimodal translation at the department of Translation, School of French Language and Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is also a member of the teaching staff of the Joint EMT Postgraduate Programme “Interpreting and Translation” and has been a Visiting Scholar of the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme ‘Technology for Translation and Interpreting’ for the spring semester of 2020-2021. She has worked as a freelance translator and she is a member of scientific associations for translation and semiotics. She has participated in national and international conferences and her research has been published in various scientific journals, volumes and conference proceedings. She has recently translated Miguel Jimenez Crespo’s book “Translation and Web Localization” in Greek.

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