Translating the Post-Editor: an Investigation of Post-Editing Changes and Correlations with Professional Experience Across Two Romance Languages
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Translating the post-editor: an investigation of post-editing changes and correlations with professional experience across two Romance languages Giselle de Almeida Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies Dublin City University January 2013 Supervisors: Dr Sharon O’Brien and Phil Ritchie I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of Doctor of Philosophy is entirely my own work, that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge breach any law of copyright, and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed: ______________________ ID No.: ______________________ Date: ______________________ ii Abstract With the growing use of machine translation, more and more companies are also using post-editing services to make the machine-translated output correct, precise and fully understandable. Post-editing, which is distinct from translation and revision, is still a new activity for many translators. The lack of training, clear and consistent guidelines and international standards may cause difficulties in the transition from translation to post- editing. Aiming to gain a better understanding of these difficulties, this study investigates the impact of translation experience on post-editing performance, as well as differences and similarities in post-editing behaviours and trends between two languages of the same family (French and Brazilian Portuguese). The research data were gathered by means of individual sessions in which participants remotely connected to a computer and post-edited machine-translated segments from the IT domain, while all their edits and onscreen activities were recorded via screen-recording and keylogging programs. A mixed-methods approach was employed for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data. The findings suggest that there are no clear correlations between translation experience and post-editing performance, or post-editing experience and post-editing performance. However, other aspects such as the opinion regarding machine translation seem to be predictors of post-editing performance. Our analysis enabled us to combine multiple factors in order to identify the ‘best’ post-editors in our participant group. Finally, similar post-editing trends were observed for both target languages, suggesting that training, guidelines and automated aids could be targeted at language groups rather than at individual languages. The insight gathered will be useful for devising future post-editing guidelines and training programmes. iii Acknowledgements Many people contributed in different ways to make this PhD possible, and I would like to acknowledge their great assistance. I am deeply grateful to my academic supervisor, Dr Sharon O'Brien, and to my industrial supervisor, Phil Ritchie, whose outstanding support, guidance, patience, knowledge, encouragement, generosity and friendship were crucial for the completion of my research. It has been a privilege and an honour to have you as my supervisors! I would also like to express my gratitude to VistaTEC and IRCSET, the funders of my PhD, for granting me a scholarship and giving me the opportunity to conduct this research, and for supporting and believing in the project. Many thanks to the staff at VistaTEC, especially Malgorzata Jarlinska, Nuria Corominas, Treasa Kelly and Ronan Daly, for all the logistical and technical assistance. I am very grateful to Autodesk for providing the corpus and the post- editing environment for my main experiment, and I would like to thank Mirko Plitt and Francois Masselot for their invaluable support and technical expertise. Thanks to my two examiners, Dr Dorothy Kenny and Dr Lucia Specia, who made very valuable and helpful recommendations to improve my research. Thanks also to all the post-editors and the two validators who took part in my experiments, and whose participation was an important element of my research. To all my colleagues and the staff from SALIS in DCU, thank you for your help and encouragement! Thanks also to all my friends for being a constant source of motivation. I would like to thank my former teachers at PUC-Rio, Dr Marcia Martins, Dr Maria Paula Frota, Paulo Henriques Britto and André Beckenn, for their iv invaluable guidance and support not only during my undergraduate studies, but also on other occasions through the years, and for providing me with the opportunity to give the very first presentation related to my PhD, in 2008. A very special thank you to my dear friend Maria Elizabeth Cabral de Melo, for helping me gather all the necessary documentation to apply for the PhD, and for her constant support and friendship. To Lia Wyler, who has always been a great example and inspiration for me since my early days in the translation profession: thank you for your friendship and encouragement, and for all that I have learned from you through the years. Minha gratidão a minha mãe, Creuza, e a meu avô, Plácido, que sempre me incentivaram e apoiaram: gostaria que vocês tivessem podido compartilhar comigo a conclusão deste desafio. À ma famille française : merci de votre tendresse et de votre soutien constant. A todas as pessoas queridas que tenho no Brasil - Cremilda, Lúcia, Lívia, Paquito, Cirênio, Célia, Sebastião ( in memoriam ), Kelly, Betinho, José Manoel, Antônia, Raimundo, Alba, Suleima, Maria, Manoela: sem vocês, eu não teria conseguido chegar até aqui. Muito obrigada, de coração. Et à Nicolas, qui m'aide toujours à retrouver la capacité de sourire et l'envie et le courage de poursuivre mes rêves : merci de tout. v To the memory of my mother. vi Post-editing – untangling threads of meaning: "To untangle a snarl, loosen all jams or knots and open a hole through the mass at the point where the longest end leaves the snarl. Then proceed to roll or wind the end out through the center exactly as a stocking is rolled. Keep the snarl open and loose at all times and do not pull on the end; permit it to unfold itself. As the process is continued the end gradually emerges. No snarl is too complicated to be solved by this method; only patience is required." (Clifford W. Ashley – The Ashley book of knots, p. 29) vii Table of contents Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Aims of this research .............................................................................................................................. 2 1.2. Relevance .............................................................................................................................................. 4 1.3. Funding .................................................................................................................................................. 6 1.4. Structure of the thesis ............................................................................................................................. 7 Chapter 2: Literature review ............................................................................................................................... 8 2.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 8 2.2. Machine Translation: background and context ........................................................................................ 8 2.3. Definition of post-editing ....................................................................................................................... 13 2.4. Studies on post-editing ......................................................................................................................... 15 2.5. PE and translation memory (TM) tools .................................................................................................. 23 2.6. Translators' opinions of MT and PE ...................................................................................................... 30 2.7. Post-editing training .............................................................................................................................. 35 2.8. Post-editing guidelines ......................................................................................................................... 37 2.9. Automated post-editing ......................................................................................................................... 42 2.10. Profile of a good post-editor ................................................................................................................ 47 2.11. MT and considerations on throughput ................................................................................................. 48 2.12. Emerging trends in PE ........................................................................................................................ 51 2.13. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 53 Chapter 3: Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 56 3.1. Introduction .........................................................................................................................................