BuzzTrans: Evaluating a Translating Instant Messenger Client Rahul Nair, Kedar Shiroor Justin Godfrey GVU Center, College of Computing School of Psychology Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technolgy 85 5th Street NW 654 Cherry Street Atlanta, GA 30332-0760 Atlanta, GA 30332-0170 [email protected], [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT This project was designed to provide a forum for cross- The ability of instant messaging (IM) to instantly connect cultural collaboration with the aim of producing digital geographically disparate people in real-time artifacts. In its current form it is a class that is communication is breaking many cultural barriers. In this simultaneously taught to two groups of students; one in an paper we present BuzzTrans - an IM system that uses American university and the other in a Russian university. automatic machine translation to transparently connect A large proportion of the class is virtual and uses the users who do not speak the same language. The results of internet to connect the Russian and American students into an evaluation are also presented along with a set of design one cohesive group. To do this, they utilize WebBoard [1]; recommendations for future work in this space. a commercial bulletin board style conferencing software which allows posting and reading of messages and files, Keywords similar to many other HTML–based user groups and the Instant messaging, chat, machine translation, CSCW, Usenet protocol. design recommendations, qualitative user study As we studied the project, we found that there was a lack of INTRODUCTION real time communication between the Russian and The popularity of Instant Messaging (IM) has been rising American students. The static nature of a web-based rapidly and it has reached an estimated 180 million [13] newsgroup is not conducive to informal, interpersonal users worldwide. Surveys [2] have shown that an communication. With a few exceptions, users can read approximately 90% of American teens and young adults every message posted and any replies. Since professors can who use the internet are also IM users. This familiarity read the content, the students are more formal about their with IM makes it an ideal vehicle to introduce younger posting and think twice before posting any “fun” content. audiences to collaborative systems and groupware. Also, the process of posting messages is quite lengthy This proliferation of IM is corroborated by Grinter and when compared to other computer supported tasks—the Palen [11], who conducted an ethnographic study into the user must first log onto WebBoard, find the thread they IM habits of teenagers and found that IM was a very wish to post or reply to, compose and then send their important part of their daily lives. All their study message. Finally, the user must then wait for a variable participants reported using IM as an important length of time while reloading the webpage to check if their collaborative resource to complete schoolwork. One of the message was posted correctly. participants also reported using IM to practice foreign Since most of the students are in the 16-22 age group, we language skills by having conversations in a different felt that IM would be an ideal way to support their informal language. communication. IM would allow students to collaborate on MOTIVATION an assignment, transfer files, have a quick chat, etc..., all The primary motivation behind BuzzTrans was to build a which are somewhat out of place in the formal academic collaboration support system for the Global Classroom nature of WebBoard. However, the language barrier is Project [8] – a long-term, global, distance learning project. somewhat of an obstacle to this idea, given that few, if any, of the American students speak Russian. On the other hand, Russian students tend to speak passable English and usually are quite fluent. Further interviews with the professors who teach the course showed that while the Russian students could fluently read English, they have more difficulty in composing statements and responses in English. It appeared to us that creating a translation module and a communication module. translating IM client would benefit the students by freeing Translation Module them from the language barrier, while still allowing them to The primary modification that we made to the TechJab engage in real time communication. Providing additional client was to add a translation module between the user support to the existing practice of IM would lead to faster interface and the underlying communication protocols. adoption when compared to introducing a completely new This module takes the input messages and sends them to practice. the translation server to be translated into the appropriate SYSTEM DESIGN language. Once the translation is complete it passes the We designed BuzzTrans with the express intention of message to communication layer and/or the user interface allowing users to transparently conduct an IM conversation as appropriate. with users in other languages. Our prototype was designed The translation module is designed to use a multithreaded to use free software and open protocols so that we could model with one thread for each active conversation. This test the feasibility of the translating IM client without any allows the user to simultaneously have conversations with of the legal issues that accompany the use of a proprietary different contacts in different languages. Since the standard. translation is accomplished within the BuzzTrans system, it Infrastructure Components is not necessary for the users’ contacts to have any special Our goal while designing the system was to enable software installed on their machine. In fact, they can use advanced translation services while maintaining any Jabber compatible IM client. interoperability with established Instant Messaging Translation Server platforms. The following sections explain the various The translation function of BuzzTrans relied on the free components of the BuzzTrans infrastructure. translation service provided by Systran Language Messaging Protocol Translation Technologies [20]. The decision to use a web We decided to use the Jabber XML protocol [14] as the based translation service was based on the following basis for our project. The secure, extensible and factors: decentralized architecture of the Jabber network along with • Small footprint on the client machine. the ready availability of freeware servers would allow the universities to set up their own jabber server to provide • Ability to transparently upgrade the translation engine private communication between students. While Jabber has and database. a much smaller installed base than popular commercial IM • Requires less processing power from client machine. services such as Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger and • The use of an IM service implies the presence of a AOL Instant Messenger, the ability to create gateways on reliable internet connection. the jabber server enables users to communicate with the commercial networks with minimal effort. The Systran translation service is presented as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) and can be accessed using a Messaging Client properly formatted HTTP POST operation which will In order to reduce the development time of the project we return a web page with the translated text. used the TechJab jabber client [21] as the starting point for BuzzTrans. TechJab is a .Net based Jabber client that was User Interaction designed to be used in Tech support environments. While it The user interface (Figure 2) of the BuzzTrans client is does not support all the features of the Jabber protocol, it is similar most IM clients with the addition of a few a very well written and stable client, making it an ideal translation specific components. When the user is in the starting point for BuzzTrans. The finished BuzzTrans single language mode, the only new component in the chat messaging client consists of a user interface module, window is the presence of a “Translate” checkbox. This checkbox is present in each individual chat window and allows the user to explicitly turn the translation feature on and off for each chat conversation. If the user checks the Translate checkbox the chat window displays the translation options palette on the chat window. The palette is intentionally displayed in between the users’ text entry screen and the chat display screen so that the users will always be aware of the status of translation. The translation palette gives the user the following options Translation Language The user can select the translation language using a list box Figure 1: BuzzTrans system architecture which lists all the translation combinations that are Figure 2: Screenshot of BuzzTrans user interface. The system is Figure 3: Screenshot of an Exodus IM client user in a Chinese- set to use English to Chinese, two-way translation while English conversation with a BuzzTrans user. showing the translated text. respond in the translated language. Figure 3 is a screenshot supported by BuzzTrans. The combinations are listed with of a contacts screen while talking to a BuzzTrans user. The the original language first and the translated language screenshot is taken while using a popular Jabber IM client second. Once a language combination is selected it will be called Exodus and is the other half of the conversation constantly visible on the translation palette. shown in figure 2. Two-way Translation STUDY DESIGN The two-way translation check box allows users to Since we did not have physical access to the Russian selectively enable and disable the two way translation students, we had to develop an alternative strategy to test capabilities of BuzzTrans. When two-way translation is the feasibility of BuzzTrans. To ensure that all subjects enabled, the users can carry out a conversation with received exposure to similar content, we created a scenario another subject without any need of knowing the other where the subject would engage in a loosely scripted IM persons language.