Investigating the requirements when offering technology to translators

A study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Information Management

at

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHFFIELD

by

BIJIAO TAN

September 2005

Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Abstract

With the wide access of Information Technology, more and more people focused on it to support the collaborative work within a real or visual organization. However, the complex information technology limited users undertake it widely. A Wiki is a web site that utilizes a database for users to publish and edit the information freely and quickly. For the application of translation, the Wiki technology has shown the initial advantages. Within a wiki community, every translator could share their professional knowledge with others, or work together. To identify this problem, this study examines the requirements of translators when they have been offered the wiki technology.

Initially, it is important to understand the effect of Wiki technology on a collaborative writing mode. Through a discussion of a application on both the community and translations involved, its strengths and weaknesses are presented essentially. As the famous application of wiki, MediaWiki has been taken into this research as a result of comparison with other Wiki clones.

To approach the wiki practice with translators, a wiki prototype was established in terms of common requirements of translators as a mixture of translation tools, and the resources related with translation. In this phase, the method of content analysis dealt with existing translation tools, such as idiom dictionaries, translation forums and , finding out proper functions suitable for translators and can be used in the Wiki prototype. And then, a questionnaire was used to collect data on which are the specific needs of translators.

In the results, the data had illustrated that most of the respondents had a solid base when it comes to computer knowledge, and quite often used the computer to support their professional work, also they had an attitude towards translation knowledge of collaboration and sharing. However, the respondents were lacking in the knowledge of HTML. It is an implication that the Wiki technology, as a simple but powerful tool, has the potential ability to match the requirements or translation.

I Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

To conclude, the design of wiki system after the evaluation could help users cost effectively on collaborative works, as a translation tool.

II Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Acknowledgements

I would like take this opportunity to deeply thank the people who provided me with useful and helpful guidance and assistance during the dissertation period.

In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Daniela Petrelli, who supervised me with her patient and helpful guidance through the course of my dissertation. In this process, she helps me to get contact with the investigating objects and settle down all the experimental equipments. Without these help, I could not image how I can finish this work. Otherwise, I really appreciate the friendly help of Mr. Peter Holdridge. He constantly and patiently assisted me to configure the Wiki system.

Furthermore, I was very grateful to the suggestion of my friends Mr. Kci Evangelista (Jones) and Mike on this topic. Especially, thank my family for their continuous support and encouragement during my study here.

III Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Table of Content

ABSTRACT...... I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... III TABLE OF CONTENT ...... IV LIST OF FIGURES ...... VI LIST OF TABLES...... VII 1 INTRODUCTION...... 1 1 RESEARCH MOTIVATION ...... 1 2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES...... 3 2 LITERATURE REVIEW...... 5 2.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 5 2.2 THE MAIN FEATURES OF WIKI TECHNOLOGY...... 5 2.2.1 Possible use case...... 9 2.2.2 Advantage...... 12 2.2.3 Disadvantage...... 13 2.3 WIKI AND COMMUNITY...... 15 2.4 WIKI AND TRANSLATION ...... 17 2.5 WHY MEDIAWIKI...... 19 2.5.1 WiKi clone and its application overview...... 19 2.5.2 MediaWiki architecture ...... 21 2.5.3 MediaWiki Feature ...... 22 2.6 RELATED WORKS ...... 23 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ...... 25 3.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 25 3.1.1 Research aims...... 25 3.1.2 Research process ...... 26 3.2 PRELIMINARY PREPARATION...... 27 3.2.1 PHP...... 27 3.2.2 Mysql Database...... 27 3.2.3 Mediawiki...... 28 3.3 PILOT WIKI FRAMEWORK ...... 28

IV Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3.3.1 Installation and configuration Process ...... 28 3.3.2 Framework design...... 29 3.4 METHODS OF QUESTIONNAIRE ...... 32 3.4.1 Data collection methods...... 32 3.4.2 Content Analysis...... 34 3.4.3 Type of questionnaire...... 35 3.5 ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF QUESTIONNAIRE...... 35 3.5.1 Closed questions...... 36 3.5.2 Open question...... 37 3.5.3 Distribution of main questionnaire ...... 38 4 ANALYSIS OF RESULTS...... 39 4.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 39 4.2 ANALYSIS OF THE SURVEYS ...... 40 4.3 RESULTS ANALYSIS ...... 63 5 DISCUSSION ...... 66 5.1 COMMUNITY FUNCTIONALITY ...... 66 5.2 WIKI APPLICABILITY...... 67 5.3 LIMITATION ...... 68 5.4 FRAMEWORK DEVELOPMENT ...... 68 5.5 CONCLUSIONS ...... 72 6 RECOMMENDATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH...... 76 6.1 RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 76 6.2 FURTHER WORK...... 76 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES...... 77 APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNAIRE ...... 82

V Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

List of Figures

Figure 1: The toolbar of MediaWiki ...... 6 Figure 2: The toolbar of SeedWiki ...... 7 Figure 3: The example of “category”...... 8 Figure 4: The page of Recent Changes in MediaWiki...... 9 Figure 5: The translation page on China Study Group...... 18 Figure 6: Mediawiki General architecture ...... 22 Figure 7: The overview prototype of wiki for translators’ community..... 29 Figure 8: The sketch map of index of idiom dictionary...... 30 Figure 9: The sketch map of representation for each lemma...... 31 Figure 10: The survey statistic overview ...... 39 Figure 11: Age group proportion ...... 41 Figure 12: age group percentage chart...... 41 Figure 13: translation experience proportion in this survey...... 42 Figure 14: The histogram of source language ...... 45 Figure 15: The pie chart of target language ...... 46 Figure 16: Distribution of working text...... 47 Figure 17: Estimate of general competence on computer ...... 49 Figure 18: Statistics of software skills ...... 50 Figure 19: frequency of using software in translators’ work ...... 51 Figure 20: Self-assessment about utilization of editing function ...... 54 Figure 21: The per centum of electronic way ...... 55 Figure 22: Estimate of experience with HTML editors...... 56 Figure 23: The statistics of problem solving collaborative attitude ...... 57 Figure 24: The statistics of collaborative form...... 59 Figure 25: Frequency of changing work places ...... 60 Figure 26: The way to move ongoing works ...... 61 Figure 27: Showing Incompatibility of MediaWiki and IIS server...... 68 Figure 28: The interface of prototype...... 69 Figure 29: The interface of Community Portal ...... 69 Figure 30: An example for Personal talking page ...... 70 Figure 31: The interface of English idioms dictionary...... 70 Figure 32: One example lemma for English idiom dictionary...... 71 Figure 33: The relevant wiki code for the lemma ...... 71 Figure 34: The help page in the Wiki system ...... 72 Figure 35: The color palette ...... 72 Figure 36: The example of review system for wiki application ...... 74 Figure 37: The example of collaborative translation mode...... 74

VI Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

List of Tables

Table 1: Comparison of non-wiki collaborative tools ...... 10 Table 2: The Wiki characters...... 12 Table 3: Comparison of Mediawiki with other wiki clones...... 19 Table 4: Comparison of Mediawiki with other wiki clones (con.) ...... 20 Table 5: MediaWiki function list...... 22 Table 6: The overall survey statistic ...... 40 Table 7: About the ethic problem of this survey...... 40 Table 8: Age group frequency analysis ...... 42 Table 9: Statistical calculations of age group ...... 42 Table 10: Translators experience ...... 43 Table 11: Source languages statistics...... 44 Table 12: Target languages statistics ...... 45 Table 13: Frequency of working text ...... 48 Table 14: The list for “other” option ...... 48 Table 15: Estimate of general competence on computer ...... 50 Table 16: Statistics of software skills...... 51 Table 17: Statistic frequency of using software ...... 52 Table 18: Self-assessment about utilization of editing function...... 54 Table 19: The per centum of electronic way...... 55 Table 20: The statistics of problem solving collaborative attitude...... 57 Table 21: The summarized list for Known Resources ...... 58 Table 22: Electronic forum list...... 60 Table 23: Frequency of changing work places...... 61 Table 24: The way to move ongoing works...... 62

VII Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators 1 Introduction

1 Research Motivation

Over the last few decades, more and more people are focused on the collaborative work supported by information technology due to attention to team work and the maturity of technology. The concept of “virtual community” or “online community” has spread over the field of information research. A group member can freely exchange their thoughts and work results at any different place and any time zone.

However, the operational complicacy of information technology embarrasses users to undertake it widely, especially for online collaborative work. Users have often to install different software tools to share group context, each managing a different information type, such as start task, coordinate group activities, aid asynchronous brainstorming, and provide a record of group activities, as explained by Bier and Pier(2003). Wikis technology attempts to overcome the complexity and aims at creating a simple online database of information with flat structure and content, Wikis, invented in 1995 by Ward Cunningham(C2.com, 2005), is based on Web technology and allows anyone anywhere to directly access the source code behind the web page to modify its content. Some simple text formatting rules allow any Wiki users to quickly modify it and become an author as well as a reader. Wikis supply an easy collaborative platform to work as a team online.

Wiki indicates a kind of hypertext system. This system supports the collaborative composition of the community, also including a set of assistant tools for the composition at the same time. We may use a browser to read pages, may create, and even edit the Wiki context on the platform of Web, and that costs less than doing on HTML context. In comparing with other hypertext systems, an exoteric feature of the Wiki has the facility to decrease the writing and publishing difficulties, the user

1 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators may experience. Furthermore, a Wiki system provides necessary help for collaborative writing and a simple communicating tool for the community, which is composed by the Wiki authors naturally. Consequently, some professionals may find benefits from the community help by using Wiki. The research discussed in this paper has been set up to investigated the use of Wiki technology in the translation community.

As a specific kind of linguistic information processing, translation generally is considered instinctively a difficult activity. In translation it is difficult to balance communicative resources with communicative needs(Wilss, 1996), for instance, if you are going to translate a poem, a specific flair for creative translation will be required to understand it as its embedded in one specific textual environment. Translation is a problem solving activity in particular. Therefore, translators quite often need knowledge on languages as well as cultures, experience gained in practice, and even having, native speakers to support and improve their work. In other words a professional cooperation within a suitable online community could be needed. Wikis based on free and open software can be a cost-effective and highly reliable option for many.

In the process of this dissertation, I investigated the requirements of information and communication technology with translators. First of all, I set up a Wiki prototype adapted to translators’ assumed needs. The designed setup intended to comprehend and help translators in improving their current work. The design was then submitted to translators’ judgment and real needs were collected via a questionnaire. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis was done. Results were used to evaluation of the implemented prototype.

This paper has been organized into 3 main parts:

Part 1 is intended to provide background information about the wikis technology and its benefits and drawbacks of its use, and also a description of its relationship amongst the community, and also how the wikis and translation have emerged in the

2 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators literature review.

Part 2 describes the design of a pilot study framework to involve translators getting close with the wikis skills, the methodology of a questionnaire design and its refinement could be taken. The refined framework is applied to the results of this application are then discussed.

Part 3 will provide a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology, along with recommendations for further research.

2 Aims and Objectives

This dissertation mainly aims at investigating the features of Wikis technology and the requirements of the translators’ community in order to create the most appropriate tool for a translation process aided. Questions addressed are: which support do translators need that can be provided by the Wikis technology? (e.g. dictionary consultation, looking at translation examples); which organization is more appropriate for the Wikis structure? (e.g. idioms, special dictionaries, resources); who and how will use the Wikis?

The main objective of this research is to investigate the potential application of Wiki technology in the context of translation tasks and to see if (and how much) the translator community would welcome this community tool. The experience of (wikipedia, 2005a) has shown the power of collaborative work within a virtual community in which everyone can access, read, modify and discuss any material of other users. It is hypothesized that the translators’ community will greatly benefit from wiki technology.

Within the research objective, activities of translation shall be watched highly. In fact, different translators often have different understandings with the same content via each personality or different translating methodologies. Furthermore, sometime

3 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators there have some illegible mistakes, misspellings and incomplete texts, that the translators need to contact with other colleagues to identify. On the other hand, some source text, not being the final text and being redrafted during the translation process, the translators need more accurate and up to date information in order to support their work. (wikipedia, 2005g)

4 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

2 Literature Review

2.1 Introduction

A Wiki is a web site that utilizes a database for users to publish and edit information freely and quickly on the web. In the first instance, it is important to understand the effect of this kind of technology on a collaborative writing mode, which was one of its original purposes with Wiki, and its strengths and weaknesses follows. A discussion of a Wikis application on both the community and translations will be involved. Finally, an overview of a Wiki clone application and a current practice of related works will be presented longitudinally.

2.2 The Main Features of Wiki Technology

The Wiki technology was invented by Ward Cunningham in order to support discussions on pattern-related programming languages (C2.com, 2005). The Wiki system also could be called a ‘simple user-editable data storage’ to hold a pattern repository(Tonkin, 2005). This model of Wiki integrates all ideas from each member of one community or group, as the same as writing on some paper, and enhances decision making to process, thereby making the team’s common aims achieve perfect performance.

As a simple web authoring tool, each Wiki page is edited using a plain text format, which can be automatically translated to formatted HTML. Some intuitive conventions are applied such as: a blank line starts a new paragraph, lines starting with a tab and an asterisk are considered as itemized lists. Otherwise, most of wiki systems had taken an editing toolbar to support editors as well as using

5 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators word-processing software in local machines. For example, Mediawiki’s1 basic but powerful toolbar (figure 1), and richer toolbar but must have MS word plug-in firstly in SeedWiki2, which is limited with users’ software platform (figure 2).

Figure 1: The toolbar of MediaWiki

1 http://meta.wikimedia.org/ 2 http://www.seedwiki.com/

6 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Figure 2: The toolbar of SeedWiki

For editing a Wiki page, there is an edit tag button on each Wiki page, which is showing on figure 1. Using this, an HTML text editing area pops up, showing the plain text representation of the page. Upon saving, the modified page is then stored. In most Wiki systems, there are no access restrictions to the use of the edit button: users browsing through a Wiki system are encouraged to add or modify contents whenever they feel the desire to do so. Most HTML language are compatible within the Wiki system, even if you just know a little bit, for example, like changing font color tag, building table syntax and so on, and using them to decorate your context, to improve the readability. It should be noticed that there are slight different formats within HTML languages in terms of different wiki environments.

Each page has a Wiki name, called an article. Wiki names are constructed by the main topic in each page. Wiki names occurring in a page are automatically translated into hyperlinks to the corresponding Wiki page. If the page does not yet exist, a hyperlinked question mark is inserted after the Wiki name or displays a different color with Wiki names, which can be used to create the page. All Wiki pages are stored and it is maintained by a database in the Wiki server. The server typically puts pages under a revision control, so that in case of mistaken or malicious

7 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators editing, old pages can be immediately restored. For organizing the file system, you can choose a list in alphabetical order showing on one page to centralize random articles, or take a link to the appropriate category page, which is in the namespace "Category"(wikipedia, 2005d) as showing on figure 3. Sometimes, there are some redundant pages (Abbreviations, Misspellings, Plurals, Tenses,) or Sub-topics or closely related topics that should be explained within the text that had been created by separate writers.

Figure 3: The example of “category”

There is an existing set of navigating functions that come with Wiki system. The navigation of the Wiki system is simplified by the fact that links are bi-directional: by clicking on the title of a page all backlinks to that page are displayed. But subpages that just have an automatic link to a page are not listed(wikipedia, 2005f). Furthermore, to find a particular page, most Wiki systems have regular expression based search capabilities, through which the contents or names of the Wiki pages are located within the Wiki database. Changes to, as well as creations of pages, are reported in a special Recent Changes page (figure 4), providing an overview of what

8 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators has happened to the site in chronological order. Some types of servers support notification of changes by email. However, it must be noted that only registered users can have access to this function, whereas unregisted users have not.

Figure 4: The page of Recent Changes in MediaWiki 2.2.1 Possible use case

Wiki systems can be used in many different ways. Deursen and Visser(2002) think Wiki could be used by two main modes: document mode and thread mode.

A wiki page is used to describe the page’s topic, for instance by giving a definition,

description, or an “opening statement.” Wiki users can add comments, or react to the

statement. Comments are often written in thread mode. This consists of a sequence of

reactions, which are usually separated by a vertical line and signed by the author.

Thread mode makes it easy to follow the flow of a discussion, whereas document mode

makes it easy to organize information(Deursen and Visser, 2002).

9 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

However, this sounds more like Weblog3 characters, in fact, Wikis are by default open to anyone within the domain served by the Wiki, but can be secured against unauthenticated (uninvited) users. So comments will be inserted everywhere within the context by authorized users within the boundaries of online collaboration, that does not consist of a sequence of reactions, even with in a thread mode. By comparison, “Weblogs by default are secured against open collaboration, but can be managed for limited collaboration, usually via appended comments or a threaded discussion forum”(Mattison, 2003). As more particular descriptions of wiki use cases, Tonkin(2005) suggested that there are four ways of implementing mode: single-user wikis, lab book, collaborating writing, . At the same time, she also listed detailed benefits from the application of each mode. Similarly, Leuf and Cunningham(2001: 73) were also coaching some views in task-oriented settings using the Wiki system such as a Virtual Notebook, and a personal information management tool. Anyway, the Wiki systems have shown potential power for whatever individual and collaborative content tool that may be used within the community.

In order to understand the Wikis system, the following table has been drawn up with collaborative tools that are non-Wiki. Table 1: Comparison of non-wiki collaborative tools

Support Type Comments software Instant message Chat server This type of communication is quite similar with and client traditional conversation; Supported with quick response software of interaction appeared to be in the person-to-person mode. Currently, the mode leans more toward multimedia channels such as: voice, webcam etc. However, content is lost unless special “recording” measures have been taken. Examples: Windows messenger; Skype.

3 Weblog: a public web site where users post informal journals of their thoughts, comments, and philosophies, updated frequently and normally reflecting the views of the blog's creator. (www.geocities.com/Athens/2405/glossary.html)

10 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Threaded discussion Forum The form of this mode often exists by discussion forum or software message board, similar with BBS. No edit existing content and functions are offered. Readers only can write down newsgroup comments threaded follow-ups. Thereby, all documents are archived according to publishing date. But “extensive quoting to give context, high noise level, hard to navigate. Little or no interlinking.” Examples: Moveable Type, CodeBeamer 3.0 Mailing list archives Annotation Mail list conducts a discussing platform achieved via software ordinary e-mail. Such archives can be complemented with annotation mechanisms PIM/e-mail clients like outlook can function in a similar way, with a mix of achieved e-mail items and document in native formats stored in a shared directory. Annotation and Special Similar to threaded discussion spaces but with a given comment server fixed content linked by way of reader annotation or software or comment anchors to various comment or discussion script for spin-offs. The owner of web site or existing content annotation could re-edit or re-structure the content addition. support Although the primary focus appears to be content management for online publishing with associated discussion threads or for e-commerce sites. Content management Scripting CMS is a complex system, normally, separated by three system systems to interacting parts: the collection system, the management manage system and publishing system to develop sophisticated web site web application. Web sites can be remotely, even content collaboratively deployed and maintained over the Web. This management system could be part of some packaged software, to allow dynamic web site creation. Examples: CMS DeLuxe, Zope Weblog Web Weblog, or called bolg, like a kind of online dairy, application allowing people to follow conversation or showing their server comments between weblogs by following links between entries on related topics. Weblogs are serial and cumulative, and readers tend to read small amounts at a time, returning hours, days, or weeks later to read entries written since their last visit. a weblog is open-ended, finishing only when the writer tires of writing Example: GeekLog, Blogger Pro Dynamic database Database Various solutions can make traditional database structures server more open and dynamic, thus allowing collaboration. technology Overlaps other groups.

(Source from: (Leuf and Cunningham, 2001: 31); (Systems and Software Consortium, 2005))

11 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

In addition, Wiki is a collaborative open-source tool based on GNU4 Free Documentation License (GFDL)(wikipedia, 2005c), anyone can customize it, and even recode it and there is no need to purchase new hardware. The package solution, such as Lotus Notes5 and Outlook6, have strong features on cooperating needs, but usually they cost money, memory and hard disk space, which even users are often confused with how to use them due to the many complex functions(Leuf and Cunningham, 2001: 12). Above all, the discussion within wiki system is extremely cost effective. Comparing with non-wiki collaborative tools, here, the Wiki characters are summarized on the below table. Table 2: The Wiki characters

Type Support software Comments Wiki Web application server; script All users could be invited to edit any pages language compiler; database server or to create new pages within the wiki web is optional depend on which wiki site. Meaningful topic associations are system is taken. promoted. A text-driven collaboration space. Users do n ot need any knowledge of underlying mechanisms or storage models in a given wiki. Examples: QuickiWiki, MediaWiki

2.2.2 Advantage

In terms of the non Wiki system description, a clear understanding about strong or weak points of Wiki should be analyzed. This should be analyzed to show the benefits for using the Wiki system. A short comparison with other approaches will assist the investigation. A mailing list is suitable for announcements or events of which a subscriber wants to be informed immediately. Like a news group it is difficult to structure information, supporting mostly thread mode for discussions.

4 http://www.gnu.org/ 5 http://www.lotus.com/products/product4.nsf/wdocs/noteshomepage 6 http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010857931033.aspx

12 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

In a wiki system, users can create and update content, typically as in a form based site, and a simple markup language. Moreover, they can modify the underlying structure, which is present in the navigation structure provided by the page links created by the users. The resulting structure is less explicit (and hence less suitable for structured querying), but more flexible. Thus, wiki is particularly useful where the underlying structure is likely to be subject to change. A typical example is the development and evolution of a taxonomy, which aims at finding a given structure for a research area(Deursen and Visser, 2002).

It is easy to be updated by people other than the original author. Many wikis are open for anyone to edit, although this is not a requirement of a wiki – access to wikis can be restricted to authorized users. The best known example of a wiki is the Wikipedia which is a global free encyclopedia which allows entries to be created and updated by anyone. It was built in 2001. wikipedia’s open source PHP7-based has a lot of the capability of the system it’s documented within(C, 2004). For instance, there are over 680,000 articles generated in most languages in the world today and still continuously growing quickly.

As totally open collaborative software, revelation of wikis’ advantage much depends on what are you going to be thinking with the wikis system.

2.2.3 Disadvantage

Experiments with wiki technology are now done in different fields, such as workplace, e-learning, etc. Although wiki systems generally are considered as good collaborative tools, however, there are still some problems that can not be ignored. First of all, wiki systems adapt a flat file system to store all articles. The underlying structure imposed by the forms also supports the possibility of structure-based

7 http://www.php.net/

13 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators searching. This structure itself can only be changed by the maintainer of the site. Therefore, when accessing the documentation in wikis, users encounter unique wiki’s access rules for each document. But administrators often need to construct wikis assessing rules due to requirements of a restricted approach. Burrow(2004) has attempted to describe a costly solution about additional wikis with restricted assess via Lattice structured wiki to solve this problem. This could be automatically conducted and maintains access rules in response to browsing and editing of the wiki hypertext.

Secondly, with the concept of wiki becoming known, the public wiki met some threats due to saboteurs and deleting all the text by someone. Vandalism in various forms is sure to be a recurring social problem, yet understanding it, and where and why it doesn’t occur, is not easy. “Peer pressure and community atmosphere are important factors, but so is the user population makeup - both in terms of number and demographics”(Leuf and Cunningham, 2001). But you can not void and stop them happening, and in order to make any sort of impact on a wiki you need to be able to generate content. So anyone can play, but only good players have any desire to keep playing.

Furthermore, the countering force that prevents serious abuse of an open wiki is probably that each individual doesn’t benefit much from abusing it and doesn’t really expect other people to either. There is, as Leuf and Cunningham(2001:331) said: “a high level of mutual trust promoted between users”. Additionally, there is an open wiki the knowledge that the next visitor is capable of immediately editing away any serious abuse. As an example for showing this problem: LA Times (Los Angeles Times) recently experimented with readers by writing the online newspaper. By means of the elicitation which the success of Weblog applying on journalism, they launched a wiki website called “Wikitorials”(GENTILE, 2005) for readers writing personal opinions serious results. However, just after three days, they had to suspend its "Wikitorial" Web due to the fact that some users flooded the site with

14 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators foul language and pornographic photos.

In addition, Wikis are limited in the overall aesthetics of the created pages is inherently meagre with fast publishing mode, that users have to learn yet another text-based editing language, which, although rather easy, is necessary anyhow (Di Iorio and Vitali, 2003).

2.3 Wiki and Community

The meaning of a community is important that the members share the same context. This helps them to own upon their common identity and McDermott (2001) believes it is the relationship building among the members that helps them develop a common identity. In the real work, communities are often formed by the implementation of a common task, and the longevity is limited by accomplishment of tasks(Liedka, 1999). Comparatively, electronic communities are able to record a history of team work automatically and form knowledge easily. Furthermore, a collaborative environment brings a chance to highlight the personal basis upon which the relationships are formed. In the community these relationships are developed further and ways of interacting are established beyond extended geographic limitation(Wenger et al., 2002). Communities often attract some people from the same and relative interest or purpose. People who have many things in common could look for each other and talk together in community’s general categories. Individual differences impacts on how well he or she performs as individuals when using computer systems.

There are a wide range of purposes and tasks within different communities. As a description of community high-level tasks, Preece(2000:) said four basic task will be involved in communities: z Exchange information z Provide support z Enable people to chat and socialize informally

15 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators z Discuss ideas Online community, as a lowing transaction solution, should in charge to perform these basic elements to improve members’ relationship. However, some inevitable problems exist on community web-sites, as Schneider(2002) and others mentioned: 1) maintaining static web-sites is time-consuming and simple discussion systems do bad knowledge management; 2) more sophisticated scenarios are badly supported.

On the contrary, wikis creates a virtual method to solve these problems. wiki movements are creating workspaces and online communities that provide an alternative to the influence of traditional, centrally managed content(Lih, 2004). Wikipedia is being built by millions of people using hundreds of languages in the world due to its open community structure. As an encyclopedia, it consists of 196 independent languages editions, approximately 500,000 articles written in English from 2001, each article linked by the name of pages(wikipedia, 2005h). The feature of right utilization makes a possibility to publish online by everyone who only has a little experience of using a computer. Wiki invites all users to modify any pages and create new pages using only a common web browser, without any special applets or plug-ins(Rick et al., 2002a).

Furthermore, Trust also should be answered as an essential component within communities. Both in terms of asking questions that may reveal their level of knowledge and when giving knowledge to people (Evans, 2004a). Trust is a requisite for any knowledge exchanged. Therefore, trust is extremely important within a group of people and a lack of trust can lead to in-correct methods being used and conflicts are bound to arise. In wikis community, anyone trusted with access to the network is trustworthy enough to access the Wiki. This keeps the essential open spirit of a wiki for the community that will use it.

Not just for community applications, the wiki could be suitable for individuals, who want to create, organize and save content on a local machine, to review quicker(Leuf and Cunningham, 2001:12). Things such as Personal Information Management

16 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators doing notebooks, files, personal e-mail lists, contacts etc. Warlick (Warlick, 2004)also was showing various good tips about individual note taking sharing using wiki.

2.4 WiKi and Translation

Translation breaks the boundary of language, it enable the delivery of information from one language to another language among different language groups. For more widely disseminating knowledge and more people being involved within the wiki community, Wikipedia have a huge amount of contributors for doing voluntary translation. There are about 6,500 languages in the world (wikipedia, 2005j). If a Multilanguage encyclopedia could be built triumphantly with such languages, the best possible way is open wiki way, at least from the view of current present. Fast and effective translation will help communities to discuss issues in different languages, but keeps the discussion together. Otherwise, an auto translation also is considered in the Wiki communities. In Wikipedia Machine Translation project, they are going to carry out the problem with other language articles generated as fast as English due to not enough translators (wikipedia, 2005i). More articles are translated into more languages, more people will come to review them. Generally speaking, a golden rule of successful software deployment is, ‘get to know your audience’. Wikipedia is becoming a most well known case for the wiki application.

One such case for wikis work with translation is Wiktionary, in which one of Wikipedia sister projects (Wikitionary, 2005). It is going to establish a free multilingual dictionary and thesaurus that's being written collaboratively on this web site. Although Wiktionary just started in 2002, open conlaborative mode carry over 84,000 entries coming to this online dictionary now. another example is China Study Group8, part of this website function employ wiki as a collaborative tool to translate long articles. It separates the article into small sections, even only have

8 http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php

17 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators one sentence to reduce the difficulties for the translation. This website is a proffesional community studied with a view to providing alternative perspectives and assessments on issues about China – both its revolutionary past and today’s China in the context of globalization. For this reason, the website is not open, only members are able to edit. But it is showing a wonderful visualization for wiki translation.

Figure 5: The translation page on China Study Group

The Wikipedia is a good online cyclopedia repository with much knowledge, that the appropriate translation process helps the knowledge to be able to be read by everyone. However, on the other side, translation is seen as knowledge – based activity needs an apt knowledge tool to be able to perform. The connection between them would be of benefits for both.

18 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

2.5 Why Mediawiki

2.5.1 WiKi clone and its application overview

After the concept of wiki had been invented, many wiki-like applications were conducted, and in the generic sense, they are called wiki clones. In this paper, Mediawiki will be taken as the basic software to design the pilot research framework. Here a comparison of Mediawiki with some wiki clones is showing on the following table: Table 3: Comparison of Mediawiki with other wiki clones

Mediawiki MoinMoin TikiWiki

Language PHP Python PHP

Comments on discussion page add on yes

elaborate permissions Permissions limited ACLs assignable to groups

Extensibility plugins plugins, themes plugins

Unicode Support yes complete unknown

multiple words, Search Simple search regular expresions, yes boolean ip blocking, quick Spam protection yes yes mass reverts

Usability easy easy easy

many features are User-customizable CSS, XSLT, user user-customizable, unknown interface editable navigation templates

Data export yes No yes

Data base Mysql works without any DB (ADODB)

19 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Installation Complex easy easy

Table 4: Comparison of Mediawiki with other wiki clones (con.)

Twiki Pmwiki Zwiki

Language perl PHP python

Comments plugin plugin yes

extensive Zope yes, assignable to permissions Permissions yes groups assignable to Zope roles python scripts, zope Extensibility plugins, skins plugins Products

Unicode Support yes yes unknown

multiple words, perl

Search regular expressions, multiple words unknown

limit scope

Spam protection yes (BlackListPlugin) IP and word blocking unknown

Usability easy easy very easy in general

User-customizable templates, skins themes, user CSS unknown interface

Data export Yes, as option unknown unknown

Data base works without works without ZODB

Installation unknown very easy unknown

(source from: (Tonkin, 2005); (wikipedia, 2005b);(MoinMoin, 2005))

Normally, wikis are available online, for anybody granted access, and usually includes the vital versioning information that allows authors to track the history of their documentation. They appear to be an ideal platform for collaborative authorship, and indeed certain projects such as the Wikipedia, an online

20 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators encyclopaedia, have proved to be entirely successful. The Mediawiki has exerted his power as a strong software platform for the project implementation, which is in an undisputable position.

On the other side, not all wikis are suitable for this task: some have no page locking system, so if two people edit the page simultaneously, one set of changes will be silently deleted. Those that do will permit only one author to edit the page. Some wikis do not include a versioning system, making them totally inappropriate for the task. For a translation application, the software must have enough plug language codes to be able to support. Mediawiki exactly presents this feature as a multilanguage encyclopedia. And Sourceforge9, which is the biggest open source software development consortium, are affording supporting techniques on language machine codes, even some languages have not been transacted into a computer system. Finally, there are the social issues that occasionally crop up, particularly on very large projects such as the Wikipedia. Certain pages on the Wikipedia that deal with particularly controversial topics, e.g. abortion or evolution, are periodically subjected to a phenomenon known as an edit war, which is to say the continued editing or reversion of the text by wikipedia contributors, often for social or political reasons. The easiest way to call a halt to such disagreements is to place a block on the page edit functionality for a period of time.

2.5.2 MediaWiki architecture

For more understanding Mediawiki, knowing how it works. A description of Mediawiki architecture is illustrated as figure 6.

Within a data layer, separate databases are prone to control and manage data information. All the wikitext of the pages and various auxiliary information about pages, users, etc. are contained in the file system(wikiMedia, 2005). At the same time, Mediawiki has some plug-in codes to provide connection other type databases

9 http://sourceforge.net/

21 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

General Architecture User Layer Web Clients Network Layer Apache Webserver

MediaWiki's PHP scripts Logic Layer PHP Compiler

Data Layer File System MySQL Database Caching System

Figure 6: Mediawiki General architecture

(Source from: (wikiMedia, 2005)) via ODBC interface. When readers review an article, the system will retrive the XHTML code from a caching system after wikitext is converted into a database. Readers’ browser should unscramble them into visual pages as clients. The entire procedure is coped by PHP scripts in the context of Apache server and PHP compiler.

2.5.3 MediaWiki Feature

However a better architecture of the Wiki website can do a certain extent design functions in a MediaWiki to support the collaborative work and also the community construction. Table 5: MediaWiki function list Category Function Category Function Navigating Searching, Go button Tracking Recent changes changes What links here Enhanced recent changes Random page Related changes Special pages Watching pages Printable version Page history Diff User contributions Accounts Logging in Referencing Links Preferences Piped links

22 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

User style Interwiki linking Variables URLs Anchors Formatting Formulas Organizing Sections Tables Templates HTML in wikitext Category Image & File uploads Redirects Image page Renaming (moving) a page Namespaces Saving effort Editing shortcuts Fixing mistakes Reverting edits and vandalism Editing toolbar Testing Magic words Communicating Edit summary Special Turkish characters characters Talk page Romanian characters Edit conflict Minor edit (Source from:(wikipedia, 2005e))

According to above analysis, MediaWiki will be chosen in the pilot studies as the Wiki platform.

2.6 Related Works

By means of the investigation of Rick etc. (Rick et al., 2002b), wiki has be proved that the learning effectiveness in the way of collaborative composition is relevant. They had established a COWEB system, which is a collaborative learning environment in Georgia Institute of Technology, to practice wiki applications in that an activity called “close reading”. They found that more learning activities that happen with the collaborative learning had improved, and the performance of students was significantly over two comparison sections. In the COWEB case, it can be run on virtually any hardware, even old 486’s. Otherwise the content is not necessary always administrated and maintained either. Because the Wiki system holds a mount of users (editors) to doing this job, there have distinct advantages compared with other solutions supported writing.

For the purpose of creation and customization of group-writable web pages, Sparrow

23 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Web is a server-based software tool. It integrates information-sharing into Web pages, leveraging the affordance of the Web for supporting group work(Bier and Pier, 2003). It is different in that the shared web page tools like wiki, but differs in that the data layout and schema is specified by the page author, so contributors ignore issues of layout and focus on content. It is also different in that contributors edit a single item at a time, so they are not distracted by the content of other items nor at risk of modifying other items unintentionally. However, there are some disadvantages on the rich User Interface of dedicated information-sharing applications, its using various templates to support tasks which it can do. Contrary, as a free software foundation, wikis has so many different “faces”. You can even ask anyone knowing computer language to create their personal template, there is not limited power. It will do what you want it to do.

Another online tool for annotation and discussion of documents is the Pink system. It has the ability to move between discourse and artifacts in both directions: retrieving a discussion associated with and artifact or a portion thereof; and bringing up an artifact that is referenced by a contribution to the discussion. Pink supports not only web page annotation but also embedded annotation to documents, such as wiki documents, created within the system(Takeda and Suthers, 2002). This work better presents a design of web-based tools for collaboration driven by an understanding of the interaction to be supported.

All these examples testify the efforts by researchers and professionals to move World Wide Web from a simple browsing system to a complete authoring and publishing system. Open collaborative functionalities will be embraced by the Internet within a community environment.

24 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3 Research Methodology

3.1 Introduction

3.1.1 Research aims

In a world that is moving from mass communication to universal or global communication and becoming more and more complex in terms of technology and organization, it should come as no surprise that translation comes on both oral and in written form. It is playing an important role for information delivery. “Translation is an activity with an intentional and a social dimension establishing links between a source language (SL) community and a target language (TL) community and therefore requiring a specific type of communicative behavior.”(Wilss, 1996:3) To achieve a better performance, a series of software tools on both local and online forms were applied towards a Computer Aided Translation, such as Terminology Management and Translation Memory Software. A certain fact is that, this translation can be of benefit from computer support, and mitigating translators’ pressure from a difficult and complex mental work.

Wiki technology had a good achievement on the application of online encyclopedia, known as Wikipedia, due to its distinct features with online writing mode and repositories. In this dissertation, two hypothesises are that: z A wiki technology could be propitious to a translation, that being text-driven, knowledge-driven, context-driven, and attitude-driven at the same time, as appropriate tool. z Features of wiki could match with the requirements of the translators’ community.

25 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3.1.2 Research process

To determine whether the assumption is tenable, an iterative design approach will be used. This is separate by three phases:

Phase 1

Initially a wiki prototype was established in terms of common requirements of translators as a mixture of translation tools, resources related with translation, finding a better way to present lemmas associate with the features of wiki and current translation tools. In this phase, the method of content analysis can be taken, to deal with existing translation tools, such as idiom dictionaries, translation forums and Wiktionary10, finding out proper functions suitable for translators or can be used in the Wiki prototype.

Phase 2

After implementation of a wiki prototype, a questionnaire will be used to collect data on which are the specific needs of professional translators. The methods decided to be used in this research are questionnaires and content analysis. The way of both mail and online questionnaire is adopted to conduct the whole survey. First, getting in contact with the staffs that work for The Modern Languages Teaching Centre to enable to email the questionnaires, and then some translation groups can be contacted via some translation forums.

Phase 3

The results from the questionnaire would then be used to determine whether the assumption has been approached. An improved prototype will be set up and ready to be tested with potential users.

10 http://www.wiktionary.org/

26 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3.2 Preliminary Preparation

3.2.1 PHP

PHP is an interesting name due to it addressed by "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", that opening the abbreviation is the abbreviation. PHP is a kind of HTML embedded language, similar with ASP on the platform of Internet Information Services (IIS). And then the grammar of PHP is a blending with C, Java, Pearl and some PHP’s tag. Thereby, PHP is not by any means easy to learn and program, but it does have a more fast executing speed on dynamic webpages rather than CGI or Perl.

In addition its source code is totally opened, allowing it to constantly have new functions of programming and updating spark. That makes it possible which PHP has more functions or options on the platform of whatever UNIX and WINDOWS. Also, such functions can be better supported on the program development. (PHP, 2005)

3.2.2 Mysql Database

MySQL is a fast, multithread, multi-users and robust SQL database server. Especially on the basic SQL command of select/insert/update has a high executing efficiency, even rather than the performance of MSSQL and Oracle. SQL11 is the most popular and standard database language, easing on storage, updating and retrieving information. At the same time, MySQL has a rapidness and flexibility to allow you to store files and images.

MySQL has the "dual licensing" model that is available on the mysql.com, based on MySQL Network and the MySQL Community Edition. For each model, users may choose to use MySQL products under the free software/open source GNU General Public License (commonly known as the "GPL") or under a commercial license.

11 SQL: Structured Query Language

27 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3.2.3 Mediawiki

MediaWiki (1.4.5), which is developed here on SourceForge via CVS12, and is also available under the GNU General Public License (the contents of the Wikimedia wikis themselves are licensed under the GNU FDL).

3.3 Pilot Wiki Framework

As one of the new technologies on the Internet, Wiki is not a familiar programme with most of the people yet. Hence, I need to install the Wiki and other relevant software into the computer initially within our campus network, to establish a Wiki environment for practice and test with them face on. The initial Wiki prototype will mainly include frequent tools and resources that translators use, moreover, the detail of wiki manual and instruction will be supplied with help.

Otherwise, Wiki has a numerical variety of versions called the Wiki clone, which is written by different computer languages existing on the Internet. With a view to compatibility with Windows OS, I would take the power from MediaWiki, which is supported by most of the languages in the world and facility with translators, the same that Wikipedia had taken, and the structure of IIS and MySQL as the server/database solution.

3.3.1 Installation and configuration Process

To install the MediaWiki you need four qualifications for your server: z MySQL - an SQL database to store the Wiki text, user list etc. z IIS - a web server to serve the HTML web pages z PHP compiler- to support the execution of the programming language that MediaWiki is written in. z A copy of MediaWiki software itself, which is a suite of programs written in PHP z phpMyAdmin - a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web

12 http://www.cvsnt.com/cvspro/

28 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3.3.2 Framework design

the prototype of wiki for translators community

Flat Structure Browser Category 1 Online Tools Dictionary English-French ......

Category 2 Idioms English lemma 1 ......

......

Category n

Modifying and To re pons e saving Internet or retrieving informaiton command Intranet

Server API(Application Programming Interface) IIS server

MySQL Database

Interface "phpMyadmin"

Figure 7: The overview prototype of wiki for translators’ community

In the server part, the administrator can maintain the Wiki system via the interface phpMyadmin, for example, the database table need to be modified or added, user list management and so on. Although the Apache server is the best compatible with PHP compiler, it is able to be replaced of IIS server.

In the browser on the client, all articles can be edited or reviewed by a flat information structure. There are no different levels and heretical files existing in the structure. Each article can be categorized by its content and retrieved via the

29 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators links and search functions.

Between the server and the browsers, all information can be transferred through both the Internet and Intranet under the TCP/IP protocol.

status:Log in log out

edit history protect delete move article discussion watch/unwatch

Main Page Language Community English: alphabetical order portal Chinese: Pinyin order current events Italian: recent chages Fre n ch : random page Help

English: alphabetical order

search A B C Go Search D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q S T

Chinese: Pinyin order A B C D E F G H I

Figure 8: The sketch map of index of idiom dictionary

30 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

According to examining the structure of traditional dictionaries, the alphabetical order and other language orders could be adapted in this design for the Multilanguage idioms dictionary. Figure 8 and 9 are showing the sketch map which possible interface for the design of online idioms dictionary. Otherwise, for each lemma, the arrangement by using different fonts or colors could improve the readability of the content.

status:Log in log out

article discussion edit history protect delete move watch/unwatch

Home away from home (lemma name) Main Page Community portal English current events recent chages definition random page Example/usage note Help Etymology Translations External Links

search

English

Definition

Bold

example/ usage note

Italic(alternative words--"/", optional words--"()")

Etymology/ source of quotation

Translations

French

German

Italian

Chinese

......

See also

Figure 9: The sketch map of representation for each lemma

31 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3.4 Methods of Questionnaire

3.4.1 Data collection methods

The following research method should be directly connected to research problems, and could approach the research aims, in other words, more accurate data will conduct more accurate results. Thus choosing a proper research method is more important. As Husssey et al(1997) mentioned, there are seven main primary data collection methods:

1. Critical Incident Technique:

This is a useful technique for collecting qualitative data in –depth interviews about a defined situation.

2. Diaries:

This is a daily record of events or thoughts that people are asked to keep for a certain length of time. The data may be quantitative or qualitative.

3. Focus Groups:

This method of collection data involves selecting a group of people from the population and discussing their reaction and feeling with regards to a product or a subject area.

4. Interviews:

In this method a sample of participants are interviewed either individually or collectively about what they think, feel or what they do with regards to a subject area.

5. Questionnaires:

A kind of data collection method that the sample group or groups are asked to complete a set of structured questions which ask how they feels, think or what they do in relation to the subject area under investigation.

32 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

6. Observation:

The way to collect an individual or group in a laboratory or in the field is observed.

In this dissertation, due to the following reasons, a measure method of questionnaire, as the main investigation method, is specified.

1. Questionnaire investigation is a well-structured method due to direct answers can be collected towards pre-designed standardized questions. Thus the format is tidy which will facilitate with the following analysis of collected data.

2. As a professional group, translators are not easy to contact by face to face due to amount of them is the freelances. The population can be reached by mail questionnaire is relatively larger when compare it to other survey methods. Both Mail and online questionnaires can be the most accessible form to the potential respondents. This is due to the fact: the research is about a web-based technology and the potential subjects are those who frequently interact with computer or internet.

3. Also, the limit time during the research period will be the cost on both the prototype design and investigation, doing a questionnaire is a relatively economic and time-saving method. A quick response could be gained.

4. To think about the ethical problem, there are no extra pressures such as media or anonymity problems exerted on potential responses so they are free to answer or not.

However, there will still be some problems that the questionnaires will pose which should be noticed and also ignored. That is emphasized in the lecture notes of Research Method module i.e.: (Bath, 2005)

z Distortion caused by ambiguous wording or question order; z Difficulty of clarifying ambiguous responses; z Absence of non-verbal cues; z The longer the questionnaire the lower the response rate; z Expense of photocopying.

33 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3.4.2 Content Analysis

Content analysis can be applied for many research purposes. It is a reasonable method to analyze code of unstructured data and information. Coding open questions in surveys is one of the important area for its application(Weber, 1990). Neuendorf has shown a definition for content analysis as:

“a summarizing, quantitative analysis of messages that relies on the scientific method (including attention to objectivity-inter subjectivity, a priori design, reliability, validity, generalizability, replicability, and hypothesis testing) and is not limited as to the types of variables that may be measured or the context in which the messages are created or presented”(Neuendorf, 2002).

The validity of research may come from a series of scientific process. In the concept of Content Analysis, ‘Validity designates that quality of research results which leads one to accept them as indisputable facts.’ It requires reasonable classification of text categories and proper construction of logical coding schemes. High reliability in content analysis requires explicit coding rules in the investigator’s mind and his/her persistence in them. It requires that classification of text categories should ‘correspond to a standard or norm’.(Weber, 1990)

For processing the survey result, part of closed questions will be processed by Excel. For open questions and open questions, content analysis method will be applied. Content analysis is far more time consuming compared with other data-collection methods and the results’ accuracy are heavily relying on “how well the analyzed documents represent the researcher’s field of interest”(Thomas, 2003). But as content analysis can gather much information and is “the only appropriate method for answering a great host of research questions”, it was believed to be a suitable way to conduct my research project.

For conducted content analysis, computer software assisted analysis and manual analysis could be approached. Computer aided text analysis enables people with the ability to pre-build a set of explicit coding rules thus the coding procedure can be highly reliable. But it remains that it has some difficulties. The richness of the

34 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators survey information may be reduced due to the incompleteness of pre-entered rules and some critical themes may be lost. Besides, considering our survey scope, -code analysis may be even more efficient comparing to deciding, installing and learning content analysis software. So we decided to conduct the content analysis in our case manually. However, an artificial bias may happen in coding process especially when there is only one content coder. Therefore we should pay more attention on analysis’ reliability and validity.

3.4.3 Type of questionnaire

In this dissertation, translators in this study, as respondent roles, are not easy to reach by face to face or by phone interviews. The type of questionnaire should be carefully taken, to reduce the risk due to the geographical dispersion. As Saunders(Saunders et al., 2000) mentioned that using a self-administered questionnaire would allow a greater number of respondents to be reached. Thereby he suggested that this kind of questionnaire is the most appropriate where respondents are widely dispersed or abroad. Also this kind of questionnaire was deployed in Mr. Evans’s dissertation (Evans, 2004b), that obtained better results. Therefore it was decided that a self-administered questionnaire would be used.

3.5 Analysis and Design of Questionnaire

Two types of questions, in which open and closed questions, will be involved in the survey questionnaire. For the considerations that to gather as accurate and comprehensive data as we could, while at the same time balance the simpleness to fill in and freedom to express. For instance, the Question 7, add extra comments for a respondent clearly to understand:

7. Your ability to acquire new computer software skills (for example, when you need software to transfer the format of images from .bmp to .jpg, you can get and learn to use it as soon as possible.) is:

35 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3.5.1 Closed questions

The closed questions are simple to be answered and processed. It is useful for testing specific hypothesis, and an ideal demonstrating form for the statistics of problems with explicit answer options or perceivable choices(Oppenheim, 1992)115. But there are several obvious disadvantages. As closed questions’ choices are set by designer, there may exit certain level of bias because of individual perspectives. Besides, loss of spontaneous responses or may irritate respondents, which will greatly degrade the variety and reliability of the survey. Thereby, a multi form mixture of closed questions will be taken, there are 3 different forms: single choice, multiple choices or multiple choices with optional ‘others’ comments.

In this questionnaire, the first step is to define what to measure, one-dimensional Scale (social sciences) scaling method. For offering suitable granularity, Likert scaling can be choice, due to it’s a one-dimensional scaling method. It is assumed that the concept is one-dimensional in nature. A typical question using a five-point Likert scale might make a statement.

10. Do you think your use of the editing function of your word processor is:

Know all

Good

OK

Basic

Poor For some specific questions, a three-points scale could be taken as:

15. How frequently do you change your work place during your work time?

Several times a day

Several times a week

Several times a month

36 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3.5.2 Open question

An open question does not give any choice or options but allows the respondent to freely answer the question. With the aim to gather more various and deeper thoughts from respondents, some open questions can be adopted, especially when asking a personal opinion for a particular question in this research. Most of the questions in the questionnaire were open to elicit respondents’ real and original ideas and supplement closed questions in terms of completeness and depth.

16. If you work in different places, how do you prefer to move your ongoing work?

Store into laptop

Using flash memory stick

Email box

Webpage

Other

17. Please explain your reason for the answer of last question

There are three sections in the questionnaire. The first section is going to investigate the general information of translators. (Question 1-7). The second part is for research translator’s IT skills, software tools and online resources (Question 8-12). The third section is investigating translators working attitude how match with wikis’ features. (Question 13-17).

37 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

3.5.3 Distribution of main questionnaire

To understand the basic behavior of translators, questionnaires will be designed and issued for a particular target group. I am going to be utilization the blending of email and electronic surveys which are supplied by some online survey agency. To enlarge the investigating examples, the questionnaire link will post to some translation professional website, such as aquarius.net or proz.com. After compared with Survey Monkey, Sysruvey and Questionpro, the service from Questionpro can be deployed due to better statistic facility to support for this survey and longer time limit.

38 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

4 Analysis of Results

4.1 Introduction

In this section the results of the study will be presented and analyzed. Firstly the data gathered from each question will be presented. The survey had gathered data for a set of questions relating to practice situation of translators with Information Technology. Three questionnaires have been posted by email and others by online survey. The results of overall survey statistics as a pie chart showing on figure 10. Due to the limited translators’ group number and university vacation, there were only 57 started reposes, and 38 completed responses, thereof one response by email. However, that’s enough for the data analysis in this investigation. Average time taken to complete: 6 minutes per questionnaire.

Figure 10: The survey statistic overview

39 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Table 6: The overall survey statistic Completed Responses 38 Started 57 Drop Outs (After Starting) 19 Survey Views 92

Otherwise, for question 1, it asks about the ethic problem for gaining authority to allow using the data in my research from respondents. The results are showing in the table 4.2. For each three questions, everyone who had participated in this investigation agreed with the authority, even when they dropped out of the questionnaire.

Table 7: About the ethic problem of this survey

# Answer Frequency Percentage

I understand that my 1. 57 33.33% participation is voluntary.

I understand that my responses will be anonymised before analysis. I give 2. 57 33.33% permission for the investigator to access to my anonymised responses.

I agree to take part in this 3. 57 33.33% survey.

Total 171 100%

4.2 Analysis of the Surveys

1. Age group:

In the beginning of this survey, it was stated that instead of asking people their precise age range, respondents would be asked to tick an age group. The groups ware based upon 5 ranges, starting from under 20 and interval with 10 ages until 50 above. The greatest number of respondents was the 30-39 which represented 48.57 per cent of the responded questionnaires.

40 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Figure 11: Age group proportion

In figure 11, there are clearly illustrating that almost 80 per cent of the translators’ age were between 20 and 39. In addition, the distribution of the age groups can be seen in figure 12. After 39, the percentage of age is falling quickly down by 8.57 per cent. One interesting thing that was found was that there is no one less than 20 engaging translators. However, this section missed three respondents, which occupied 7.9 per cent, but it does have an effect with the results of the analysis.

Missing

50 and Under 20 Under 20 above 20-29 20-29 40-49 30-39 40-49 50 and above 30-39 Missing

Figure 12: age group percentage chart

41 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Table 8: Age group frequency analysis

Responses were measured on a 5 point scale, where 1= Very often and 5= Never.

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

1. Under 20 0 0.00%

2. 20-29 11 31.43%

3. 30-39 17 48.57%

4. 40-49 3 8.57%

5. 50 and above 4 11.43%

Total 35 100% The mean and standard deviation for age group are shown in Table 4.4.

Table 9: Statistical calculations of age group

Statistical Calculations

Mean 3.000 Mean Percentile 60.00%

Standard Deviation 0.939

Standard Error 0.159

2. Translation experience:

Figure 13: translation experience proportion in this survey

42 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

The results of the translation experience are presented on the figure 13. The translation experience from 3 to 7 years is biggest part in the translators group. The percentage is 47.06 per cent, nearly half. The number of working on less than 3 years slight lower 8.82 per cent than working 7 to 12 years is 17.65 per cent. Otherwise, only 2.94 per cent translators have less than 1 year’s experience. In translation, the experience is more important due to the translation being a knowledge based activity. The graph indicates a greater concentration of experience around 3 to 12 year point.

Table 10: Translators experience

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

1. Student/less than 1 year 1 2.94%

2. Less than 3 years 6 17.65%

3. 3 to 7 Years 16 47.06%

4. 7 to 12 Years 9 26.47%

5. More than 12 years 2 5.88%

Total 34 100%

The frequency analysis of the translators experience can be seen from table 4.5. Of the total 34 records in this table, other 4 is missing.

3. Which languages do you know? Please sign your native ones with an *

For this question, there were 25 languages that have been answered as individual knowing languages. They basically covered most languages within Europe. It is distinctly presented that English is the most occurrence frequency language in this part whatever native language and other source language.

Looking at table 4.6, native language speakers, German was the second biggest language which was the translators’ mother tongue that had been found in this survey. Following that, was Italian and French. Looking at the results, Russian, Swedish, Spanish and Croatian have the same percentage in this table. However, on the other

43 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators hand, there is no native speaker of Asia and Africa that had been found in this survey.

For other source languages, most of the people have French as a second language. There is similar inverse proportion between Spanish, German and Italian, as a following language group. As shown in the table, Farsi, Bosnian and Greek languages are not as popular as the other languages.

Table 11: Source languages statistics Native Other source Number Languages language language

1 English 11 24 2 Russian* 2 3 3 Dutch 1 2 4 Italian 5 7 5 Farsi (=Persian) 1 6 Swedish 2 1 7 French 4 14 8 Spanish 2 9 9 German 6 8 10 Czech 1 11 Croatian 2 1 12 Portuguese 1 1 13 Arabic 1 14 Pashto 1 15 Chinese 2 16 Japanese 1 17 Bosnian 1 18 Serbian 1 19 Turkish 1 20 Polish 1 21 Bambara 1 22 Finnish 1 23 Afrikaans 1 24 Greek 1 25 Slovene 1 Total 39 83

44 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

In figure 14 the number of language knowing by translators from table 11 has been illustrated in a histogram.

Native language Other source language

30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Dutch French German Arabic Chinese Bosnian Turkish Bambara Slovene English Farsi Croatian Afrikaans (=Persian)

Figure 14: The histogram of source language

4. Which languages do you use in your profession?

As a comparison data with the last question, what language is commonly used within the profession was collected. There two respondents that had missed this question, so the total valid example is 35. The result data is present on the table4.7. Definitely, the occupation of 37 per cent rate, English has indubitable a high occurrence frequency in the 23 language accounted for. Every respondent could be working with English. Italian and German is considered with same rank, as 9 times in the response. French and Spanish appeared 8 and 6 times respectively as forth and fifth ranked target languages.

Table 12: Target languages statistics

Languages Frequency percentage

1 Russian 4 0.04

2 English 34 0.36

3 Dutch 3 0.03

4 Italian 9 0.10

5 Chinese 2 0.02

6 French 8 0.09

7 Spanish 6 0.06

8 German 9 0.10

9 Croatian 3 0.03

45 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

10 Portuguese 2 0.02

11 Arabic 1 0.01

12 Pashto 1 0.01

Farsi(=Persian) 13 1 0.01

14 Japanese 1 0.01

15 Bosnian 1 0.01

16 Serbian 1 0.01

17 Turkish 1 0.01

18 Swedish 1 0.01

19 Bambara 1 0.01

20 Finnish 1 0.01

21 Afrikaans 1 0.01

22 Greek 1 0.01

23 Slovene 1 0.01

Total 93 100%

The data on table 12 is transferred into figure 15 as a percentage form. As can be seen from this diagram, it is evident that other languages hold the second proportion in the numbers of occurrence, only less than English. That means that although each other language had a small frequency, they can not be ignored due to the fact that so much translation work had happened amongst them. In another words, the existence of Multilanguage indicated translation could be necessary.

Russian 13% 4% English 2% Dutch 3% Italian Chinese 10% 37% French Spanish 7% German Croatian 9% Portuguese 2% 3% 10% Others

Figure 15: The pie chart of target language

46 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

5. Which types of text do you work with?

Figure 16: Distribution of working text

Figure 16 displays translators that deal with what kind of text and their proportion for each one. It is from that figure that the percentage of technical documentation is processed higher than the others. On the contrary, there are only 7.58 per cent of translators doing on the Literary Texts, being the lowest one. Software User Interfaces and Legal Texts have the same percentage, about 14.39 per cent, which would be a bit higher than Web-Based Information. Furthermore, Economics Texts, Help Files and other also occupy a certain proportion in records.

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Table 13: Frequency of working text

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

Technical documentation 1. (instruction manuals, 25 18.94%

service manuals, etc.)

2. Software user interfaces 19 14.39%

3. Help files 14 10.61%

4. Web-based information 18 13.64%

Legal texts (contracts, 5. 19 14.39% instruments etc.)

Economics texts (business 6. reports, correspondence 16 12.12%

etc.)

7. Literary texts 10 7.58%

8. Other 11 8.33%

Total 132 100%

In total, there are 132 answer example were responded, as showing in table 4.8.

For the open – ending question, respondents also answered some specific translation text, which are summarized in the table 4.9.

Table 14: The list for “other” option

1 Environmental 2 Medical texts 3 Government 4 Social Sciences texts 5 Books (non-fiction), catalogues (art) 6 Marketing and tourism 7 Technical and scientific papers 8 Tourism, oenology 9 Advertising

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6. Your general competence on computer use is:

Figure 17: Estimate of general competence on computer

From the above figure, it can be seen that the frequency number for the answer which is good, is much higher than those of the other answer. At the same time, there are about 26 per cent of the translators considered they are Excellent on the general competence of computer use. Otherwise, the frequency that thinks they have the proper ability to cope with email and basic electronic document is 5.71 per cent.

Compared with other questions, it is quiet different there is no one respond the answer Poor and No-Existent. In another words, nobody think they have poor skills on the computer facilities.

A total of 35 were identified as valid records showing in the table 4.10.

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Table 15: Estimate of general competence on computer

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

Excellent - (Customise O/S, 1. 9 25.71% create macros)

2. Good 24 68.57%

Adequate - (Can send email, 3. 2 5.71% create WP docs)

4. Poor 0 0.00%

5. Non-existent - (No computer) 0 0.00%

Total 35 100%

7. Your ability to acquire new computer software skills is:

Figure 18: Statistics of software skills

Following the question 6, it shows that most people have more confidence on using software according to data in figure 18. There are 44.44 per cent and 41.67 per cent translators consider they are excellent and good at software application. The frequency of an Adequate then gradually decreases. The option of Poor only appears once as evident on table 16.

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Table 16: Statistics of software skills

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

1. Excellent 16 44.44%

2. Good 15 41.67%

3. Adequate 4 11.11%

4. Poor 1 2.78%

5. Can’t do that 0 0.00%

Total 36 100%

8. How often do you use software tools when translating?

Figure 19: frequency of using software in translators’ work

In this part, most of translators are using software to support their work as showing on the figure 19. Only a small part of them seldom take any applications of software, they take it monthly or even longer. Otherwise, the table 17 shows 5.56 per cent translators are working with software weekly.

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Table 17: Statistic frequency of using software

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

1. Daily 31 86.11%

2. Weekly 2 5.56%

3. Monthly 1 2.78%

4. Less frequently 1 2.78%

5. Not at all 1 2.78%

Total 36 100%

9. Please indicate the software tools you use:

To explore the details about the category of software which translators use, a few open questions ask translators to indicate a software name. Here, some comments were summarized here for each question:

1. Computer Operating System

Almost every translator deploys Window operation system in their working computer, and one person only use Mac OS. Also two of them consider Linux as secondary option.

2. Word Processor

There are 60 per cent of translators only use Microsoft Word as their word processor. Acrobat also seems to have a much more concerned effort. Some word processor tool based Open Source has been mentioned several times, such as Open Office, Emacs, etc.

3. Search Engine

Google, as the most favored search engine amongst translators, has distinct proportion of them.

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4. Localization Software

There are only 7 records acquired during different localization software tools, such as Heartsome, Catalyst, Passolo and so on. Also two records are explicit saying they do not use this kind of software.

5. Terminology Management

Around 67 per cent of respondents are using Trados term management suite (Multiterm) as the tool of terminology management. Another about 20 per cent is using Wordfast. Otherwise, there have two respondents just use Excel for terminology management.

6. Translation Memory Software

There are using Trados by over half valid example, and approximate 37 percent of translators deployed Wordfast.

7. Machine Translation

There is no much usage of software for Machine Translation, only the Prompt software appears twice.

8. Content Management System

There are no proper records to be achieved. It is look like no one concerned this problem.

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10. Do you think your use of the editing function of your word processor is:

Figure 20: Self-assessment about utilization of editing function

The figure 20 illustrates that the majority of respondents think their level of knowing Editing Function is GOOD. More over quarter of them think is OK. As the detail of statistics number showing on the table 18, 11.43 per cent of frequency is KNOW ALL, and the answer of BASIC occurs only twice.

Table 18: Self-assessment about utilization of editing function

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

1. Know all 4 11.43%

2. Good 19 54.29%

3. OK 10 28.57%

4. Basic 2 5.71%

5. Poor 0 0.00%

Total 35 100%

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11. How much proportion of your work is done in electronic way?

Figure 21: The per centum of electronic way

It can be seen in figure 21 that the percentage of 75 to 100 per cent, appears far more often than the others, which indicated translation as an electronic form has been very popular. The respondents, whose work in electronic forms occupied one quarter and three-fourths, had same percentage. The results are tabulated below showing on the table 19.

Table 19: The per centum of electronic way

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

1. 0-25% 5 14.29%

2. 25%-50% 2 5.71%

3. 50%-75% 5 14.29%

4. 75%-100% 23 65.71%

Total 35 100%

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12. What is your experience in using Html editors

Figure 22: Estimate of experience with HTML editors

It can be seen from the figure 22 that the same percentage appears on the respondents who think they are GOOD or POOR on the experience of HTML editors, even in the different way. Also it is a little higher than the percentage of the respondents who think it is BASIC. In addition, 20 per cent consider their experience with HTML editors just OK.

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13.What do you do if problems arise during a translation, e.g. translation of idioms, neologisms, puzzling acronyms/abbreviations/jargon?

Figure 23: The statistics of problem solving collaborative attitude

Figure 23 illustrates search the web for hits and check dictionary will occupy a bigger proportion in most respondents, when they met some working problems. Furthermore, just over one-fifth of them prefer to ask colleague advice. For the option of Looking up in known resources, it has similar proportion with Need help from native speaker. In the question 13.1, the known resources will be presented farther.

Table 20: The statistics of problem solving collaborative attitude

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

1. Check dictionary 34 25.19%

2. Ask colleague advice 29 21.48% Need help from native 3. 13 9.63% speakersâ ™

4. Search the Web for hints 35 25.93%

Look up in known 5. 15 11.11% resources.

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6. Other 9 6.67%

Total 135 100%

In the last option, the other choice occurs 9 times, as showing on the table 20, and the majority of them will be looking forward for help from electronic forum, due to a large amount of member in translation communities that support them to answer the questions. However, there is one person who would like to “let my brain work for one or two days”.

13.1 If above question you chose "Look up in known resources.", could you indicate it?

Following the question 13, a survey about the Known Resources in details is emphasized, that will be helpful for understanding the requirements of translation works. Due to the fact this question is open, a summarized text is necessary, as results showing on the table 22.

Table 21: The summarized list for Known Resources

1 Eurodicautom 2 Termium 3 Any books that are related to the subject 4 technical manuals 5 dict.leo.org, 6 www.proz.com 7 online dictionaries, glossaries, content relevant websites 8 industry reference material 9 wordreference.com, 10 IATE 11 TIS Enquiry (http://tis.consilium.eu.int/utfwebtis/frames/introfsEN.htm) 12 Logos (http://www.logos.it/language/translations_en.html) 13 Wikipedia, 14 Answers.com 15 Self created a link-collection for personal work

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The majority of Known Resources by respondents come from online resources, beside three items that may be in paper form, which have been highlight in the table 22. From the resource list, some resource based on web pages, like proz.com and Wikipedia, and some based on enquiry mode, in which respondents could access online database by searching multilingual term bank. However, there are some problems with free resources sometimes, for instance, Eurodicautom has stopped to update its database. In addition, some resources only offer the service for members. In another words, you must spend money for registration before you use them, such as, Termium and ITAE.

It is interesting to discover in table 22 for the last item, the respondent created a link-collection for his personal translation work, or could say a personal knowledge repository. Professional experience would be improved from this process.

14. Do you share your work with colleagues or community by?

Figure 24: The statistics of collaborative form

Figure 24 presents the statistics of collaborative form with translation. This has the highest proportion in respondents by email to communicate with others. Around 27.42 per cent of records are showing as the form of Electronic Forum. Besides the online communication, 16.13 per cent used to exchange their translation work via Phone Call, almost twice than traditional intercourse way, face to face. There are furthermore, some respondents that specifically indicate they do not need share their

59 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators work with other colleagues and members within a community. For the “Other” option, there are only one respondent who is going to use Blog to share his work. The statistics shows that most translators need to exchange information with their professional translation, and they prefer using online tools to communicate with others, email as an ease to use and traditional tool is wildly acceptable by translators.

14.1 If above question you chose "Electronic forum", could you indicate it?

After gather up the answers from respondents, a results list is showing on table 22.

Table 22: Electronic forum list

1 www.proz.com 2 biblit.it 3 kudoz 4 NETA 5 listserve 6 Lantra-L 7 ZaLang 8 WAITT

15. How frequently do you change your work place during your work time?

Figure 25: Frequency of changing work places

Figure 25 displays clearly that the option of “Several times a month” chosen hold the largest proportion in the numbers of occurrence. The number of “Several times a day” chosen is just a little higher than “Several times a week”, due to one more time

60 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators appear in frequency which is showing on table 25. There are 21 valid example received in this question.

Table 23: Frequency of changing work places

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

1. Several times a day 4 19.05%

2. Several times a week 3 14.29%

3. Several times a month 14 66.67%

Total 21 100%

16. If you work in different places, how do you prefer to move your ongoing work?

Figure 26: The way to move ongoing works

In this question, respondents were asked about how they move their ongoing works, due to the requirement of changing into different working places. A “store way” with the highest rank is to use the laptop amongst the options as showing on figure 26. With the second rank, some respondents prefer to use flash memory stick.

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Table 24: The way to move ongoing works

Frequency Analysis

# Answer Frequency Percentage

1. Store into laptop 12 41.38%

2. Using flash memory stick 9 31.03%

3. Email box 6 20.69%

4. Webpage 1 3.45%

5. Other 1 3.45% Total 29 100%

Furthermore, email box was taken with a lower frequency, and only one respondent select webpage as storage solution. For the “Other” option, there is one valid record, which is CD.

17. Please explain your reason for the answer of last question

Most of respondents think the reason of choosing the laptop is the most convenient, because of the various reasons. One of the important conditions is that, they are doing their work on the laptop, and can even work when they in traveling and just naturally save the work into laptop. Otherwise, this solution could meet some personal requirements, for instance, the comments of “I use my laptop as my "office", then I have two desktops in my two different homes which I use to connect to Internet”, and “I don't have a real desk at home, so I can't afford to have a tower or desktop PC. A laptop can be easily moved around and does not need much space.”; “I try to have a record of it in several places, as the computer can suffer a breakdown”

For the reason of choosing flash memory disk, most of people consider it is a convenient way to transfer files is an easier and better approach for everyone, and the flash memory disks have a reliable size, which is much easy to carry. Especially, it’s suitable for the people who seldom need to move their ongoing work or only have a few pieces of work need to transfer. They could even post it for a delivery purpose.

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Although Email was selected by more people, it just is seen as a temporary storage solution, such as for print purpose. Proceed from data security questions, some people think burning their data into a CD is more trustful.

4.3 Results Analysis

As a solid mental process, translation can be seen as a kind of work which is more hard for understanding, especially for laypeople, due to relations with a various theories and disciplines such as cognitive psychology, cognitive , etc.. The general investigation could help technical persons comprehend fully, the translation process and requirements, thus to design a more suitable framework with Wikis’ features. Based on this aims, the results of data collected will be analyzed by three separate stages:

Question 1-7

This is aimed to investigate the general information of translators, showing a picture about the translators as a whole. The condition of translators’ age group, the years with translation experience and which language source text or target text is was mentioned in this part.

As shown in the statistics data, most of translators’ age is from 20 to 39 with 3 to 12 years professional experience. Due to translation being a knowledge-based activity(Wilss, 1996), there are no one’s age under 20 in this research data, even the age group from 20 to 29 has a smaller proportion. On the other side, the age group elder than 39 years old, has much smaller proportion. Related with working languages, there are 25 languages that have appeared on this survey, most of them root from Europe due to its research area. Most of the translators use English as central link language with professional work. It is an implication that the software tools based on central European code should be selected and the community functions should move towards suitability for this age group or particular subjects. For instance, some sub topics could be piloted by means of the types of text in which translators working with such as technical or legal topic.

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In addition, translators have a very good performance on a general competence use of a computer, according to the data responded from question 6 and 7.

Question 8-12

For further exploring information management technology and relative tools which the translators needed, it was investigated that translator’s IT skills, software tools and online resources with regard to translation in this part.

There are high ranks with translators using software to support their work daily, especially for Terminology management and Translation memory software. In other words, Computer Aided Translation (CAT) has quiet popular applications in the industry market. Most of respondents have a distinct confidence with using word processors. Computerized writing mode has been very familiar with translators. As a result, 75-100 per cent of translators work is electronic form which is showing on the data of question 11. Such solid skills mean that the writing mode of Wiki is a potential useful tool for them.

Furthermore, the data of question 12 display a various distribution among different levels on the experience in using HTML editors. This implies that translators should be offered a suitable tool with the low barriers about HTML language, in other words, the Wiki technology has a potential ability to mach the requirement of translators. Otherwise, if an introductory help function is involved, the Wiki system could embrace with translators farther.

Question 13-17

In this part, it research on translator working attitude how match with Wikis’ features. Thus, some open questions were taken. To consider the lack of Wiki experience with respondent, only some questions about collaborative mode supported by community functions and the way of storing information were mentioned, that however is original from Wikis’ characters simply.

It is evident that most of translators prefer to solve problems by themselves, due to a bigger proportion on the choice of “Check dictionary” and “Search the web for hints” in the figure 23.

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When they are going to do the translation process, translators will take the information from various resources, but most of them are online resources. This could be of benefit for the final framework design with learning from existing resources, such as migrating some functions, and then improving them under the collaborative mode.

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5 Discussion

5.1 Community Functionality

Translation is a highly knowledge-based activity. Translators need to be on top of both Source Text and Target Text to drive translation processes. Also translation procedures is a process of experience accumulation(HARKNESS and SCHOUA-GLUSBERG, 1998). It is evident that most of the translators have 3-7 years professional experience, even a considerable part of them have 7-12 years experience. However, problems come when tying to implement knowledge-based solution like Community of Practice over a culture that does not understand knowledge and its usage. A solid structure of knowledge management could reduce the risk from the problems, and benefit text-driven translation within a professional community.

In the answer of question 13, most of the respondents will find out that information needed from various resources can help them meet the working problems. If an integrated solution with different disciplines could be offered, this could help translators to save time from the search process, and benefit from a shared learning agenda. On the other side, a community brings people together and aids in focusing their learning, it is this community that helps to build the relationships needed for this shared sense of identity and ultimately benefits the organization(Wenger et al., 2002: 31).

Amongst the data of this survey, there have appeared 23 kinds of languages that used are within the translators’ work, and the respondents come from 13 kinds of native language groups, dealing with 17 types of texts. Also do not forget there are only 38 examples. It is the confidence showing that in working difficulties and the building of personal relationships which are quite regularly difficult within the translator groups. A communication requirement should be included to dissolve the gap due to geographic and culture differences. Wenger et al(Wenger et al., 2002:33) have demonstrated that the creation of a community of practice could help the

66 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators members to form a common bond or identity and saw that they shared the same interests in the issues they were encountering. Through a community, that knowledge management can help a visual organization for each member.

5.2 Wiki Applicability

As an estimation of the basic computer competency, most of translators have well organized skills o information literacy, and experienced writing mode with computer daily in this investigation. As a software based on the GNU framework, Wiki do not have much simple writing functions for users, but its powerful on the collaborative work. For specific interest to the translation community, there are a growing number of open source programs suitable for use on small to medium size projects. While wiki system may not be the best choice for all users, it is a cost-effective and highly reliable option for many(McKay, 2004).

To the online storage solution, one of the Wiki features, most of translators could not adopt with it, due to they do not change the work place frequently which is showing on the answer of the Question 15, and also prefer to store their working documents on their own laptop. However, based on their thinking as to where writing where is stored, is much more convenient. The advantage of Wiki system could not be taken wildly by translators until the manner of online writing built, also depending the stability of the Wiki system.

In addition, the wiki system can be set up without any cost beside hardware and a OS platform. But the compatibility of selected various software should be notice. For instance: MediaWiki system has a good compatibility with Apache server. But this dissertation took IIS as a server. Thus there are still some problems that exist after iterative debugging such as showing on figure 27.

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Figure 27: Showing Incompatibility of MediaWiki and IIS server 5.3 Limitation

In this survey, some questions after its launch it became apparent that poorly designed in terms of achieving that objective, such as the title of questions 6 is too general, that should be related with online skills. At the same, this data may have been interesting if it was not suitable for this research.

The distribution of questionnaire post was strict on the two translation electronic forums. The selected samples may be limited with that. From the statistic data, we can see most of languages only come from European mainland.

Otherwise, experience with the Wiki system may be not enough, due to the time limit, extended period for the translators familiar with the Wiki system should be involved, that could be approach with the results more closely.

5.4 Framework Development

The scope of this dissertation covered PHP programming technology, the configuration of network server and MediaWiki, an investigation of translation process and translators’ community. In terms of the statistic data and its discussion, a new prototype was evaluated for further research, which is showing on the following figures:

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Figure 28: The interface of prototype

In the main page of this wiki prototype, a brief introduction about this project was presented, as same as the structure of the software platform for this website.

Figure 29: The interface of Community Portal

The Community portal has integrated most of functions which was designed in the new evaluation, such as multilanguage idioms dictionary and glossary, translation corpus collection, translation online resource and so on.

69 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators

Figure 30: An example for Personal talking page

The personal talking page offered a place for discussing private problems.

Figure 31: The interface of English idioms dictionary

An alphabetical order was applied in the English idioms dictionary, that could help users quick locate a lemma and easy to read with the content.

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Figure 32: One example lemma for English idiom dictionary

For a particular lemma, using different fonts and colors to distinguish different sections increase the readability of the context. If a phrase has been edited, the color will be blue, if not, is red.

Figure 33: The relevant wiki code for the lemma

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Of specific problem of seldom wiki experience with translators, a strong help system was built to solve the problems would be met, as same principles, any users can modify this part as well, such as some personal problem experience:

Figure 34: The help page in the Wiki system

A color palette was designed to support users writing color words easily.

Figure 35: The color palette 5.5 Conclusions

In this investigation, the main aims of exploring the features of Wikis technology would be matched with the requirements of the translator’s community, which could be approached through the discussion part. In order to satisfy the research aim, a series of specific objectives were developed. The following section will answer the

72 Investigating the requirements when offering Wiki technology to translators question addressed in the research objectives.

Through the investigating process, the picture of translators was described on the collect of their general data with Information Technology. At the same time, the requirements of translation have been mentioned among several fields according the data analysis. These fields include various disciplines and sources. Thereby the opened collaborative mode of Wiki system can invite more people to participate in a visual community, and make possible to share knowledge between each other. This feather of wiki system also can be used on the purpose of collecting a corpus. Otherwise, some translation resources should be established, especially for the legal and technical topic, due to their higher frequency of the occurrence in questionnaire results.

Furthermore, a wiki application of online Multilanguage dictionary, called Wiktionary, has showing powerful evidence as a tool of Computer Aided Translation. However, people often confuse with the character of unstructured “”. An attempt to improve a template for a glossary of linguistic terms was built. The interface of the template is showing by an alphabetical order (Figure 31), and for each term has a link with similar meaning, called “See also”, and another link of “translation” to connect upon different languages, in terms of translation is a meaning-based information process(Wilss, 1996). Moreover, another purpose for using wiki system in translation, it is consider wiki system as a reading review tools to collect relative comments, which is presenting on the figure 36.

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Figure 36: The example of review system for wiki application

Collaborative translation can be provided by the Wikis technology as same as the other application. In the figure 37, translators can participate in the translation process freely, and either possible to change original translation script or with some comments. They also could be benefit from learning the process that review others translation.

Figure 37: The example of collaborative translation mode

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The Wiki system which was established as a prototype will open for every translator, language learner, literary fans or any freelance working with language problem. Thus it will open to everyone want to use it.

In general, the design of wiki system was aimed to satisfy the requirements of translators’ community. That could help users with cost effectively on Multilanguage dictionary consultation or a specific dictionary for linguistic terms collection such as idioms and jargons, accessing an integrative translation resource, literature review and comments and collaborative translation.

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6 Recommendations and further research

6.1 Recommendations

After users experience with Wiki system, more questions should be asked connecting with specific Wiki functions, to acquire directly the opinions from users. Moreover, wildly evaluation also needs to be considered.

6.2 Further Work

This research has attempted to access an investigation about how wiki system could help translator’s community as a tool of Computer Aided Translation, more concentrate on the Wiki collaborative translation mode. To improve current work, more contribution with the content of the Wiki system should be involved. The rich information make for more people participate in the contributing process and benefit from there.

On the other side, the current Wiki prototype cannot offer some functions which are needed by translation such as collaborative translation, due to the software function limit. Therefore, the reengineering with current wiki system will be required to design a more suitable tool for translation work.

However, the application of flexible and opened Wiki concept is not just limit for translation with its form. For all its creative productivity, our era seems essentially one of reproducing, inventorying, data processing, and conveying information. As Willss(1996: 123) said: “Translation is the manifestation of a dynamic interaction between the source text author, the source text (ST), the translator, the target text (TT), the TT’s reader, and , last but not least, the social environment in which the translator works.” The Wiki system could be designed for an agile translating tool for a middle or small size translation project, to meet a requirement of dynamic interaction in the collaborative translation process.

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Appendix A: Questionnaire

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85