ALANAZI, MOHAMMAD S, Ph.D., December 2019 Modern and Classical Language Studies the USE of COMPUTER-ASSISTED TRANSLATION TOOLS F
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ALANAZI, MOHAMMAD S, Ph.D., December 2019 Modern and Classical Language Studies THE USE OF COMPUTER-ASSISTED TRANSLATION TOOLS FOR ARABIC TRANSLATION: USER EVALUATION, ISSUES, AND IMPROVEMENTS (368 PP.) Dissertation Advisor: Sue Ellen Wright The development of technology since the last quarter of the 20th century has played a momentous role in shaping the translation process for most languages. The Arabic language, however, has encountered challenges and difficulties to catch up with the accelerated changes in computer-assisted translation tools. Those challenges have been examined and investigated extensively during the last decade. However, these tools evaluations made by Arabic language translators have not been adequately taken into consideration in the previous studies. The challenging morphological, syntactic, phonetic, and phonologic characteristics of Arabic language make it one of the most complicated languages for the use of developed translation technology, which can explain a potentially understandable negative assessment among Arabic language translators. This study examined Arabic language translators’ evaluation of computer- assisted translation tools and investigated potential problems that can possibly complicate the use of the tools. Finally, the study discussed factors to take into consideration when developing computer-assisted tools to address Arabic language translators’ needs. The study hypothesized that Arabic language translators would express concerns regarding language-specific issues during the use of the tools. Complications would occur for Arabic language translators while working with these applications, e.g. MT suggestions, segmentation, punctuation and script related issues etc. To test the study's hypothesis, a mixed methodological approach was pursued that combines the following: an online survey and an observational experiment. Arabic language translators were recruited to participate in the study. A mixed approach of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collected data were conducted to demonstrate the responses and evaluation of the participants toward the tools. The results of the study reveal a strong inclination by Arabic language translators in this study to encourage and support the use of CAT tools despite the complications (e.g., segmentation, punctuation and spelling etc.) and suggest that Arabic language translators are more likely to make changes to TM and extensive post-editing to MT suggestions. Triangulation of the survey and experiment findings supports the conclusion that there is no relationship between the complications experienced while using translation tools and the expressed level of satisfaction. Keywords: Arabic language, MT, CAT tools, evaluation, perspectives, complications THE USE OF COMPUTER-ASSISTED TRANSLATION TOOLS FOR ARABIC TRANSLATION: USER EVALUATION, ISSUES, AND IMPROVEMENTS A Dissertation Submitted to Kent State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Mohammad S. Alanazi December 2019 © Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials. Dissertation written by Mohammad S. Alanazi BA, Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, 2009 M.A., University of Florida, 2013 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2019 Approved by Sue Ellen Wright______________________, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Said Shiyab__________________________, Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Erik Angelone________________________, Michael Carl_________________________, Yesim Kaptan________________________, Accepted by Keiran Dunne________________________, Chair, Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies James L. Blank_______________________, Dean, College of Arts and Science TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... v LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... ix LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. xi LIST OF ABBREVATIONS ........................................................................................... xiii ARABIC TRANSLITERATION..................................................................................... xiv DEDICATION .................................................................................................................. xv ACKNOWLDEGMENT.................................................................................................. xvi CHAPTER I ........................................................................................................................ 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Overview ................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Statement of the Problem .......................................................................................... 2 1.3 Research Questions and Hypotheses ......................................................................... 5 1.4 Potential Impact and Significance ............................................................................. 7 1.5 Overview of the Dissertation..................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER II ..................................................................................................................... 11 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................. 11 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 11 2.2 Challenges for Arabic Language Natural Language Processing ............................. 12 2.2.1 Morphological Analysis in Arabic ................................................................... 12 2.2.2 Syntactical Analysis of Arabic ......................................................................... 14 2.2.3 Arabic Diacritics ............................................................................................... 19 2.2.4 Arabic Diglossia ............................................................................................... 22 2.2.5 Arabic Optical Character Recognition (OCR) .................................................. 25 2.2.6 Governmental and Academic Support for Arabic Computer Tools ................. 28 2.3 Development of Arabic Automated Translation Tools ........................................... 30 v 2.3.1 Rule-Based Machine Translation ..................................................................... 32 2.3.2 Example-Based Machine Translation ............................................................... 33 2.3.3 Statistical Machine Translation ........................................................................ 34 2.3.4 Hybrid Machine Translation ............................................................................. 35 2.3.5 Neural Network-based Machine Translation .................................................... 36 2.4 Shift to Human-Machine Translation ...................................................................... 37 2.4.1 The Translator’s WorkStation (Computer-assisted Translation Tools) ........... 38 2.4.2 Challenges encountered with CAT tools with Arabic ...................................... 43 2.4.3 Integrated Computer-assisted Translation Tools .............................................. 46 2.5 Summary ................................................................................................................. 49 CHAPTER III ................................................................................................................... 51 METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................... 51 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 51 3.2 Research Approach ................................................................................................. 52 3.3 Survey...................................................................................................................... 54 3.3.1 Participants ....................................................................................................... 54 3.3.2 Materials and Procedure ................................................................................... 57 3.4 Experiment .............................................................................................................. 58 3.4.1 Translation Task ............................................................................................... 59 3.4.2 Semi-Structured Interview ................................................................................ 60 3.4.3 Participants ....................................................................................................... 61 3.4.4 Research Procedure .......................................................................................... 62 3.5 Data Elicitation ........................................................................................................ 64 3.5.1 Quantitative Analysis ....................................................................................... 66 3.5.2 Qualitative analysis..........................................................................................