Moses, time, and crisis translation
Training translators to react to sudden emergencies is a challenge. This article presents the results of a training experiment
testing the speed of acquisition of the skills necessary to operate the open-source Moses statistical machine translation (SMT)
system. A task-based approach was used with trainee translators who had no experience working with MT technology. The experiment
is a feasibility study to ascertain whether training on Moses SMT could be considered for long-lasting crisis scenarios. The
article reports its findings in four sections. The first section discusses the research context in which ‘crisis translation’ is
defined; the second section illustrates the rationale of the experiment; the third section looks at the results of the training
experiment; and the fourth at the trainees’ perceptions of their learning processes. The conclusion reflects on the viability of
using Moses and on the next phases needed to refine the findings of this first experiment.
Article outline
- Crisis communication and the position of translation
- Moses SMT and training experiment
- Trainee translators in a task-based learning process
- Participants’ self-reflective approach
- Concluding remarks
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
References
Alexander, David E.
2016 How to Write an Emergency Plan. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press.
Al Sharou, Khetam
2018 English-Arabic Translation through Moses SMT: Intensive Course on Open Source Technologies in Postgraduate Translation Programmes. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. London: University College London.
Bandura, Albert
1977 “
Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change.”
Psychological Review 84(2): 191–215.
Bulut, Alev and Turgay Kurultay
2001 “
Interpreters-in-aid at disasters: Community interpreting in the process of disaster management.”
The Translator 7(2): 249–263.
Bernacki, Matthew L., Timothy J. Nokes-Malach, and Vincent Aleven
2015 “
Examining self-efficacy during learning: Variability and relations to behavior, performance, and learning.”
Metacognition and Learning 10(1): 99–117.
Burns, Anne
2010 Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching: A Guide for Practitioners. New York: Routledge.
Businario, Roberta
2012 Relief Operations across Language Barriers: The Interpreter Factor. Unpublished MSc Thesis. University College Dublin.
Cadwell, Patrick and Sharon O’Brien
2016 “
Language, culture, and translation in disaster ICT: An ecosystemic model of understanding.”
Perspectives 24(4): 557–575.
Cadwell, Patrick and Sharon O’Brien
2017 “
Translation facilitates comprehension of health-related crisis information: Kenya as an example.”
JoSTrans 281: 23–51.
CLING
2011 Guidelines for Using Language and Sign Interpreters – useful tips for Christchurch agencies.
[URL]. Last accessed 4 July 2018.
Cohen, Louis, Lawrence Manion, and Keith Morrison
2013 “
Action research.” In
Research Methods in Education, 6th edition, ed. by
Louis Cohen,
Lawrence Manion, and
Keith Morrison, 344–361. London: Routledge.
Compeau, Deborah R. and Christopher A. Higgins
1995 “
Computer self-efficacy: Development of a measure and initial test.”
MIS Quarterly 19(2): 189–211.
Crowley, John and Jennifer Chan
2011 Disaster Relief 2.0: The future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies. Washington, DC and Berkshire, UK: Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
[URL]. Last accessed 4 July 2018.
Doherty, Stephen and Dorothy Kenny
2014 “
The design and evaluation of a statistical machine translation syllabus for translation students.”
The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 8(2): 295–315.
Doğan, Aymil
2016 “
‘Anybody down there?’ Emergency and disaster interpreting in Turkey.” In
Mediating Emergencies and Conflict. Frontline Translation and Interpreting, ed. by
Federico M. Federici, 59–83. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Doğan, Aymil and Rana Kahraman
2011 “
Emergency and disaster interpreting in Turkey: Ten years of a unique endeavour.”
Hacettepe University Journal of Faculty of Letters 28(2): 61–76.
Federici, Federico M.
2016 “
Introduction: A state of emergency for crisis communication.” In
Mediating Emergencies and Conflict. Frontline Translation and Interpreting, ed. by
Federico M. Federici, 1–29. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Federici, Federico M.
2010 “
Assessing translation skills: Reflective practice on linguistic and cultural awareness.” In
Teaching and Testing Interpreting and Translating, ed. by
Valerie Pellatt,
Kate Griffiths, and
Shao-Chuan Wu, 171–192. Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang.
Federici, Federico M. and Patrick Cadwell
Gaspari, Federico
2001 “
Teaching machine translation to trainee translators: A survey of their knowledge and opinions.”
MT Summit VIII Workshop on Teaching Machine Translation, Sep 2001.
[URL]. Last accessed on 4 July 2018.
Gerbier, Solweig, et al.
2011 “
Evaluation of natural language processing from emergency department computerized medical records for intra-hospital syndromic surveillance.”
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 11(1): 50.
Hale, Sandra
2007 Community Interpreting. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hester, Vaughn, Aaron Shaw, and Lukas Biewald
2010 “
Scalable crisis relief: Crowdsourced SMS translation and categorization with Mission 4636.”
Proceedings of the First ACM Symposium on Computing for Development (ACM DEV’10), 1–7. New York: ACM.
Howe, Austin, Murray E. Jennex, George H. Bressler, Eric G. Frost
2013 “
Exercise24: Using social media for crisis response.” In
Using Social and Information Technologies for Disaster and Crisis Management, ed. by
Murray E. Jennex, 232–250. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Hubscher-Davidson, Séverine
2008 “
A reflection on action research processes in translator training: Project on group work in Level 2 translation classes.”
The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 2(1): 75–92.
Hubscher-Davidson, Séverine
2011 “
A discussion of ethnographic research methods and their relevance for translation process research.”
Across Languages and Cultures 12(1): 1–18.
Hurtado Albir, Amparo
2007 “
Competence-based curriculum design for training translators.”
The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 1(2): 163–195.
Hurtado Albir, Amparo
(ed) 1999 Enseñar a traducir. Metodología en la formación de traductores e intérpretes. Madrid: Edelsa.
Jennex, Murray E.
2013 Using Social and Information Technologies for Disaster and Crisis Management. Hershey PA: IGI Global.
Kiraly, Donald C.
2000 A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education: Empowerment from Theory to Practice. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Kiraly, Donald C.
1995 Pathways to Translation: Pedagogy and Process. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press.
Lewis, William, Robert Munro and Stephan Vogel
2011 “
Crisis MT: Developing a cookbook for MT in crisis situations.”
Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Statistical Machine Translation: 501–11.
Lewis, William
2010 “
Haitian Creole: How to build and ship an MT engine from scratch in 4 days, 17 hours, & 30 minutes.”
Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT 2010). Saint-Raphaël, France.
Moser-Mercer, Barbara, Leïla Kherbiche, and Barbara Class
2014 “
Interpreting conflict: Training challenges in humanitarian field interpreting.”
Journal of Human Rights Practice 6(1): 140–58.
Munro, Robert
2013 “
Crowdsourcing and the crisis-affected community: Lessons learned and looking forward from Mission 4636.”
Journal of Information Retrieval 16(2): 210–66.
Munro, Robert
2010 “
Crowdsourced translation for emergency response in Haiti: The global collaboration of local knowledge.”
AMTA Workshop on Collaborative Crowdsourcing for Translation. Denver, Colorado. 31 October 2010.
Mulder, Femke, Julie Ferguson, Peter Groenewegen, Kees Boersma, and Jeroen Wolbers
2016 “
Questioning big data: Crowdsourcing crisis data towards an inclusive humanitarian response.”
Big Data & Society 3(2): 1–13.
Nunan, David
1993 “
Action research in language education.” In
Teachers Develop Teachers Research, ed. by
Julian Edge and
Keith Richards. Oxford: Heinemann.
O’Brien, Sharon
2016 “
Training translators for crisis communication: The translators without borders example.” In
Mediating Emergencies and Conflict. Frontline Translation and Interpreting, ed. by
Federico M. Federici, 85–111. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pescaroli, Gianluca, et al.
2014 “
Pathogenic vulnerabilities and resilient factors in systems and populations experiencing a cascading disaster.” Fortress, FP7 Project Report 2.1.
[URL]. Last accessed 4 April 2018.
Pescaroli, Gianluca and David E. Alexander
2015 “
A definition of cascading disasters and cascading effects: Going beyond the ‘toppling dominos’ metaphor.”
planet @ risk 3(1): 58–67.
Pescaroli, Gianluca and David Alexander
2016 “
Critical infrastructure, panarchies and the vulnerability paths of cascading disasters.”
Natural Hazards 82(1): 1–18.
Perry, Ronald W.
2007 “
What Is a Disaster?” In
Handbook of Disaster Research, ed. by
Havidan Rodríguez,
Enrico L. Quarantelli, and
Russel R. Dynes, 1–15. New York: Springer..
Qadir, Junaid, Anwaar Ali, Raihan ur Rasool, Andrej Zwitter, Arjuna Sathiaseelan, and Jon Crowcroft
2016 “
Crisis analytics: big data-driven crisis response.”
Journal of International Humanitarian Action 11: 12.
Quarantelli, Enrico L.
(ed.) 2005 What is a Disaster? A Dozen Perspectives on the Question. New York: Routledge.
Samson, Richard
2005 “
Computer-assisted translation.” In
Training for the New Millennium: Pedagogies for Translation and Interpreting, ed. by
Martha Tennent, 101–126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schön, Donald A.
1995 “
The new scholarship requires a new epistemology.”
Change 27(6): 27–34.
Shaluf, Ibrahim M., Fakharu’l-razi Ahmadun, and Aini Mat Said
2003 “
A review of disaster and crisis.”
Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal 12(1): 24–32.
Shank, Daniel and Shelia Cotten
2014 “
Does technology empower urban youth? The relationship of technology use to self-efficacy.”
Computers & Education 701: 184–193.
Smith, R. M., et al.
2012 “
Disaster triage after the Haitian earthquake.”
Injury 431: 1811–1815.
Sutherlin, Gwyneth
2013 “
A voice in the crowd: Broader implications for crowdsourcing translation during crisis.”
Journal of Information Science 391: 397–409.
Taibi, Mustapha and Uldis Ozolins
2016 “
Community translation: Definitions, characteristics and status quo.” In
Community Translation, ed. by
Mustapha Taibi and
Uldis Ozolins, 7–28. London: Bloomsbury.
Tanner, Lydia and Alice Obrecht
2015 “
Words of relief: Translators without Borders. Local language translation for emergencies.”
HIF/ALNAP case study. London: ODI/ALNAP.
United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
2009 UNISDR Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction. Geneva: UNISDR.
[URL]. Last accessed 4 July 2018.
Valero Garcés, Carmen
2014 Communicating Across Cultures: A Coursebook on Interpreting and Translating in Public Services and Institutions. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Whittaker, Joshua, Blythe McLennan, and John Handmer
2015 “
A review of informal volunteerism in emergencies and disasters: Definition, opportunities and challenges.”
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 131: 358–368.
Wright, Stephen, Kristin Perrone-McGovern, Jenelle Boo, and Aarika Vannatter White
2014 “
Influential factors in academic and career self-efficacy: Attachment, supports, and career barriers.”
Journal of Counseling and Development 92(1): 36–46.
WHO
2003 Words are Important. Geneva: World Health Organization.
[URL]. Last accessed 4 July 2018.
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Moskal, Marta, Giovanna Fassetta, Maria Grazia Imperiale & Jamie Spurway
2024.
‘To translate feelings not words’. Humanitarian interpreting: challenging institutional and professional boundaries in interpreting for refugees.
Language and Intercultural Communication ► pp. 1 ff.
Ruiz Rosendo, Lucía & Maura Radicioni
2022.
Humanitarian Interpreting in the Age of COVID-19. In
Translation and Interpreting in the Age of COVID-19 [
Corpora and Intercultural Studies, 9],
► pp. 165 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.