Comparable Corpora And Computer Assisted Translation

Computer-assisted translation (CAT) has always used translation memories, which require the translator to have a corpus of previous translations that the CAT software can use to generate bilingual lexicons. This can be problematic when the translator does not have such a corpus, for instance, when the text belongs to an emerging field. To solve this issue, CAT research has looked into the leveraging of comparable corpora, i.e. a set of texts, in two or more languages, which deal with the same topic but are not translations of one another. This work had two primary objectives. The first is to assess the input of lexicons extracted from comparable corpora in the context of a specialized human translation task. The second objective is to identify bilingual-lexicon-extraction methods which best match the translators' needs, determining the current limits of these techniques and suggesting improvements. The author focuses, in particular, on the identification of fertile translations, the management of multiple morphological structures, and the ranking of candidate translations. The experiments are carried out on two language pairs (English–French and English–German) and on specialized texts dealing with breast cancer. This research puts significant emphasis on applicability – methodological choices are guided by the needs of the final users. This book is organized in two parts: the first part presents the applicative and scientific context of the research, and the second part is given over to efforts to improve compositional translation. The research work presented in this book received the PhD Thesis award 2014 from the French association for natural language processing (ATALA).

The 1990s saw a paradigm change in the use of corpus-driven methods in NLP. In the field of multilingual NLP (such as machine translation and terminology mining) this implied the use of parallel corpora. However, parallel resources are relatively scarce: many more texts are produced daily by native speakers of any given language than translated. This situation resulted in a natural drive towards the use of comparable corpora, i.e. non-parallel texts in the same domain or genre. Nevertheless, this research direction has not produced a single authoritative source suitable for researchers and students coming to the field. The proposed volume provides a reference source, identifying the state of the art in the field as well as future trends. The book is intended for specialists and students in natural language processing, machine translation and computer-assisted translation.

This book provides an overview of how comparable corpora can be used to overcome the lack of parallel resources when building machine translation systems for under-resourced languages and domains. It presents a wealth of methods and open tools for building comparable corpora from the Web, evaluating comparability and extracting parallel data that can be used for the machine translation task. It is divided into several sections, each covering a specific task such as building, processing, and using comparable corpora, focusing particularly on under-resourced language pairs and domains. The book is intended for anyone interested in data-driven machine translation for under-resourced languages and domains, especially for developers of machine translation systems, computational linguists and language workers. It offers a valuable resource for specialists and students in natural language processing, machine translation, corpus linguistics and computer-assisted translation, and promotes the broader use of comparable corpora in natural language processing and computational linguistics.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of methods to build comparable corpora and of their applications, including machine translation, cross-lingual transfer, and various kinds of multilingual natural language processing. The authors begin with a brief history on the topic followed by a comparison to parallel resources and an explanation of why comparable corpora have become more widely used. In particular, they provide the basis for the multilingual capabilities of pre-trained models, such as BERT or GPT. The book then focuses on building comparable corpora, aligning their sentences to create a database of suitable translations, and using these sentence translations to produce dictionaries and term banks. Then, it is explained how comparable corpora can be used to build machine translation engines and to develop a wide variety of multilingual applications.

Professional translators are increasingly dependent on electronic resources, and trainee translators need to develop skills that allow them to make the best use of these resources. The aim of this book is to show how CULT (Corpus Use for Learning to Translate) methodologies can be used to prepare learning materials, and how novice translators can become autonomous users of corpora. Readers interested in translation studies, translator training and corpus linguistics will find the book particularly useful. Not only does it include practical, technical advice for using and learning to use corpora, but it also addresses important issues such as the balance between training and education and how CULT methodologies reinforce student autonomy and responsibility. Not only is this a good introduction to CULT, but it also incorporates the latest developments in this field, showing the advantages of using these methodologies in competence-based learning.

Language Resources (LRs) are sets of language data and descriptions in machine readable form, such as written and spoken language corpora, terminological databases, computational lexica and dictionaries, and linguistic software tools. Over the past few decades, mainly within research environments, LRs have been specifically used to create, optimise or evaluate natural language processing (NLP) and human language technologies (HLT) applications, including translation-related technologies. Gradually the infrastructures and exploitation tools of LRs are being perceived as core resources in the language services industries and in localisation production settings. However, some efforts ought yet to be made to raise further awareness about LRs in general, and LRs for translation and localisation in particular to a wider audience in all corners of the world. Topics in Language Resources for Translation and Localisation sets out to establish the state of the art of this ever expanding field and underscores the usefulness that LRs can potentially have in the process of creating, adapting, managing, standardising and leveraging content for more than one language and culture from various perspectives.

This collection surveys the state of the art of computer-assisted literary translation (CALT), making the case for its potential to enhance literary translation research and practice. The volume brings together early career and established scholars from around the world in countering prevailing notions around the challenges of effectively implementing contemporary CALT applications in literary translation practice which has traditionally followed the model of a single translator focused on a single work. The book begins by addressing key questions on the definition of literary translation, examining its sociological dimensions and individual translator perspective. Chapters explore the affordances of technological advancements and availability of new tools in such areas as post-edited machine translation (PEMT) in expanding the boundaries of what we think of when we think of literary translation, looking to examples from developments in co-translation, collaborative translation, crowd-sourced translation and fan translation. As the first book of its kind dedicated to the contribution CALT in its various forms can add to existing and future scholarship, this volume will be of interest to students and scholars in Translation Studies, especially those working in literary translation, machine translation and translation technologies.

Lynne Bowker introduces the world of technology to the world of translation in this unique book, the first of its kind. Bowker reveals the role of technology in translation and how to use this ever developing tool.