Carlos da Silva Cardoso Teixeira has bachelor degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Linguistics from the University of Campinas (Unicamp), SP, Brazil. He holds an MA in Translation and Intercultural Studies (2011) from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). He was a full-time freelance translator from 2000-2011, specialising mainly in localisation and technical translation. His main field of interest for doctoral research is translation technology, especially the interaction between translators and tools, and the human aspects of technology. Carlos held a Marie Curie doctoral grant from the European Commission (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN-263954, TIME project).
The impact of metadata on translator performance: how translators work with translation memories and machine translation
Supervisor: Dr. Anthony Pym, Dr. Reine Meylaerts
Research Summary
The potential productivity gains derived from integrating machine translation (MT) and translation memories (TM) are calling for new work methods in the translation market. As an example, some translation agencies pre-translate their source files using a combination of TM and customised MT before sending them out to translators, who then become reviewers, or post-editors. In this scenario, translators may review each segment without knowing its provenance, i.e. whether it comes from a translation memory (and at which match percentage) or from a machine-translation engine. Could this missing information have an impact on the way translators perform their tasks, compared to a more traditional environment, where translators would know where each translation suggestion comes from? In other words, how do the metadata about translation suggestions affect translators' behaviour in environments that integrate TM and MT? In order to find answers to these questions, two translation environments are compared through a set of experiments: a visual or interactive environment vs. a blind or pre-translation environment. Data are collected using screen recording, keystroke logging, eye tracking and retrospective interviews. Special emphasis is placed on the ecological validity of the experimental set-up. Results are expected to benefit all parties involved in the translation scene, including independent translators, translation agencies, translation-tool developers and, ultimately, translation customers, as the results can contribute to devise optimal workflows and best practices. The intellectual importance of this project lies on the findings about how technology might impact the translators' cognitive processes and job satisfaction.
Conference Presentations
2014. "Perceived vs. measured performance in the post-editing of suggestions from machine translation and translation memories." Third Workshop on Post-Editing Technology and Practice (WPTP-3), within The eleventh biennial conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA-2014). Vancouver, BC, Canada. October 26.
2013. "Understanding how translators interact with technology: A translation process experiment." 7th EST Congress. Germersheim, Germany. August 30.
2013. "The impact of translation metadata on translator behaviour in TM/MT (post-) editing environments." Graduate Conference: New Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. July 1.
2013. "The handling of translation metadata in TM/MT environments: Insights from process research." OPTIMALE Symposium. Université de Rennes, France. June 6.
2012. "Methods of data collection in translation process research." CETRA 2012 (24th Research Summer School). K.U. Leuven, Belgium. August 30.
2012. "Knowledge of provenance and its effects on the translation process in an integrated TM/MT environment." ETP - International Workshop on Expertise in Translation and Post-editing: Research and Application. Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. August 17.
2011. "Knowledge of provenance and its effects on translation performance (in an integrated TM/MT environment)." NLPCS 2011 (8th International Workshop on Natural Language Processing and Cognitive Science). Special Issue: Human-Machine Interaction in Translation. Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. August 20.
2011. "Knowledge of provenance: How does it affect TM/MT integration?" Graduate Conference: New Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. May.
Publications
2014. "Perceived vs. measured performance in the post-editing of suggestions from machine translation and translation memories." In: Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Post-Editing Technology and Practice (WPTP-3), edited by Sharon O'Brien, Michel Simard, and Lucia Specia, 45-59.
2014. (with Anthony Pym, Gabriel González Núñez, Marta Miquel-Iriarte, Sara Ramos Pinto, and Wine Tesseur) "Work placements in doctoral research training in the humanities: Eight cases from translation studies." Across Languages and Cultures 15 (1): 1-23. doi: 10.1556/Acr.15.2014.1.1.
2014. "Data collection methods for researching the interaction between translators and translation tools-An 'ecological' approach." In: Schwieter, John & Ferreira, Aline (eds.) The development of translation competence: Theories and methodologies from psycholinguistics and cognitive science. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
2014. "The handling of translation metadata in translation tools." In: O'Brien, Sharon; Balling, Laura; Carl, Michael; Simard, Michel & Specia, Lucia (eds.). Post-editing of Machine Translation: Processes and Applications. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
2013. "Multilingual systems, translation technology and their impact on the translator's profession." In: Neustein, Amy & Markowitz, Judith A. (eds.) Where Humans Meet Machines: Innovative Solutions to Knotty Natural Language Problems. Heidelberg; New York: Springer Verlag. 299-314.
2011. "Knowledge of provenance and its effects on translation performance in an integrated TM/MT environment." In: Proceedings of the 8th International NLPCS Workshop - Special theme: Human-Machine Interaction in Translation. Copenhagen Studies in Language 41. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur. 107-118.
2007. "Tradução de contos contemporâneos franceses de Vincent Ravalec: a busca de uma linguagem e a descoberta de várias línguas". Trabalhos em Lingüística Aplicada. Edição especial. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp. 109-122.
Viva December 17, 2014
Examining committee :
Dr. Arnt Jakobsen (Copenhagen Businesss School)
Dr. Pilar Sánchez-Gijón (Universitat Autònoma Barcelona)
Dr. Olga Torres-Hostench (Universitat Autònoma Barcelona)
External experts
Dr. Sharon O'Brien (Dublin City University)
Dr. Frieda Steurs (KU Leuven)
