Ana is currently Operations Manager for Logoscript. She has over 18 years experience in the software localization industry in activities ranging from translation, editing and proofing of documents/software to co-ordination and management of projects, plus resource and operation management. She has a university degree in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Granada. She also teaches in the Master de Tradumàtica at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Productivity and quality in the post-editing of outputs from translation memories and machine translation
Supervisors: Anthony Pym and Sharon O'Brien
Research Summary
In the localization industry, machine-translated segments are gradually being included in the translation-memory (TM) system workflow as another type of fuzzy match. The results from our pilot experiment with a group of eight professional translators indicate that machine translated segments give higher productivity and have fewer final errors than 80-90 percent fuzzy matches from TM segments. The results further reveal that although the technical experience of translators has an incidence on processing speed, it does not affect the number of final errors in the samples. However, TM fuzzy matches have a considerable impact on the number of errors, especially in terms of accuracy. The results show pronounced dispersion which seems to indicate a high degree of subject dependency. This research project will attempt to explore in further detail the findings from the initial pilot project to confirm if these trends can be validated with a greater number of subjects, larger sample data, more refined questionnaire and retrospective interviews to add further qualitative data on this subject dependency. Similarly, the research will check the correlation existing between new, machine-translated and translation-memory segments from different levels of fuzzy matches to analyze productivity and quality, and therefore pricing, as well as the impact of translators' experience on these two variables.
Publications
Guerberof, Ana. 2008. "Post-editing MT and TM: a Spanish case". Multilingual. Vol .19. Issue 6. pp 45.
Guerberof, Ana. 2009. Productivity and quality in the post-editing of outputs from translation memories and machine translation. Localisation Focus. The International Journal of Localisation. Vol. 7 Issue 1.
Guerberof, Ana. 2010. Project management and machine translation. Multilingual.
Guerberof, Ana. 2013. What do professional translators think about post-editing? Journal of Specialised Translation 19.
Guerberof, Ana. 2014. "The role of professional experience in post-editing from a quality and productivity perspective." O'Brien et al. Post-editing of Machine Translation: Processes and Applications. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 51-76.
Conference Presentations
Oct. 2008 Localization World Conference. Wisconsin, USA. Speaker. Best Practices in Post-Editing MT.
Dec.2008 Localization Industry Standard Association (LISA) Forum. Dublin (Ireland). Speaker Post-editing MT & TM segments.
Dec. 2008 Localization Industry Standard Association (LISA) Forum. Dublin (Ireland) Participant in round table. Standards Impact on the Productivity of Automated Translation Technologies: What Works, What Doesn't and Why?
June 2009. New Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies. URV, Tarragona, Spain.
August 2009. Beyond Translation Memories Workshop. MT Summit XII. Ottawa, Canada.
VIVA September, 24, 2012
Evaluation committee:
Dr. Pilar Sánchez Gijón (UAB)
Dr. Olga Torres Hostench (UAB)
Dr. Harold Somers (University of Machester)
External experts:
Dr. Ilse Depraeter (Université de Lille 3)
Dr. Alexander Künzli (Université de Genève)
