Predicting difficulty in translation : a pilot study

Publication type
C1
Publication status
Published
Authors
Vanroy, B., De Clercq, O., & Macken, L.
Editor
Timothy Read, Salvador Montaner and Beatriz Sedano
Series
Technological innovation for specialized linguistic domains : languages for digital lives and cultures, proceedings of TISLID’18
Pagination
163-174
Publisher
Editions universitaires européennes
Conference
3rd conference on Technological Innovation for Specialized Linguistic Domains (TISLID 18) : Languages for digital lives and cultures (Ghent, Belgium)
Download
(.pdf)
Project
PreDicT
View in Biblio
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Abstract

In this pilot study, we investigate a number of features that have been suggested as indicators of translation difficulty, namely error count, word translation entropy and syntactic equivalence. We correlate these product features with translation process features such as duration, editing, and gaze information. The dataset that we use contains both translations of professional translators and students. The product data contains manual error analyses of the translations as well as automatically calculated entropy values and syntactic reordering metrics whereas the process data consists of keystroke and eye tracking data together with general duration and pause information. In addition to correlations between product and process data, we also compared the datasets of the professional translators and students.