MT from an Everyday User’s Point of View

Annelise Bech


Abstract
This paper discusses the experiences of the specialised Danish translation company Lingtech in its use of MT for the translation of technical texts. The background and motivation for setting up Lingtech as an MT-based company is outlined. After a short general presentation of the PaTrans MT-system, the different tasks we have to perform in relation to our use of MT and the way this work is organized in order to achieve maximum cost-efficiency are described. This leads on to the discussion of problem areas for the everyday user in terms of ergonomy and tools for what may be called 'peripheral' tasks, e.g. pre- and post-editing texts, and dictionary maintenance. In the course of gaining experience in running an MT-based organization, we have identified crucial areas, where even relatively simple tools can have quite an impact on the overall productivity and profitability of using MT. Given the state-of-the-art within language technology many useful tools can now be made for the MT-user; however, we argue that too little attention has been given to these aspects so far and that they may indeed be critical to the commercial success of machine translation.
Anthology ID:
1997.mtsummit-papers.7
Volume:
Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit VI: Papers
Month:
October 29 – November 1
Year:
1997
Address:
San Diego, California
Editors:
Virginia Teller, Beth Sundheim
Venue:
MTSummit
SIG:
Publisher:
Note:
Pages:
98–105
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/1997.mtsummit-papers.7
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Annelise Bech. 1997. MT from an Everyday User’s Point of View. In Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit VI: Papers, pages 98–105, San Diego, California.
Cite (Informal):
MT from an Everyday User’s Point of View (Bech, MTSummit 1997)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/1997.mtsummit-papers.7.pdf