On “Human Parity” and “Super Human Performance” in Machine Translation Evaluation

Thierry Poibeau


Abstract
In this paper, we reassess claims of human parity and super human performance in machine translation. Although these terms have already been discussed, as well as the evaluation protocols used to achieved these conclusions (human-parity is achieved i) only for a very reduced number of languages, ii) on very specific types of documents and iii) with very literal translations), we show that the terms used are themselves problematic, and that human translation involves much more than what is embedded in automatic systems. We also discuss ethical issues related to the way results are presented and advertised. Finally, we claim that a better assessment of human capacities should be put forward and that the goal of replacing humans by machines is not a desirable one.
Anthology ID:
2022.lrec-1.647
Volume:
Proceedings of the Thirteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference
Month:
June
Year:
2022
Address:
Marseille, France
Editors:
Nicoletta Calzolari, Frédéric Béchet, Philippe Blache, Khalid Choukri, Christopher Cieri, Thierry Declerck, Sara Goggi, Hitoshi Isahara, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Hélène Mazo, Jan Odijk, Stelios Piperidis
Venue:
LREC
SIG:
Publisher:
European Language Resources Association
Note:
Pages:
6018–6023
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.647
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Thierry Poibeau. 2022. On “Human Parity” and “Super Human Performance” in Machine Translation Evaluation. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, pages 6018–6023, Marseille, France. European Language Resources Association.
Cite (Informal):
On “Human Parity” and “Super Human Performance” in Machine Translation Evaluation (Poibeau, LREC 2022)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.647.pdf