@inproceedings{popovic-castilho-2019-ambiguous,
title = "Are ambiguous conjunctions problematic for machine translation?",
author = "Popovi{\'c}, Maja and
Castilho, Sheila",
editor = "Mitkov, Ruslan and
Angelova, Galia",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP 2019)",
month = sep,
year = "2019",
address = "Varna, Bulgaria",
publisher = "INCOMA Ltd.",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/R19-1111",
doi = "10.26615/978-954-452-056-4_111",
pages = "959--966",
abstract = "The translation of ambiguous words still poses challenges for machine translation. In this work, we carry out a systematic quantitative analysis regarding the ability of different machine translation systems to disambiguate the source language conjunctions {``}but{''} and {``}and{''}. We evaluate specialised test sets focused on the translation of these two conjunctions. The test sets contain source languages that do not distinguish different variants of the given conjunction, whereas the target languages do. In total, we evaluate the conjunction {``}but{''} on 20 translation outputs, and the conjunction {``}and{''} on 10. All machine translation systems almost perfectly recognise one variant of the target conjunction, especially for the source conjunction {``}but{''}. The other target variant, however, represents a challenge for machine translation systems, with accuracy varying from 50{\%} to 95{\%} for {``}but{''} and from 20{\%} to 57{\%} for {``}and{''}. The major error for all systems is replacing the correct target variant with the opposite one.",
}
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="popovic-castilho-2019-ambiguous">
<titleInfo>
<title>Are ambiguous conjunctions problematic for machine translation?</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Maja</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Popović</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Sheila</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Castilho</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2019-09</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP 2019)</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ruslan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Mitkov</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Galia</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Angelova</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>INCOMA Ltd.</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Varna, Bulgaria</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>The translation of ambiguous words still poses challenges for machine translation. In this work, we carry out a systematic quantitative analysis regarding the ability of different machine translation systems to disambiguate the source language conjunctions “but” and “and”. We evaluate specialised test sets focused on the translation of these two conjunctions. The test sets contain source languages that do not distinguish different variants of the given conjunction, whereas the target languages do. In total, we evaluate the conjunction “but” on 20 translation outputs, and the conjunction “and” on 10. All machine translation systems almost perfectly recognise one variant of the target conjunction, especially for the source conjunction “but”. The other target variant, however, represents a challenge for machine translation systems, with accuracy varying from 50% to 95% for “but” and from 20% to 57% for “and”. The major error for all systems is replacing the correct target variant with the opposite one.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">popovic-castilho-2019-ambiguous</identifier>
<identifier type="doi">10.26615/978-954-452-056-4_111</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/R19-1111</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2019-09</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>959</start>
<end>966</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Are ambiguous conjunctions problematic for machine translation?
%A Popović, Maja
%A Castilho, Sheila
%Y Mitkov, Ruslan
%Y Angelova, Galia
%S Proceedings of the International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP 2019)
%D 2019
%8 September
%I INCOMA Ltd.
%C Varna, Bulgaria
%F popovic-castilho-2019-ambiguous
%X The translation of ambiguous words still poses challenges for machine translation. In this work, we carry out a systematic quantitative analysis regarding the ability of different machine translation systems to disambiguate the source language conjunctions “but” and “and”. We evaluate specialised test sets focused on the translation of these two conjunctions. The test sets contain source languages that do not distinguish different variants of the given conjunction, whereas the target languages do. In total, we evaluate the conjunction “but” on 20 translation outputs, and the conjunction “and” on 10. All machine translation systems almost perfectly recognise one variant of the target conjunction, especially for the source conjunction “but”. The other target variant, however, represents a challenge for machine translation systems, with accuracy varying from 50% to 95% for “but” and from 20% to 57% for “and”. The major error for all systems is replacing the correct target variant with the opposite one.
%R 10.26615/978-954-452-056-4_111
%U https://aclanthology.org/R19-1111
%U https://doi.org/10.26615/978-954-452-056-4_111
%P 959-966
Markdown (Informal)
[Are ambiguous conjunctions problematic for machine translation?](https://aclanthology.org/R19-1111) (Popović & Castilho, RANLP 2019)
ACL