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PABLO CANCELO–EVALUATION OF MACHINE TRANSLATION SYSTEMS
EVALUATION OF MACHINE TRANSLATION SYSTEMS
1. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
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PABLO CANCELO
Universidade da Coruña
Machine translation products are currently receiving a considerable amount of
hype. At one end of the scale are mass media reports on one product after another that use
the latest magical technique to produce nearly perfect translations. Unfortunately, these
reports are usually based on the manufacturers’ promotional press releases, and make it
into print without any attempt at verification or review. At the other end of the spectrum
are the detractors of machine translation, those who assert that all translation programs are
useless, and the whole effort is a meaningless waste of time. In the middle, however, is
another group of people – of which this researcher is one – who hold that machine
translation technology, while not perfect, has progressed in recent years and some of the
systems can render a source language document into an understandable, though rough,
target language translation.
In order to adequately answer the question of whether machine translations of
documents is practical, it is necessary not only to rigorously test the current commercial
systems but also to look a little bit more closely at the translation process in general.
Translation is a highly creative process. For each semantic idea in one language,
there are several possibilities for expressing the same idea in another language. It is the job
of the translator to find the best match possible, without sacrificing the overall flow of the
finished document. Given the high degree of creativity and complexity involved, it is naï ve
to view the translation process as a “black box” mechanism whereby a document in the
source language goes in one end and the translation in the target language comes out of the
other, no matter how poor the input might be. Unfortunately there is no “black box”
system that can remove all the difficulties inherent in language translation.
Even if machine translation systems can never duplicate human translations, we
may wonder whether they can at least generate output that is understandable and useful for
in-house memos and the like. The answer is a guarded “maybe” assuming that users
proceed with caution. The danger with machine translation is not that the output may be
incomprehensible, but rather that it may be ambiguous or even erroneous, leading the
reader to misunderstand the intent of the original writer. That said, though, when used
correctly, and for appropriate purposes, MT systems can be extremely useful.
Any translation tool might be evaluated according to the economic benefits or
fitness of a particular system as part of a process in an organization (Sparck Jones, K. &
Gailliers: 1996). This evaluation is typically performed by potential users and/or purchasers
of a system (individuals, companies or agencies)
Researchers and developers might also focus on criteria such as accuracy,
intelligibility and the linguistic constructions the system can successfully handle. This