Improving the Quality of Machine Translations by Providing Stylistic Guidelines to Authors and Editors
Abstract
This research sought to identify stylistic guidelines which could be used by the authors and editors of English language texts in order to improve the quality of subsequent machine translations to other languages. A literature review was conducted to provide background information and to determine what guidelines would be appropriate. Nine guidelines were developed on the basis of the review. The guidelines were then tested. They were applied to five paragraphs from a Royal Australian Air Force technical publication by the researcher and an independent volunteer. Both the resulting texts and the original paragraphs were translated into French using the Globalink Translation System and the quality of the translations obtained was evaluated by four human translators. While the translations of the paragraphs which had been edited by the volunteer were significantly better than the translations of the original texts, the translations of the paragraphs edited by the researcher were not. Use of the guidelines by authors and editors cannot be recommended on the basis of this result. However, analysis of the conduct and results of the research suggested potentially fruitful alternative approaches to the development and testing of guidelines. These approaches are presented as specific recommendations for further research.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA258786
Entities
People
- Edward J. Walsh
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology