Comparing Machine Translation and Human Translation: A Case Study

Lars Ahrenberg


Abstract
As machine translation technology improves comparisons to human performance are often made in quite general and exaggerated terms. Thus, it is important to be able to account for differences accurately. This paper reports a simple, descriptive scheme for comparing translations and applies it to two translations of a British opinion article published in March, 2017. One is a human translation (HT) into Swedish, and the other a machine translation (MT). While the comparison is limited to one text, the results are indicative of current limitations in MT.
Anthology ID:
W17-7903
Volume:
Proceedings of the Workshop Human-Informed Translation and Interpreting Technology
Month:
September
Year:
2017
Address:
Varna, Bulgaria
Editors:
Irina Temnikova, Constantin Orasan, Gloria Corpas Pastor, Stephan Vogel
Venue:
RANLP
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics, Shoumen, Bulgaria
Note:
Pages:
21–28
Language:
URL:
https://doi.org/10.26615/978-954-452-042-7_003
DOI:
10.26615/978-954-452-042-7_003
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Lars Ahrenberg. 2017. Comparing Machine Translation and Human Translation: A Case Study. In Proceedings of the Workshop Human-Informed Translation and Interpreting Technology, pages 21–28, Varna, Bulgaria. Association for Computational Linguistics, Shoumen, Bulgaria.
Cite (Informal):
Comparing Machine Translation and Human Translation: A Case Study (Ahrenberg, RANLP 2017)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://doi.org/10.26615/978-954-452-042-7_003