A Framework for Data Management for the Online Volunteer Translators’ Aid System QRLex

Proceedings of PACLIC 19, the 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on Language, Information and Computation. A Framework for Data Management for the Online Volunteer Translators' Aid System QRLex Youcef Bey†‡, Kyo Kageura‡, and Christian Boitet† †Laboratoire CLIPS-GETA-IMAG Université Joseph Fourier 385, rue de la Bibliothèque. Grenoble, France youcef.bey@imag.fr ‡Graduate School of Education The University of Tokyo 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku. Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan kyo@p.u-tokyo.ac.jp Abstract A new framework for a system that aids online volunteer translators is proposed. As regards this proposal, first, the current status and conditions of online volunteer translators and their translation environments are examined, and general requirements for a system that would aid these translators are given. Our proposed approach for dealing with heterogeneous data, which involves providing a new XML structure that we have developed for maximizing efficiency and functionalities, is then described. 1. Introduction For many years, specialists and researchers have become pessimistic in regards to the prospects for fully automatic translation capable of producing high quality translations equal to human translator. It is well known that the ALPAC report in 1966 evaluated the performances of Machine Translation (MT) systems negatively. Martin Kay stated: “...this happens when the attempt is made to mechanize the non-mechanical or something whose mechanistic substructure science has not yet been revealed...” [6] This situation has promoted a shift in emphasis of research from fully automated machine translation to computer aided human translation, which exploits the potential of computers to support human skills and intelligence [5]. Many industries have made a large investment in developing useful translation-aid tools, which has resulted in commercial Computer-Aided Translation (CAT) systems such as Translation Memory (TM) in various forms, dictionaries and terminology database techniques. However, these systems are not designed to be used by all translators. On the one hand, the commercial feature is a barrier for many translators. On the other hand, these tools do not provide content and functions that fully satisfy some translators. Online volunteer translators, to whom we specifically address our system, are among those excluded from commercial CAT systems. There is thus a real need to aid online volunteer translators and their communities by providing them with a free environment with a rich linguistic content and improved process and data management. In section 2, we first outline the status and conditions of online volunteer translators and how they work in translation. Section 3 outlines the framework and technical modules we have defined on the basis of analyzing online translators' requirements and, in the process clarified the basic requirements for the data management module. In section 4, we present the XML structures that we defined for our data management module. 2. Aiding Online Volunteer Translators We notice recently an important grow of volunteer translators who are translating thousands of documents in different fields and, thereby, showing the true way to break the language barrier. This is mainly due to the important role that the internet plays in allowing translators to join volunteer translation activities. For example, in the W3C consortium, there are 301 …

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