Using free on-line services in MT training

Using free on-line services in MT teaching Federico Gaspari Centre for Computational Linguistics UMIST PO Box 88 Manchester M60 1QD United Kingdom F.Gaspari@postgrad.umist.ac.uk Abstract This paper discusses the role that can be played in teaching machine translation (MT) by free on-line MT services, emphasising the advantages that they offer for didactic purposes as well as their drawbacks in comparison with traditional PC-based MT software. Some of the key reasons behind the huge potential for the successful integration of on-line systems into MT teaching activities are explored. The paper argues that exposing students to Internet-based MT can raise their awareness on crucial issues in today’s multilingual communication processes, which are relevant inter alia to web localisation and multilingual on-line content management. 1 Introduction The present author has taught modules focused on MT within graduate courses aimed at trainee translators, which had never included MT components before (cf. Gaspari, 2001). These modules comprised a theoretical part which served as a general introduction to the subject of MT, and covered the following main areas: historical development, design methods, linguistic and computational issues in MT systems, their practical use with reference to post-editing techniques, principles of evaluation, a review of the main approaches (e.g. rule-based vs. example- based and statistics-based MT) and a few case studies of some of the systems (e.g. Meteo, Systran, Eurotra), etc. At the end of the modules there were hands-on lab sessions in which the students were invited to experiment with some on- line MT services available free of charge on the Internet, testing and comparing their performance. This strategy had to be adopted because of the lack of financial resources, owing to which it was not possible to purchase PC-based commercial MT systems for the students to experiment with. As a result, for demonstrations or practical experiments with MT, the instructor had no choice but to deploy free on-line systems available through the Internet. The students were asked to choose the input texts and the language combinations they wanted to work with among those available, and to examine the output given by the free on-line MT services in the target language under the supervision of the instructor, following some simple pre- defined guidelines (described in detail in Gaspari, 2001:37-38). This final practical session proved extremely popular with the students, who at the conclusion of the theoretical part of the course could appreciate the difficulties faced by MT systems in simulated productive scenarios. On the whole, the tests carried out with the web-based MT services turned out to be very stimulating for all the students, who were eager to share with the rest of the class and the instructor their comments and remarks about the performance of the systems they were testing. Drawing on the experience briefly described above, this paper will argue that integrating the use of free on-line MT services into MT courses can be highly beneficial, irrespective of the background and syllabus of the students, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. 2 Background: the role of …

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