Integrating on-line MT services into monolingual web-sites for dissemination purposes: an evaluation perspective

62 Integrating on-line MT services into monolingual web-sites for dissemination purposes: an evaluation perspective Federico Gaspari Centre for Computational Linguistics UMIST PO Box 88 Manchester M60 1QD United Kingdom F.Gaspari@postgrad.umist.ac.uk Abstract. On-line machine translation (MT) services are becoming increasingly popular among Internet users. In particular, over the last few years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of monolingual web-sites that rely on Internet-based MT systems to disseminate their contents in a variety of languages, which seems to be one of the most interesting areas in the current use of MT technology. This paper is based on preliminary observations of these recent developments and reports on how on-line MT services are actually integrated into a sample of monolingual web-sites only available in English, attempting to evaluate the success of the strategies used to incorporate web- based MT technology for dissemination purposes. The discussion suggests in conclusion that the overall lack of a user-oriented approach and the limited consideration of issues of user-friendliness make the integration of on-line MT into the sample of monolingual web-sites largely ineffective. 1. Introduction 1.1 Background This paper provides an overview of how a sample of 36 monolingual web-sites incorporate on-line machine translation (MT) technology disseminate their contents in multiple languages.to The investigation focuses on web-sites that originally present information only in English, and explicitly encourage non-English-speaking visitors to translate their web-pages via links to on-line MT services. These monolingual web-sites rely on web-based MT technology for dissemination purposes, i.e. to make their contents available in other languages to a much wider population of Internet users with different linguistic backgrounds. into The use of on-line MT technology integrated monolingual web-sites is becoming increasingly popular (see e.g. Yang & Lange 2003: 192-193), even though exposing Internet users to raw MT output in order to disseminate information in multiple languages certainly entails controversial issues: “This is a sensitive area, since the imperfections of MT may distort the message” (Yang & Lange 2003: 201). It seems particularly interesting that MT technology today is heavily used for dissemination purposes on the Internet, contradicting the widely held belief that unedited MT output is only suitable for internal use or gisting purposes, and should not be used for outbound circulation. 1.2 Purposes of the evaluation This paper reviews some of the most common patterns in the way in which monolingual web-sites embed on-line MT technology, and attempts a brief evaluation of how successful these strategies are from the point of view of Internet users. In this respect, this research looks in particular at some of the perceived weaknesses in the approach towards the use of on-line MT services for dissemination purposes, and contrasts them with examples of good user-centred design emerging from the sample of web-sites. Due to the preliminary nature of this report and to space constraints, only some of the criteria that are relevant to the successful integration of on- line MT technology into monolingual web-sites are reviewed and evaluated here. The investigation lays particular emphasis on user-friendliness …

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