Ape: reducing the monkey business in post-editing by automating the task intelligently

Ape: Reducing the Monkey Business in Post-Editing by Automating the Task Intelligently Claus Povlsen and Annelise Bech* Center for Sprogteknologi Njalsgade 80, DK-2300 Copenhagen S Denmark claus@cst.ku.dk * Lingtech A/S Vesterbrogade 24 DK-1620 Copenhagen V abe@lingtech.dk Abstract For a professional user of MT, quality, performance and cost efficiency are critical. It is therefore surprising that only little attention – both in theory and in practice - has been given to the task of post-editing machine translated texts. This paper will focus on this important user aspect and demonstrate that substantial savings in time and effort can be achieved by implementing intelligent automatic tools. Our point of departure is the PaTrans MT-system, developed by CST and used by the Danish translation company Lingtech. An intelligent post-editing facility, Ape, has been developed and added to the system. We will outline and discuss this mechanism and its positive effects on the output. The underlying idea of the intelligent post-editing facility is to exploit the lexical and grammatical knowledge already present in the MT-system’s linguistic components. Conceptually, our approach is general, although its implementation remains system specific. Surveys of post-editor satisfaction and cost-efficiency improvements, as well as a quantitative, benchmark-based evaluation of the effect of Ape demonstrate the success of the approach and encourage further development. Keywords Machine translation, user aspects, post-editing. Introduction Machine translation is now a serious alternative to manual translation. Many organisations and businesses employ MT-systems and for various purposes. Some use MT- systems for information purposes (gisting of material in “exotic” languages), some as a basis for decision-making (as to which documents to provide high-quality translations of) and some use machine translation in their production (providing an output to be post-edited and finalised before “publication”/delivery to the client). Lingtech, a professional translation company Copenhagen, Denmark is one of the pioneers in using MTin in its production of high-quality technical translations. Since 1993, Lingtech has used PaTrans1 to translate technical texts, primarily patents, and currently some 3.5 million words are run through the system every year. 1 PaTrans was developed by Center for Sprogteknologi for Lingtech. The system translates from English to Danish. The system is described in (Ørsnes et al.,1996; and Maegaard & Hansen, 1995). The output from the MT-system is post-edited and finalised by Lingtech staff before a final translation is delivered to the client. Thus, Lingtech has a considerable interest in the time and money spent on this task. (Previously, Lingtech has reported on improved cost- benefit from providing ancillary tools and setting up a suitable work-flow for preparing texts for machine translation and extending dictionaries (Bech, 1997)). From the user point of view, steps to improve and reduce the post-editing workload is not only an issue of profit maximisation, although it is obviously an incentive, which cannot be neglected in the business context. The quality of the final product as well as the ergonomy and job- satisfaction of the post-editors are also at stake. Over the years, Lingtech has carefully and systematically monitored and registered problem-areas in …

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