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REDEFINING
TRANSLATION
QUALITY:
FROM USER DATA
TO BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Introduction 4
Translation Quality 5
French Poetry and DQF 5
Translation: A Nice-to-Have? 7
Quality Evaluation 12
Quality Evaluation on a Shoestring 12
Business Intelligence 20
Business Intelligence and Quality Evaluation Data 20
Crowdshaping Translations 24
TAUS 31
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
INTRODUCTION
Translation quality is one of the key concepts in the translation industry today.
Measuring and tracking translation quality is essential for all players of the
industry. More and more translation vendors offer different types and levels
of quality resulting in dynamic pricing. Translation buyers are seeking to know
whether their customized Machine Translation (MT) engine is improving and
they would like to compare different MT providers. Finally, translators need to
set the threshold of TM/MT matches at the most optimal levels. These are just
a few examples where translation quality becomes central and increasingly
tuned to user satisfaction.
The aim of this eBook is to redefine the way we look at translation quality and
evaluate translations. We are not trying to achieve this by a collection of sci-
entific papers or by heavy argumentation. What we offer is a selection of short
articles in reflectional style on various aspects of the quality of translations.
The first three articles are on the topic of Translation Quality. We will focus
on past and new interpretations of the concept of translation quality. The
uber-ization of the translation industry is near and well investigate how ap-
proaches to translation quality reflect this new phenomenon.
The second topic, Quality Evaluation, includes two articles. I will explain how
to save on time and resources by applying new techniques and methods for
translation quality evaluation. Also, how to be fair to translators when mea-
suring productivity? How to take into account the quality of the available re-
sources when comparing translators and post-editors? These are some of the
questions we are trying to answer in this chapter.
Finally, we complete our journey from quality to intelligence with two more
articles on the topic of Business Intelligence. We will consider evolving trends
in translation technology, new methods of evaluation and we even touch hot
topics like crowdshaping and big data.
Enjoy reading!
Attila Grg
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
TRANSLATION
QUALITY
French Poetry and DQF
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
And the good news is that DQF is available for academics free
of charge. It is perhaps the only workflow tool for quality evalu-
ation that can be used in the translation classroom today.
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
Translation: A Nice-to-Have?
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
- Monica Guy
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
QUALITY
EVALUATION
Quality Evaluation on a Shoestring
Quality is a hot topic today for all players of the translation in-
dustry: translation buyers want different types of quality and
flexible ways of pricing; LSPs would like to know whether their
customized MT solution is improving; and translators are keen
on setting the threshold of fuzzy matches/MT suggestions at the
most optimal level. These are just a few examples where quality
evaluation plays a crucial role.
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
- Maxim Khalilov
The main theme of the 2014 QE Summit held in Dublin was ef-
ficiency how to save on time and resources by applying new
techniques and methods for translation QE. Speakers at the
event elaborated on five topics which are also five proposed
ways of saving on budget when it comes to QE. The outcomes
of the break-out sessions and the presentations were bundled
in the following five best practices:
Quality Estimation
Community Evaluation
Readability
Usability Evaluation
Sampling
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
Productivity defined
According to Wikipedia:
Productivity is an average measure of the efficiency of produc-
tion. It can be expressed as the ratio of output to inputs used in
the production process, i.e. output per unit of input.
This formula works well when all the variables on the in- and
output side are listed, well defined and measured consistently.
Problems arise through only taking a limited number of vari-
ables. Unfortunately, thats exactly what is happening in the
translation industry today: we take time as the only input, and
words as the only output. As a result, the more words produced
in a shorter amount of time, the higher the productivity will be.
This is just too simplistic if you ask me. Im just wondering how
our industry could get away with it so long!
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
Now, I dont say this is all easy to measure, keep track of, or
aggregate in one single score. But still, lets try and see what
happens!
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
Variables
The variables involved in producing the Efficiency Score are, in
the first place, the two obligatory variables (core variables) and
any additional variables (optional variables) that are added to
the calculation to increase precision and credibility. The score
can be calculated to measure translator efficiency, but the fo-
cus can also be on CAT/TMS efficiency or MT engine efficiency.
While edit distance and the edits per hour are calculated in
many translation tools, this measurement tends to be only ap-
plied to evaluate MT engines and less so for evaluating post-ed-
iting productivity. This is simply because no one has come up
with a method that would combine a productivity score with
edit distance information and normalize the score in a dynamic
way. This is exactly what the TAUS Efficiency Score does when it
is based on the core variables.
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
Use case
The Efficiency score based on core variables is calculated using
the following data:
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
Summary
For the Efficiency Score based on the core variables, we mea-
sure time for processing segments while tracking the segment
origin. Next, we measure the edit distance and calculate the edit
distance per segment (minimum number of edits needed to get
from A to B) and produce the number of edits per hour. Finally,
we normalize and unify the two measurements. For more preci-
sion and credibility, we can base our calculation of the score on
additional (optional) features.
The two data points are used to generate a numerical score that
will show the efficiency of the translator among other transla-
tors who worked in similar projects (technology, process and
content). As I mentioned earlier, you can also use the score to
compare technologies, processes etc. Before calculating the
Efficiency Score, the data needs to be preprocessed and trans-
formed to fall within a smaller and common range for all the
metrics, such as [0.0, 1.0]. This way we give data points an equal
weight.
Future work will involve adding the Efficiency Score to the TAUS
Quality Dashboard. Initially this score will be calculated based
on the core variables. In a later phase, the possibility of adding
quality and content difficulty scores is envisioned.
Lets see whether this will reform the way we look at translation
productivity and determine our prices. In any case, one thing is
for sure: the traditional way of measuring productivity is dead.
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE
Business Intelligence and Quality
Evaluation Data
Business Intelligence (BI) in the translation industry is about en-
gineering an environment of answers by selecting, collecting
and interpreting data derived at various stages of the transla-
tion process. In this webinar, Tom Shaw (Capita) explained how
quality evaluation data of even a small sample can predict ROI
and support business decisions when this type of data is re-
corded and interpreted correctly. Business Intelligence is start-
ing to catch on in the translation industry, and with good reason
using smart ways to transform data of any type into actionable
information yields business benefits and helps stakeholders
make informed decisions.
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
The general consensus is that you shouldnt wait for your busi-
ness to have big enough data or perfect data to track BI and
do benchmarking. Because of the elusive nature of data, you
will never have enough of it and it will never be perfect, de-
spite your best efforts. Whats more, reports and analytics that
BI provides actually help expose the faults in your data. This
being said, its still important to understand really good, action-
able business intelligence in the translation industry depends
on complete and accurate data. This is the old garbage in, gar-
bage out axiom and its as true now as it ever was.
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
Crowdshaping Translations
Is your business...
Improving translation quality without spending a fortune
on manual assessment?
Providing awesome customer experience within the lim-
its of your budget?
Monitoring translator performance?
Of course, you need to own such technology and you also have
to know how to interpret and put the harvested data to work.
That might be a drawback as crowdshaping technology is still
evolving and best practices are missing in various industries.
Also you might think: Wait a minute. How about my privacy?
But is data privacy really an issue today? Evidence suggests
that consumers are growing accustomed to a world in which
data is a shared resource.
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
A new IBM study found that consumers are willing to share their
personal information with retailers, particularly if they get good
value in exchange. The percentage of consumers willing to share
their current location via GPS nearly doubled year-over-year to
36 percent. 38 percent of consumers would provide their mo-
bile number for the purpose of receiving text messages and 32
percent would share their social handles with retailers.
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
These are just a couple of examples, but Im sure there are more
out there and even more to come
The data is there and we make so little use of it. The good new
is: all you want to know will soon be available at your fingertips
by using an intelligent solution for aggregating data, the TAUS
Quality Dashboard.
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
FURTHER
READING &
REFERENCE
This list of reading material is far from complete. It can serve as
a first step towards understanding the main topics in transla-
tion quality evaluation.
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
https://www.taus.net/reports/
translation-quality-evaluation-is-catching-up-with-the-times
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
ABOUT
Attila Grg
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
TAUS
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Redefining Translation Quality: From User Data to Business Intelligence
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