neural machine translation: what does it mean for translators? · 2018-03-15 · ‘neural machine...

‘Neural machine translation:

what does it mean for translators?’

March 9th and 10th, 2018

tenvcongres.nl / tenvcongres.be

Daniel Prou, Business Manager for Machine Translation

Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission

• A (very) short history of machine translation

• Why the hype around neural machine translation?

• How good (or bad) is neural machine translation?

• What does it mean for the translation profession?

• Final words

Three "generations"of machine translation

Rules-based machine translation:

Based on

• Linguistic analysis

• Dictionary

Limited usefulness

Three "generations"of machine translation (contd.)

Data driven engines (statistical and neural)

Data = existing human translations (bilingual corpora)

The machine "learns" from a large number of examples

Statistical machine translation (SMT)

• Recombines fragments of existing translations based on statistics

• Requires a lot of processing power

• Much better results than the previous (rules-based) systems

Neural machine translation (NMT)

• Uses neural networks to identify and reproduce patterns of human translations

• Requires even more processing power

• Better, more natural-sounding translations than statistical engines





• Final words

Why neural machine translationhas such an impact

• It's noticeably more fluent than previous systems

• To see the flaws, you need to be a translator

• It covers almost all translation needs

gisting

≠

professional translation





• Final words

Limits of neural machine translation

• Better for some source-target language combinations than others

• Better for "in-domain" translations

• Quality depends on the size of the corpus

• Building engines requires specialists

• Takes time and processing power

• Neural engines are black boxes

Limits of neural machine translation (contd.)

• Translates one sentence at a time – no context beyond the single sentence

• No knowledge of the world

Typical mistakes of neural engines

Ierland blijft gestreden voor wat naar verwachting de zwaarste sneeuwval in decennia zal zijn.

Ireland remains braced for what is predicted to be its heaviest snowfall in decades.

Icy-lizzards in heel Europa hebben ook treinen geannuleerd en wegen tot stilstand gebracht.

Icy blizzards across Europe have also seen trains cancelled and roads come to a standstill.

Parijs heeft nu noodopvanghuizen ingericht voor zijn ruige dwarsliggers.

Paris has now set up emergency shelters for its rough sleepers.

Bij mensen scheiden de bloed-hersenbarrière, de barrière van de bloed-hersenbarrière, de barrière van het bloed-cerebrospinale vocht en soortgelijke vloeistof-hersenbarrières het perifere immuunsysteem van het neuroimmuunsysteem, dat de hersenen beschermt.

In humans, the blood–brain barrier, blood–cerebrospinal fluid barrier, and similar fluid–brain barriers separate the peripheral immune system from the neuroimmune system, which protects the brain.

Mastercellen bevinden zich in bindweefsel en slijmvliezen en reguleren de ontstekingsreactie.

Mast cells reside in connective tissues and mucous membranes, and regulate the inflammatory response.

Mastercellen bevinden zich in bindweefsel en slijmvliezen en reguleren de ontstekingsreactie.

Mast cells reside in connective tissues and mucous membranes, and regulate the inflammatory response.

Mestcellen




• What does it mean for the translators?

• Final words

The human translator's "domaines réservés"

• Subtitling

• Communication, advertising, marketing

• Technical documents, manuals

• Legal documents, contracts

• …

Using machine translation as a translator

• Beyond post-editing, a wealth of ways to integrate machine translation into the translation process

• Various options, products and services depending on the translation needs

• Be aware of confidentiality issues

Why translators chooseto use machine translation

• Speed

• Typing aid

• Inspiration

• No empty segment

• Dictionary

• Terminology(Study by Dublin City University, 2016)

First neural engines launched in 2017

Used by

• European Commission, European Parliament, Council,other European institutions

• Public administrations across Europe

Both for gisting and as a tool for human translators

eTranslation for translators

• Mix of statistical and neural engines

• Neural first for those languages where statistical engines are less useful: Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, German

• All other languages (from and into English) will followin 2018 and 2019

• Integrated into the translation workflow, systematically available

eTranslation for translators (contd.)

• Translators free to use machine translation or not

• Translators free to use machine translation snippets or whole sentences

• Widespread adoption





• Final words

• At its core, the translators' workremains unchanged

• Try machine translation yourself!

Thank you.

[email protected]

neural machine translation: what does it mean for translators? · 2018-03-15 · ‘neural machine...

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