Article published In: Translation, Cognition & Behavior
Vol. 3:1 (2020) ► pp.76–99
Predicting translation behaviors by using Hidden Markov Model
Published online: 13 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/tcb.00035.lu
https://doi.org/10.1075/tcb.00035.lu
Abstract
The translation process can be studied as sequences of activity units. The application of machine learning
technology offers researchers new possibilities in the study of the translation process. This research project developed a
program, activity unit predictor, using the Hidden Markov Model. The program takes in duration, translation phase, target
language and fixation as the input and produces an activity unit type as the output. The highest prediction accuracy reached is
61%. As one of the first endeavors, the program demonstrates strong potential of applying machine learning in translation process
research.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Translation process modeling
- 3.Activity unit and activity unit predictor
- 4.The present study
- 4.1Data analysis
- 4.2Modeling
- 4.2.1Model configuration
- 4.2.2Decoding
- 4.2.3Generalization
- 4.3Experiment
- 5.Results
- 6.Discussion and conclusion
- Note
References
References (17)
Aziz, Wilker, Maarit Koponen, and Lucia Specia. 2014. “Sub-sentence Level Analysis of Machine Translation Post-editing Effort.” In Post-editing of Machine Translation: Processes and applications. Edited by S. O’Brien, L. W. Balling, M. Carl, M. Simard and L. Specia, 170–199. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
Bahdanau, Dzmitry, Kyunghyun Cho, and Yoshua Bengio. 2015. “Neural Machine Translation by Jointly Learning to Align and Translate.” Paper presented at International Conference on Learning Representations (San Diego, USA, 7–9 May 2015).
Bangalore, Srinivas, Bergljot Behrens, Michael Carl, Maheshwar Ghankot, Arndt Heilmann, Jean Nitzke, Moritz J. Schaeffer, and Annegret Sturm. 2016. “Syntactic Variance and Priming Effects in Translation.” In New Directions in Empirical Translation Process Research. Edited by M. Carl, S. Bangalore and M. Schaeffer, 211–238. Cham: Springer International.
Campbell, Stuart. 2000. “Choice Network Analysis in Translation Research.” In Intercultural faultlines: Research models in translations studies. Edited by M. Olohan, 29–42. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Carl, Michael and Arnt Lykke Jakobsen. 2009. “Towards Statistical Modelling of Translators’ Activity Data.” International Journal of Speech Technology 121: 125–138.
Carl, Michael and Moritz J. Schaeffer. 2017. “Sketch of a Noisy Channel Model for the Translation Process.” In Empirical modelling of translation and interpreting. Edited by S. Hansen-Schirra, O. Czulo, and S. Hofmann, 71–116. Berlin: Language Science Press.
. 2018. “The Development of the TPR-DB as Grounded Theory Method.” Translation, Cognition & Behavior 1 (1): 168–193.
Carl, Michael, Srinivas Bangalore and Moritz J. Schaeffer. 2016a. “Introduction and Overview.” In New Directions in Empirical Translation Process Research. Edited by M. Carl, S. Bangalore and M. Schaeffer, 3–12. Cham: Springer International.
. 2016b. “The CRITT Translation Process Research Database.” In New Directions in Empirical Translation Process Research. Edited by M. Carl, S. Bangalore and M. Schaeffer, 13–54. Cham: Springer International.
Heilmann, Arndt and Stella Neumanm. 2016. “Dynamic Pause Assessment of Keystroke Logged Data for the Detection of Complexity in Translation and Monolingual Text Production.” Paper presented at Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity (Osaka, Japan, 11–17 December 2016).
Lacruz, Isabel and Gregory Shreve. 2014. “Pauses and Cognitive Effort in Post-Editing.” In Post-editing of Machine Translation: Processes and applications. Edited by S. O’Brien et al., 246–273. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
Läubli, Samuel and Ulrich Germann. 2016. “Statistical Modelling and Automatic Tagging of Human Translation Processes.” In New Directions in Empirical Translation Process Research. Edited by M. Carl, S. Bangalore and M. Schaeffer, 155–181. Cham: Springer International.
Martínez Gómez, Pascual Akshay Minocha, Jin Huang, Michael Carl, Srinivas Bangalore, and Akiko Aizawa. 2014. “Recognition of Translator Expertise using Sequences of Fixations and Keystrokes.” Paper presented at Eye Tracking Research and Applications Symposium (Safety Habor, USA, 26–28 March 2014).
Minh, Volodymyr et al. 2014. “Recurrent Models of Visual Attention.” Paper presented at Neural Information Processing Systems (Montreal, 8–13 December 2014).
Pomegranate: Probabilistic Modeling in Python. [URL] Accessed 20 August 2018.
Schaeffer, Moritz J., Michael Carl, Isabel Lacruz, and Akiko Aizawa. 2016. “Measuring Cognitive Translation Effort with Activity Units.” Baltic Journal of Modern Computing 4 (2): 331–345.
Toury, Gideon. 2004. “Probabilistic Explanations in Translation Studies: Welcome as they are, would they qualify as universals?” In Translation Universals: Do they exist. Edited by A. Mauranen and P. Kujamäki, 15–32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Carl, Michael, Yuxiang Wei, Sheng Lu, Longhui Zou, Takanori Mizowaki & Masaru Yamada
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
