Translation in transition: between cognition, computing and technology

Translation in transition: between cognition, computing and technology celebrates the end of the 5-year ‘world-class’ grant from CBS to the Centre for Research and Innovation in Translation and Translation Technology (at the Department of International Business Communication). The conference will provide a forum for discussion both of how we can get to know more about how human translators exercise their skill cognitively and of how the computer can be made to help human translators, by automatically translating written text, by recognising and translating spoken utterances or –more indirectly– by logging translation events and analysing recorded process data.

Torsdag, 30 januar, 2014 - 08:00 to Fredag, 31 januar, 2014 - 18:00

Konferencen forgår på engelsk.

Conference programme (updated as of December 12, 2013)

The main focus of research at the CBS centre for research and innovation in translation and translation technology (CRITT) has been on developing a methodology for translation process research and developing and studying software for translation and post-editing as well as for the study of cognitive processes underlying these tasks. The use of keylogging and eyetracking, sometimes in combination with cued retrospection, less often with concurrent think-aloud, has given much new insight into how translators, at different levels of expertise, produce translations. Our database with recordings of translation and post-editing events now holds close to 1.000 recordings, which we are happy to share with research colleagues around the world. The main tools in this methodological development and research have been Translog and Translog II, both of which have undergone many changes over the years. In the EU FP6 Eye-to-IT project (2006-2009) a gaze-based application (based on Translog and an integrated gaze-to-word mapping tool) was developed to support reading and translation by displaying relevant interlinear prompts whenever a fixation on a word exceeded a time threshold defined by the researcher or user. Currently, in the context of the EU FP7 CASMACAT project (2011-2014), we are developing an ‘intelligent’ interactive application to support post-editing of machine-translated text, for which much of the ‘intelligence’ is derived from our study of expert human translator behaviour.

Hitherto, most of our experiments have involved keyboard and/or gaze input. Only one major project, called ‘Speaking your translation’, has investigated the use of spoken input. However, with recent advances in automatic voice recognition, we foresee that spoken input may soon become standard, either alone or as part of a multimodal key/eye /speech input solution. In order to tackle this new prospect, CRITT has joined forces with the CBS DanCAST centre, which specialises in speech recognition, in a new research platform called The Bridge.

Translation in transition: between cognition, computing and technologycelebrates the end of CRITT’s 5-year ‘world-class’ grant from CBS and the transition to the new, larger research group. The conference will provide a forum for discussion both of how we can get to know more about how human translators exercise their skill cognitively and of how the computer can be made to help human translators, by automatically translating written text, by recognising and translating spoken utterances or –more indirectly– by logging translation events and analysing recorded process data.

Fields of research to be convered in the conference:

  • translation process research
  • reading processes (especially in translation)
  • writing and post-editing processes
  • intelligent machine translation (MT which learns from/adapts to human users)
  • cognition and translation
  • computational modelling of human translation
  • speech recognition and translation
  • translation expertise, in people and in systems

Important information & dates

  • Conference programme
  • Keynote speakers:
    • Srinivas Bangalore (AT&T Labs-Research, USA)
    • Annette de Groot (Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
    • Paul Kussmaul (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany)
    • Shravan Vasishth (Universität Potsdam, Germany)
    • Luuk van Waes (Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium)
  • Scientific committee: Laura W. Balling, Michael Carl, Barbara Dragsted, Peter Juel Henrichsen, Arnt Lykke Jakobsen, Andreas S. Kirkedal
  • Conference fee: 750 Kr. (approx. 100 euros - it includes book of abstracts, coffees and lunches)
  • Conference dinner: January 30, 2013. This conference dinner will be optional and sponsored by CBS at an additional cost of 30 euros
  • Registration deadline: EXTENDED to January 6, 2014 - Register and pay here (www.conferencemanager.dk/translation2014/registration)
  • Contact: Bartolomé Mesa-Lao (bm.ibc@cbs.dk)
Sidst opdateret: Department of Management, Society and Communication // 10/10/2018