Moses, time, and crisis translation

Abstract

Training translators to react to sudden emergencies is a challenge. This article presents the results of a training experiment testing the speed of acquisition of the skills necessary to operate the open-source Moses statistical machine translation (SMT) system. A task-based approach was used with trainee translators who had no experience working with MT technology. The experiment is a feasibility study to ascertain whether training on Moses SMT could be considered for long-lasting crisis scenarios. The article reports its findings in four sections. The first section discusses the research context in which ‘crisis translation’ is defined; the second section illustrates the rationale of the experiment; the third section looks at the results of the training experiment; and the fourth at the trainees’ perceptions of their learning processes. The conclusion reflects on the viability of using Moses and on the next phases needed to refine the findings of this first experiment.