Helping the helpers: Evaluating the impact of a controlled language checker on the intralingual and interlingual translation tasks involving volunteer health professionals. Issue 2 (4th May 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rossetti, Alessandra; O'Brien, Sharon
• Is Part Of: Translation studies. Volume 12:Issue 2(2019)
• Page Start: 253
• Page End: 271
• Publication Date: 2019-05-04
• Subjects: Controlled language checker -- text simplification -- volunteer satisfaction -- machine translation quality -- health information -- non-profit organization; Translating and interpreting -- Periodicals; 418.0205
• DOI: 10.1080/14781700.2019.1689161
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1478-1700

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Cochrane is a non-profit organization which mainly relies on volunteer health professionals for the production, simplification, evaluation, and multilingual dissemination of high-quality health content. The approach that Cochrane volunteers adopt for the simplification (or intralingual translation) of English health content is non-automated and involves the manual checking and implementation of plain language guidelines. This study investigated whether and to what extent the introduction of a controlled language (CL) checker – which would make the simplification approach semi-automated – increased authors' satisfaction and machine translation (MT) quality. Twelve Cochrane authors completed a standardized questionnaire and answered follow-up questions on their level of satisfaction and preferences. Forty-one Cochrane evaluators assessed the quality of the Spanish MT outputs of simplified texts. Authors showed a preference for the introduction of a CL checker. Differences in MT quality scores were slight.