Publikationen

Kann ein regelbasiertes maschinelles Übersetzungssystem eine annehmbare Zieltextqualität generieren? Und wenn ja, wie? Diese Arbeit verbindet die beiden großen Themen Übersetzung und die Redaktion über den Untersuchungsgegenstand der Optimierung maschinell übersetzter Texte. Es werden unter anderem Gemeinsamkeiten in der digitalen Auszeichnung von Sprachdaten für informationsverwaltende Systeme und in der semantischen Kennzeichnung für regelbasierte MÜ Systeme betrachtet. Neben den Untersuchungsergebnissen liefert die Arbeit Vorschläge zur Optimierung der kommunikativen Bedingungen für die regelbasierte MÜ. Neben diesen Inhalten beleuchtet die Autorin Prozesse und Akteure sowie Herausforderungen im Fachgebiet der mehrsprachigen Fachkommunikation.

This paper provides an insight into an ongoing research project in the field of machine translation. The work focuses on the examination of the system behavior of rule-based machine translation systems after the modification of linguistic characteristics in the source texts. Since a modification will always imply a prior evaluation of the contents, ideas already gained from the previous use of methods to evaluate automatically translated contents will be presented. Then, the approach that is followed in the current evaluation of the translation qualities of automatically translated contents as well as the modifications made to the source texts resulting from the evaluation outcome are described. The paper ends with a brief conclusion and an outlook on planned further research activities.

Immer mehr Produkte, die immer umfangreichere Funktionen anbieten und damit einen großen Dokumentationsaufwand erzeugen, werden im Zuge der Globalisierung weltweit vermarket. Dabei ist es nicht nur der gute Ton, der die Unternehmen antreibt, den Verbrauchern die technische Dokumentation in den entsprechenden Landessprachen zur Verfügung zu stellen. Für viele Produkte wird vom Gesetzgeber rechtssichere Dokumentation verlangt. Doch wie und von wem wird heute mehrsprachige technische Dokumentation erstellt? Und welche Rolle spielt regulierte Sprache1 für die Erstellungs- und Übersetzungsprozesse in der Fachkommunikation? Dieser Artikel erläutert, warum und inwiefern der Einsatz von regulierter Sprache in der mehrsprachigen Fachkommunikation noch ein Thema ist bzw. auch in Zukunft sein wird. Dabei werden zunächst die Textproduzenten ins Visier genommen, bevor die Bedeutung von technischer Dokumentation betrachtet wird, um dann in den Übersetzungsprozess zu schauen. Abschließend werden die Informationen für ein Fazit und Ausblick betrachtet und aufgearbeitet.

This paper describes how MT is integrated into a course project in the Master programme of the International Technical Communication course of study at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences. The students who are participating in the MA programme can choose to study full-time or part-time, i.e. all courses are being taught as distance learning courses and in-class courses alternately. This concept is one of the reasons that the students are very different/diversified regarding their professional background, their age, years of working experience etc. Some students have already been working as translators for years or decades others have just finished a BA programme as a technical writer or translator, and again others have so far been working as engineers or teachers. This aspect produces very interesting comments in the chat room and/or in class as well as in the results of their work and in their final reports. An observation that one can make and that can be seen as a side-effect when students who have such varying curricula and different professions who are working together is, that their view onto the actual project work is fairly different as well. While technical writers nowadays have a focus on controlling the language prior to the actual writing process, technical translators do not have in mind that the source texts they have to use as working basis, follow any rules at all. This may be because of the negative experiences technical writers have made in the past regarding the quality of the source texts. However, this is an additional outcome of the course and mentioned here, yet it is not intended to be examined in detail in this article. The course project is based on the idea of combining controlled language and a pre-editing step in order to achieve an effective way to prepare contemporary technical documentation for rule-based machine translation (RBMT). I will explain what I mean by “contemporary” within the context of technical documentation and why this attribute plays an important role within the decision-making process to integrate CL, pre-editing and MT in the course project, which also includes practical exercises for the students. In addition, the reason why RBMT is the MT method chosen within the context of multilingual text production is explained.

This paper describes how MT is integrated into a course project for translation and technical writing students. The course project is based on the idea of combining controlled language and a pre-editing step in order to achieve an effective way to prepare contemporary technical documentation for rule-based machine translation (RBMT). I will explain what I mean by “contemporary” within the context of technical documentation and why this attribute plays an important role within the decision-making process to integrate CL, pre-editing and MT in the course project, which also includes practical exercises for the students. In addition, the reason why RBMT is the MT method chosen within the context of multilingual text production is explained.