Main Article Content
The assessment of translation accuracy of the Lexica Machine Translation System
Abstract
This article focuses on the research of the
English–Afrikaans language pair development team and aims to establish an
assessment method and procedure that will assess the translation accuracy of
the Lexica Machine Translation (MT) System in an easily repeatable, scientifically
acceptable way. Lexica is a transfer system that is used to carry out
morphological, syntactic, semantic and contextual analysis and can be used for
the following language pairs: Afrikaans, Tswana, Swahili and Portuguese to
English; and English to Xhosa, Zulu and Afrikaans. The research has shown that
there are no universally accepted and reliable methods and measures, and that
assessment methodology has been the subject of much discussion in recent years.
To assess the accuracy of translation of the Lexica MT System, diagnostic
assessment was determined as the most suitable mode of assessment, as the focus
of such assessment is on the identification of limitations, errors and
deficiencies, which may then be corrected or improved by the development team.
A method and procedure were developed according to which marks were awarded in
terms of the following two aspects: (a) preservation of meaning, (b)
grammatical correctness.
Southern African Linguistics and
Applied Language Studies 2003, 21(4): 295–306
English–Afrikaans language pair development team and aims to establish an
assessment method and procedure that will assess the translation accuracy of
the Lexica Machine Translation (MT) System in an easily repeatable, scientifically
acceptable way. Lexica is a transfer system that is used to carry out
morphological, syntactic, semantic and contextual analysis and can be used for
the following language pairs: Afrikaans, Tswana, Swahili and Portuguese to
English; and English to Xhosa, Zulu and Afrikaans. The research has shown that
there are no universally accepted and reliable methods and measures, and that
assessment methodology has been the subject of much discussion in recent years.
To assess the accuracy of translation of the Lexica MT System, diagnostic
assessment was determined as the most suitable mode of assessment, as the focus
of such assessment is on the identification of limitations, errors and
deficiencies, which may then be corrected or improved by the development team.
A method and procedure were developed according to which marks were awarded in
terms of the following two aspects: (a) preservation of meaning, (b)
grammatical correctness.
Southern African Linguistics and
Applied Language Studies 2003, 21(4): 295–306
