Is machine translation (MT) your friend or enemy? Challenges for English->Japanese translators

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Is machine translation (MT) your friend or enemy? Challenges for English->Japanese translators"

ありみちさわい
7 years ago
Views:

1 Challenges for English into Japanese Machine Translation (MT): Can We Embrace MT for Language Teaching? Noon Lecture University of Michigan, February 26, 2016 Takako Aikawa Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2 Outline 1. A brief introduction of my background 1. A brief introduction of Machine Translation (MT) o Historical background of the development of MT o How does (Statistical) MT work? 2. Challenges for the English -> Japanese (EJ) MT o Open problems for MT in general o Differences between English and Japanese 3. What can we do to improve the quality of MT for EJ translations? o Crowdsourcing o Controlled/Simplified English 4. Can MT be used for teaching Japanese? o Ban, or Embrace MT? 5. Surprise! 6. Q & A

3 What is a statistical machine translation (SMT)? ohistorical Development of MT ohow does SMT work?

4 A brief history of MT

5 claims were made that the computer would replace most human translators 1~2 million words/hour with adequate commercial computers. When you would achieve this? If the experiments go well, then perhaps within 5 years or so.

7 Moving to Statistical MT systems from hand-coded/rule-based MT systems Why Statistical? What s wrong with human rules?

8 Scalability and Sustainability Scalability Rule-based MT: You need rich linguistic resources and computational linguists for each language pair. => Too expensive and not scalable. Statistical MT: All you need is bilingual parallel corpus data. => Resource light and so scalable.

9 sustainability Rule-based MT s SMT

10 How does a statistical machine translation system work?

11 Practical Use of MT (phone applications)

12 o Open problems for MT in general o English-Japanese specific issues while presenting linguistic differences between the two languages

13 Open Problems for MT

14 Philipp Koehn

15 Lexical Ambiguity Word ambiguity: many words have different senses depending on a given context (e.g.) Deposited money in my bank account. Sitting on the bank of the Charles river. Reading an interesting book. Book your hotel as soon as possible.

16 Syntactic Ambiguity VP-Attachment vs. NP-Attachment John watched a bird [ PP with binoculars]. (vp-attachment) (np-attachment) John watched a bird [ PP with feathers]. (vp-attachment) (np-attachment)

It s raining cats and dogs. どしゃ降りです How are you? お元気ですか Idioms Human languages are ambiguous and still very difficult for machine to Pronoun handle for Resolution practical use/purposes!

17 It s raining cats and dogs. どしゃ降りです How are you? お元気ですか Idioms Human languages are ambiguous and still very difficult for machine to Pronoun handle for Resolution practical use/purposes! Gender and Number Agreements for Pronouns in many languages o MT has to know the antecedent of a pronoun for agreement purposes o MT has to know the gender and the number of that antecedent

18 Why is the quality of the English -> Japanese MT so bad?

19 Differences between English and Japanese SVO vs. SOV: Word Order Case-markers Pronouns Counters (Japanese)

20 SVO (head-initial) vs. SOV (head-final) Word Order Causes problems for word/phrase alignments I think.. と思う Taro read the book that he bought yesterday. 太郎はきのう買った本を読んだ

21 Case-markers=>Free Word Order Taro ate the apple. 太郎がそのリンゴを食べた Taro ate the apple. そのリンゴを太郎が食べた Taro gave Hanako the apple. 太郎が花子にそのリンゴをあげた Taro gave Hanako the apple. そのリンゴを太郎が花子にあげた

22 Postpositions Taro ate the apple at school/at 3pm. 太郎がそのリンゴを学校で / 午後 3 時に食べた Taro will come by train/by noon 太郎は電車で / 正午までに来ます Taro ate the pie with his friends/with a knife. 太郎が友達と / ナイフでそのパイを食べた

Pronouns English: Overt Pronouns Japanese: The presence Empty Pronouns of empty & pronouns the Principle of Japanese causes Avoid a lot Pronouns of challenges for the direction of Japanese

23 Pronouns English: Overt Pronouns Japanese: The presence Empty Pronouns of empty & pronouns the Principle of Japanese causes Avoid a lot Pronouns of challenges for the direction of Japanese -> English translation as MT has to supply an appropriate pronoun based on the context. Pronoun resolution requires the understanding of a given context! But MT is still at a sentence level.

24 Japanese is more ambiguous than English in many Which respects. direction would be harder, English -> Japanese or Japanese -> English? Translating an ambiguous language into an unambiguous language is much harder.

25 Japanese Counters Japanese counters (e.g., 本人冊, etc.) Let s translate the following via Google Translate and Bing Translator. I saw three dogs and two cats at his house. I ate 3 cakes yesterday. I read 4 books at the library today. I have three students who are working for my project.

26 Google Translate (Oct. 10, 2014) Google Translate (Oct. 29, 2014)

27 Bing Translator (Oct. 10, 2014) Bing Translator (Oct. 29, 2014)

28 Other fundamental issues Word-breaking o English: use a white space to indicate word-boundaries o Japanese: needs a word-breaker for any sort of NLP/MT related tasks Proper Nouns o How to read proper nouns (e.g.) 高山 ( たかやま / こうざん /)=> Takayama?/Koozan? 金山 ( かなやま / きんざん /) =>Kanayzma?/Kinzan? 大山 ( おおやま / だいさん )=>Ooyama?/Daisan? 国府 ( こくふ / こくぶ / こう )=> Kokufu?/Kokubu?/Kou? etc.

29 Why is the quality of the English -> Japanese MT so bad? Japanese and English are so apart

30 Differences in syntactic structures between two languages matter English -> Japanese Taro went to Chicago with his friend. 太郎が友達とシカゴに行った English -> Spanish Taro went to Chicago with his friend. Taro fue a Chicago con su amigo. Japanese -> Korean 太郎が友達とシカゴに行った 타로가친구와시카고에갔다.

31 What can we do to improve the quality of English-Japanese MT? Crowdsourcing (crowdsourcing of training data) Controlled/Simplified English

32 crowdsourcing ( クラウドソーシング )

33 Turk Workers via Amazon

34 Training Data The more the training data, the better the quality of an SMT system. Companies like Google or Microsoft are constantly The cleaner the training looking data, for new the better the quality of an SMT system. data!

35 Google Translate

36 Bing Translator

37 Duolingo

38 Controlled English/Simplified English

39 Boeing Simplified Technical English

40 Shannon Obrien

41 Impact on Controlled Language

42 From: English_and_MT_Best_Practices_for_Localization_Content_Optimizatio n_and_simplification.pdf

43 やさしい日本語

45 Can MT be useful for teaching Japanese? Many students are already using G-Translate for their homework, etc. etc. 今日と明日, 私は Section 3 のクラスに行きますスケジューリングの競合がありますこれは大丈夫ですか?

ありがとう 14:10~ はいいです今日はしゅくだいを与えるはい私は 2 時 20 分来ています! すぐにお会いし相川先生! 私は来ていなかった本当にごめんなさい私の lab は長いランチミーティングを持っていました私はあなたを悩ませてごめんなさい Thank you. 2:10 is a good.

46 ありがとう 14:10~ はいいです今日はしゅくだいを与えるはい私は 2 時 20 分来ています! すぐにお会いし相川先生! 私は来ていなかった本当にごめんなさい私の lab は長いランチミーティングを持っていました私はあなたを悩ませてごめんなさい Thank you. 2:10 is a good. Today I give homework. Yes, I am coming at 2:20! And see you soon, Aikawa sensei! I'm sorry that I didn't come. My lab has had a long lunch meeting. I'm sorry for bothering you.

47 Can we embrace MT for language teaching? If so, how?

http://ictforlanguageteachers.blogspot.com/2011/11/googletranslate-friend-or-foe.html Do we want to punish students for using Google Translate?

48 Do we want to punish students for using Google Translate? Or do we want to embrace MT for language teaching? (e.g.) We can use the output of Google Translate to raise our students linguistic awareness. Ask our students to spot the mistakes and explain why such mistakes have been made.

49 Google Translate (Jan. 28, 2015) Thank you. 2:10pm ありがとう works for me. Simple verbs (e.g., work, have, do, etc.) 2:10pm 14:10は私のために動作します is fine with me. I 14:10 can には私と一緒に大丈夫です give you my homework today. 今日はあなたに私の宿題を与えることができます Yes, I will come at 2:20pm. Yes, I will be coming at 2:20pm. Registry/Style/Politeness Issues はい私は2 時 20 分午後来る See はい私は you soon, 2:20 Aikawa pmに来るということだ sensei. すぐに相川先生あなたを参照してください Sorry that I didn't come. I had a long lunch meeting at my lab. Tense/Aspect 私が来なかったことを申し訳ありません私は私の研究室での長いランチミーティングを持っていた Sorry to bother you. We need to have more people. お邪魔して申し訳ありません There are many people who can describe the Japanese culture. 私たちはより多くの人々を持っている必要があります Ken 日本文化を記述することができる多くの人々があります Usage of Overt Pronouns wants Mary to listen to the tape. I want you to study more. ケンはメアリーはテープを聞くことを望んでいる私はあなたがもっと勉強したいと思います To Infinitive/Ing form

50 Google Translate (Jan. 28, 2015) ありがとう 14:10 は私のために動作します ( works for me.) 14:10 には私と一緒に大丈夫です ( fine with me.) 今日はあなたに私の宿題を与えることができますはい私は 2 時 20 分午後来るはい私は 2:20 pm に来るということだすぐに相川先生あなたを参照してください私が来なかったことを申し訳ありません私は私の研究室での長いランチミーティングを持っていた (..had a long lunch meeting.) お邪魔して申し訳ありません私たちはより多くの人々を持っている必要があります日本文化を記述することができる多くの人々がありますケンはメアリーはテープを聞くことを望んでいる (Ken wants Mary to ) 私はあなたがもっと勉強したいと思います (I want you to )

51 Web-based translation tools are chaning the way language is taught

52 Should translation tools be embraced? Tolerated? Banned? "Best practices are evolving," Merschel said. "We're just at the beginning of the conversation. We don't want to ban them. We should embrace and examine new technology. Some language instructors don't believe online translation tools are a threat to the learning process..but some are NOT. We involve students in the learning process too. You need to use it at the right time and in the right way. It's like before you use a calculator, you've got to know how to add and subtract. "It's pretty easy to show them the limitations of the tools," Decades ago, foreign language instruction leaned heavy on literal translation and memorization. But today, many language instructors eschew rote memorization in favor of interaction-based learning steeped in critical thinking and language immersion, Porter said. And the language instructors of today didn't have Google Translate when they did their training. "We're of a generation that learned language without access to these tools,

53 Thank you! Takako Aikawa

-2-

-2- Unit Children of the World NEW HORIZON English Course 'Have you been to?' 'What have you done as a housework?' -1- -2- Study Tour to Bangladesh p26 P26-3- Example: I am going to Bangladesh this spring.