Latest “IEA Insider” now out featuring article by cApStAn LQC co-founder Steve Dept

The latest edition of the International Education Association (IEA)’s newsletter, the IEA Insider, is just out! It is released annually at their General Assembly and this issue features an article by cApStAn founder Steve Dept. In the article Steve talks about cApStAn’s experience with machine translation (MT) and (human) post-editing, and reflects on the role of MT in the past and in current times. The quality of MT engines has improved today, Steve says, but “we are still a long way from running a stimulus and an item through a translation engine, then letting a human reviser fix the errors, assuming efficiency gains without loss of quality”. To implement this successfully, the main ingredients are to increase the lead time, to do more language engineering upfront (using a form of controlled writing that the MT engine would have better chances to interpret correctly), and more testing (piloting).  Part of the translation verification could gradually be replaced by post-editing, which could lead to a shorter time frame for a semi-automated translation process. Exciting times ahead! 

cApStAn has collaborated with the IEA on the translation verification of most of IEA’s international studies, including the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).