This paper reports on an experiment investigatinghow effective free online machine translation (MT) is in helping Internet users to access the contents of websites written only in languages they do not know.This study explores the extent to which using Internet-based MT tools affects the confidence of web-surfers in the reliability of the information they find on websites available only in languages unfamiliar to them. The results of a case study for the language pair Italian-English involving 101 participants show that the chances of identifying correctly basic information(i.e. understanding the nature of websites and finding contact telephone numbersfrom their web-pages) are consistently enhanced to varying degrees (up to nearly20%) by translating online content into a familiar language. In addition, confidence ratings given by users to the reliability andaccuracy of the information they find are significantly higher (with increases between5 and 11%) when they translatewebsites into their preferred language with free online MT services.
The Added Value of Free Online Machine Translation Services: Confidence Boosters for Linguistically-challenged Internet Users, a Case Study for the Language Pair Italian-English
Federico Gaspari
2006-01-01
Abstract
This paper reports on an experiment investigatinghow effective free online machine translation (MT) is in helping Internet users to access the contents of websites written only in languages they do not know.This study explores the extent to which using Internet-based MT tools affects the confidence of web-surfers in the reliability of the information they find on websites available only in languages unfamiliar to them. The results of a case study for the language pair Italian-English involving 101 participants show that the chances of identifying correctly basic information(i.e. understanding the nature of websites and finding contact telephone numbersfrom their web-pages) are consistently enhanced to varying degrees (up to nearly20%) by translating online content into a familiar language. In addition, confidence ratings given by users to the reliability andaccuracy of the information they find are significantly higher (with increases between5 and 11%) when they translatewebsites into their preferred language with free online MT services.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
