MMPE : A M ulti- M odal I nterface for P ost- E diting M achine T ranslation (2020)

Abstract: Current advances in machine translation (MT) increase the need for translators to switch from traditional translation to post-editing (PE) of machine-translated text, a process that saves time and reduces errors. This affects the design of translation interfaces, as the task changes from mainly generating text to correcting errors within otherwise helpful translation proposals. Since this paradigm shift offers potential for modalities other than mouse and keyboard, we present MMPE, the first prototype to combine traditional input modes with pen, touch, and speech modalities for PE of MT. The results of an evaluation with professional translators suggest that pen and touch interaction are suitable for deletion and reordering tasks, while they are of limited use for longer insertions. On the other hand, speech and multi-modal combinations of select & speech are considered suitable for replacements and insertions but offer less potential for deletion and reordering. Overall, participants were enthusiastic about the new modalities and saw them as good extensions to mouse & keyboard, but not as a complete substitute.

## introduction as machine translation (mt) has been making substantial improvements in recent years foot_0 , more and more professional translators are integrating this technology into their translation workflows @xcite . the process of using a pre-translated text as a basis and improving it to create the final translation is called post-editing @xcite . older research showed a strong dislike of translators towards pe @xcite , and more recent studies agree that translators are still cautious about pe and question its benefits @xcite , partly because they see it as a threat to their profession @xcite . experienced translators in particular exhibit rather negative attitudes @xcite . conversely, novice translators have been shown to have more positive views on pe @xcite . @xcite demonstrated that some translators actually strongly prefer pe and argue that "users might have dated perceptions of mt quality". apart from translators' preference, productivity gains of 36% when using modern neural mt for pe @xcite already result in substantial changes in translation workflows @xcite and will probably continue to do so the better mt becomes. thus, pe requires thorough investigation in terms of interface design, since the task changes from mostly text production to comparing and adapting mt and translation memory (tm) proposals, or put differently, from control to supervision. previous elicitation-based research @xcite investigated how translation environments could better support the pe process and found that translators envision pe interfaces relying on touch, pen, and speech input combined with mouse and keyboard as particularly useful. a small number of prototypes exploring some of these modalities also showed promising results @xcite . this paper presents mmpe, the first translation environment combining standard mouse & keyboard input with touch, pen, and speech interactions for pe of mt. the results of a study with 11 professional translators show that participants are enthusiastic about having these alternatives, even though time measurements and subjective ratings do not always agree. overall, pen and touch modalities are well suited for deletion and reordering operations, while speech and multi-modal interaction are suitable for insertions and replacements. ## related work in this section, we present related research on translation environments and particularly focus on existing multi-modal approaches to pe. ## the mmpe prototype we present the mmpe prototype (see figure 1 ) which combines these modalities for pe of mt. a more detailed description of the prototype can be found in @xcite , and a video demonstration is available at https://youtu.be/ h2ym2r8wfd8 . ## evaluation results and discussion in this section, we present and discuss the study's main findings. ## conclusion while more and more professional translators are switching to the use of pe to increase productivity and reduce errors, current cat interfaces still heavily focus on traditional mouse and keyboard input, even though the literature suggests that other modalities could support pe operations well. this paper therefore presents mmpe, a cat prototype combining pen, touch, speech, and multi-modal interaction together with common mouse and keyboard input possibilities, and explores the use of these modalities by professional translators. the study shows a high level of interest and enthusiasm for using these new modalities. for deletions and reorderings, pen and touch both received high subjective ratings, with pen being even better than mouse & keyboard. in terms of timings, they were also among the fastest for these two operations. for insertions and replacements, speech and multimodal interaction were seen as suitable interaction modes; however, mouse & keyboard were still favored and faster here. as a next step, we will integrate the participants' valuable feedback to improve the prototype. while the presented study provided interesting first insights regarding participants' use of and preferences for the implemented modalities, it did not allow us to see how they would use the modalities over a longer time period in day-to-day work, which we also want to investigate in the future. furthermore, participants in herbig et al. (2019a) were positive regarding the idea of a user interface that adapts to measured cognitive load, especially if it automatically provides additional resources like tm matches or mt proposals. an exploration of multi-modal measuring approaches @xcite shows the feasibility of this, so we will try to combine explicit multi-modal input, as done in this work, with implicit multi-modal sensor input to better model and support the user during pe.