Shared resources, shared values? Ethical implications of sharing translation resources

4 November 2010 EM+/CNGL workshop 1

Shared resources, shared values? Ethical implications of sharing translation resources

Jo Drugan and Bogdan BabychUniversity of Leeds, UK

www.leeds.ac.uk/cts


Overview• Practical challenges to sharing translation

resources, but also ethical and legal problems• Recent collaboration and greater openness, but

focus generally on practical issues• Good reasons for failure to broach ethics• Yet essential to do so – huge and growing

demand for translation can’t be met without sharing

• Questions users and developers should be asking and suggested ways forward


Talk map1. Practical problems in sharing translation

resources2. Ethical problems in sharing translation

resources3. Case studies

• Google Translation Toolkit• TAUS Language Search Engine (LSE)

4. Conclusion

Sharing translation resources: Practical problems• Exploitation of large parallel corpora to

create/populate translation resources hampered by:– “Locked-in” data: range of tools– Ineffective exchange formats

• Vashee 2010: ‘Translation tools often trap your data in a silo because the vendors WANT to lock you in and make it painful for you to leave’

– Client reservations


Recent progress on practical problems• Large minable multilingual corpora released

online since 1990s– Canadian Hansard, UN texts, Europarl corpus– Large-scale SMT platforms rely on such

parallel corpora• European Union TM archive, 2007• Translation Automation User Society (TAUS),

2007• Shared online Translation Environment Tools

(TenTs), crowdsourced/collaborative translation


Sharing translation resources and MT• Koehn 2010: SMT is domain-dependent to

much greater degree than RBMT– Lower quality of out-of-domain translation

• Sharing translation resources essential for building high-quality SMT systems– Range of text types/subject domains– Requires consideration of ethical and legal

issues


And ethics?...• Conspicuous by its absence: limited to issues

of (informed) consent and ‘threats’ to translators– Improved MT quality– Collaborative translation

• Yet familiar issues– Trailblazers (Wikipedia)– Legal grey areas (translation as

international activity par excellence)


Consequences?• Two standard reactions:

1. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’• Risks of burying your head in the sand• Legal implications, traceability

2. Excessive caution• Passing up potentially valuable data


Consequences - MT?• ‘What has ethics got to do with MT?’• Sharing translation resources requires

consideration of ethical and legal issues– Confidentiality of data– Trade, industrial, state secrets– Intellectual property rights (moral rights?)

of translators, authors, data owners


Engaging with ethics• Share data confidently, arguing from clearly stated

values• Draw on precedents in related fields/debates• Essential because sharing is increasingly the norm

– TAUS: Information Age = ‘insatiable demand for translation services that cannot be met with existing proprietary business models and the capacity of around 300 000 professional translators worldwide’

• One way in: case studies– Ethical questions raised by what’s actually

happening


1. Google Translation Toolkit• SMT

– Since 2005, http://translate.google.com/ – 58 language pairs in 2010– For assimilation, typically not integrated in

translation workflow• MT post-editing concerns• Google move to embed MT in online

collaborative translation environment: Google Translation Toolkit


Google Translation Toolkit• MT integrated with TM and user dictionary

functionality• TM matches/user dictionary entries have

priority but post-edit MT output if not available• Translators collaborate, as for Google Docs• Stored on ‘cloud’ servers but can be

downloaded• User options, no MT if preferred• But limiting factors…


Limiting factors• Ethical rather than technological• No.1: Confidentiality of project and resources

– Not practical for most real-world professional projects

– Technically possible to address translators’/clients’ concerns

– Default settings


Other ethical issues not addressed• Recognition, compensation of translators’ work

– Potential legal consequences– Other tools support such approaches:

http://mymemory.translated.net/doc/ • Ownership, attribution• Familiar issues• Potentially useful innovative technology falls

down because it fails to take into account practical user-based scenarios, in part due to inadequate ethical framework


2. TAUS Language Search Engine (LSE)• Online tool for searching uploaded TMX data

– Parallel concordances, word alignment techniques

– Intelligent dictionary– User (mis)expectations

• Ethical framework is explicit – even a ‘model’– User consent– Quid pro quo– Data owner responsibility


But key questions remain unaddressed• Ethical, not technical• Ownership and consent – broader issues

– ‘Community of users and providers of translation technologies and services’ – but all large-scale, not end users or freelance translators

– Informed consent?• NB not legal/contractual - broader

– Industry codes of ethics, ‘taking credit for others’ work’

– UNESCO 1976, ‘supplementary payment’?


Key questions unaddressed• Translator choice? • Should ultimate responsibility afford claims to

ultimate ownership?• Avoiding harm?• Effects on future translation quality

judgments?


Positively ethical• The aims and ambitions of these two initiatives

can be seen as profoundly ethical• Relevant principles in codes:

– Professional review, informed critiques, raise standards, improve public understanding, contribute to society and human well-being, respect human diversity, support fellow professionals, contribute to profession’s standing, enhance quality of life

• Not just defensive, but allows case to be made for action rather than inaction



Questions/Discussion

Documents

Shared resources, shared values? Ethical implications of sharing translation resources