Human or Machine Translation? Survey Reveals EU SME Preferences by Use Case

人工翻译还是机器翻译?欧盟中小企业使用偏好案例调查

2020-07-13 04:40 Lingua Greca

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A survey of over 2,800 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) published by the European Commission revealed nearly 40% of respondents had not used a machine translation tool prior to the study. Moreover, while an overwhelming majority of SMEs still preferred human translation for business activities, such as negotiating contracts and dealing with the public sector in another country, over 70% said machine translation was nonetheless useful for their business. The survey was conducted in line with the rollout of the Commission’s online machine translation service, eTranslation, to SMEs. First launched in November 2017, eTranslation was created for EU governments, universities, and projects under the Connecting Europe Facility, as well as SMEs. Data gathering was done between December 2019 to March 2020 and led by DG CNECT with the help of DG GROW. (DG CNECT is the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology; DG GROW stands for Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs).  Prior to the publication of the complete survey results on June 9, 2020, Philippe Gelin, Head of Sector Multilingualism at the European Commission, discussed data from the survey during a stakeholder consultation in February 2020. The survey garnered 2,868 responses from SMEs operating in Europe, majority of which were from the Manufacturing sector (28%), followed by Professional, Scientific, and Technical (11.7%), Other Services (11%), Wholesale and Retail (9.6%), and ICT (7.7%). Other sectors made up less than 5% of the total number of respondents. Asked how many documents they expected to translate each month if they were provided with “free, secure, automated translation,” the majority of SME respondents said they would use machine translation (MT) on 3–10 documents (37%) or 11–50 documents (33%). “This was later confirmed by the pilot testing [of eTranslation] which showed an average monthly usage of 5 documents per SME,” the study said. The Commission pilot tested eTranslation with 635 SMEs representing various sectors from 25 countries, and said “83% found eTranslation usable and 50% expected to use it every day or every week.” The majority of SMEs regarded Social Media (80%), Gathering Information (70%), and Chatbots (60%) as the main use of MT. Most respondents preferred human translation when negotiating and signing contracts, resolving conflicts around commercial transactions, dealing with the public sector abroad, and even conducting marketing and promotional activities. When deciding whether or not to use MT, the most important factor for SMEs was Accuracy, followed by Ease of Use, Free of Charge, and Speed. Least important was Support. Europe’s SMEs also showed interest in language technologies other than MT, with Spell Check and Grammar Tools attracting the highest, and Speech Recognition drawing the least interest. Elaborating on this interest, a number of SMEs singled out features or tools as being necessary for business. These were “domain adaptation along with thematic dictionaries for various sectors (e.g., health, medical, food, maritime, ICT, chemical, legal, geoinformatics, plastic, cinema, advertisement, communication, creative industry); speech recognition tool (also for languages currently not supported by any provider); automated website translation; more languages for automated translation (e.g., Asian languages or Turkish).” SMEs said English, German, and French were the top three languages they needed followed by Spanish, Russian, Italian, and Chinese. Most of the SMEs surveyed came from France, Poland, and Portugal. According to the study, “the diversity of the results [confirms] the broad European linguistic landscape, highlighting the continuous challenge the Single Market and especially its SMEs are confronted with.” A free MT tool such as eTranslation would, therefore, place all businesses “on an equal footing, without penalising those working in languages with smaller populations or linguistic markets where language combinations may be harder or more costly to acquire.” Another survey has been scheduled for early 2021 to collect user experience data on and suggested improvements to eTranslation. Image: Roberto Viola, Director-General of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT)
欧盟委员会公布的一项调查显示,在2800多家受访的中小企业中,近40%的企业在这次调查之前没有使用过机器翻译工具。 此外,虽然绝大多数中小企业仍倾向于在商务活动中使用人工翻译,如合同谈判以及与他国的公共部门打交道等,但超过70%的中小企业表示,机器翻译对其业务还是有用的。 这项调查是与委员会向中小企业推出在线机器翻译服务平台eTranslation同步推进的。eTranslation于2017年11月首次推出,面向欧盟各国政府、大学、欧洲基础设备连接(CEF)计划下的所有项目,以及中小企业。 数据收集工作于2019年12月至2020年3月期间完成,由欧盟委员会通信网络内容和技术总司(DG CNECT)领导,并得到欧盟发展部委员会(DG GROW)的帮助。(DG CNECT是通信网络、内容和技术总局;DG GROW是内部市场、工业、创业和中小企业总局)。 在2020年6月9日公布完整的调查结果之前,欧盟委员会多语言部门负责人菲利普·葛林(Philippe Gelin)在2020年2月的一次利益相关方磋商中曾讨论过调查中的数据。 这项调查共收到在欧洲经营的中小企业共2868份答复,其中大部分来自制造业(28%),其次是专业部门,科学和技术产业(11.7%)、其他服务业(11%)、批发和零售业(9.6%)以及信通技术(7.7%)。其他行业占受访总数不足5%。 如果有人提供“免费、安全、自动化的翻译”,他们希望每月翻译多少文档?——当被问及这个问题时,大多数受访中小企业表示,他们将对3-10个文档(37%)或11-50个文档(33%)使用机器翻译。 该研究显示:“eTranslation的试点测试后来证实了这一点,测试结果显示,每个中小企业每月平均使用它翻译5份文件。”委员会测试了来自25个国家的635家试点中小企业,并表示“83%的受试企业认为eTranslation可用,50%的企业甚至想要每天或每周使用。” 大多数中小企业认为社交媒体(80%)、信息收集(70%)和聊天机器人(60%)是机器翻译的主要用途。但在谈判和签订合同、解决商业交易冲突、与国外公共部门打交道,甚至进行营销和促销活动时,大多数受访企业都更倾向于使用人工翻译。 在影响中小企业决定是否使用机器翻译的因素中,最重要的是准确性,其次是易操作性、是否免费和翻译速度。最不重要的是支持。 欧洲中小企业还探索了机器翻译以外的语言技术,其中拼写检查和语法工具最受欢迎,语音识别的受欢迎程度最低。 根据其兴趣,一些中小企业特别挑选出了业务所必需的那些特点或工具,比如:“领域适应以及各领域的专题词典(例如卫生、医疗、食品、海事、信通技术、化学、法律、地理信息学、塑料、电影、广告、通信、创意产业);语音识别工具(也适用于目前任何供应商都不支持的语言);自动化网站翻译;可用于自动翻译的更多其他语言(如一些亚洲国家语言或土耳其语)。 一些中小企业表示,英语、德语和法语是他们最需要的三种语言,其次是西班牙语、俄语、意大利语和汉语。大多数接受调查的中小企业来自法国、波兰和葡萄牙。研究结果表明,“结果的多样性证实了欧洲语言的广阔前景,突出了单一市场,特别是中小企业,所面临的持续挑战。” 因此,像eTranslation这样的免费机器翻译工具将使所有企业处于“平等的地位”,而不会使那些需要使用小众语言的企业处于不利地位;小众语言指的是使用人口较少的语言,或语言市场较小的语言,这些语种的语言组合可能更难获得,或者获取成本更高。 另一项调查计划于2021年初进行,用于收集用户体验数据,并提出对eTranslation的改进建议。 图片来自:DG CNECT罗伯托·维欧拉(Roberto Viola)

以上中文文本为机器翻译,存在不同程度偏差和错误,请理解并参考英文原文阅读。

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