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‘Irrefragable answers’ using comparable corpora to retrieve translation equivalents

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Abstract

In this paper we present a tool that uses comparable corpora to find appropriate translation equivalents for expressions that are considered by translators as difficult. For a phrase in the source language the tool identifies a range of possible expressions used in similar contexts in target language corpora and presents them to the translator as a list of suggestions. In the paper we discuss the method and present results of human evaluation of the performance of the tool, which highlight its usefulness when dictionary solutions are lacking.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by EPSRC grant EP/C005902. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and links to relevant research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Serge Sharoff, Bogdan Babych & Anthony Hartley

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  1. Serge Sharoff
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  2. Bogdan Babych
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  3. Anthony Hartley
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Correspondence to Serge Sharoff.

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Sharoff, S., Babych, B. & Hartley, A. ‘Irrefragable answers’ using comparable corpora to retrieve translation equivalents. Lang Resources & Evaluation 43, 15–25 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-007-9046-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-007-9046-4

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