Call for papers
EVALUATION OF TRANSLATION TECHNOLOGY

Editors: Walter Daelemans (University of Antwerp) / Véronique Hoste
(University College Ghent)

LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, NEW SERIES (8/2009)
Journal of translation and interpreting studies published by the
Hoger Instituut voor Vertalers en Tolken, Hogeschool Antwerpen

Lacking widely accepted and reliable evaluation measures, the
evaluation of machine translation and translation tools is still an
open issue. Commercial translation tools such as translation memories
and translation workbenches are widely used and their developers claim
usefulness in terms of productivity, consistency or quality. However,
these claims are rarely proven using objective comparative studies. In
this collection we dissect the state of the art in translation
technology and translation tool development and provide quantitative
and qualitative answers to the question "how useful is translation
technology?" Evaluation of translation technology requires a
multifaceted approach. It involves the evaluation of the textual
output quality in terms of intelligibility, accuracy, fidelity to its
source text, and appropriateness of style and register. But it also
takes into account the usability of supportive tools for creating and
updating dictionaries, for post-editing texts, for controlling the
source language, for customization of documents, for extendibility to
new languages and for domain adaptability, etc. Finally, evaluation
involves contrasting the costs and benefits of translation technology
with those of human translation performance. This special issue will
be a combination of invited and contributed papers. Invited papers
consist of position papers by top researchers or developers in the
field and invited commentaries on these position papers. Contributed
papers, the subject of this call for papers, describe ongoing efforts
in developing and using machine translation technology and tools for
translation support. All contributions should focus on one of the
three core themes given below. Strict editing and the specific
structure of the collection will guarantee that the collection
transcends the sum of the papers in it and that the volume forms an
integrated and coherent whole. Both invited and contributed papers
will be peer-reviewed.

Preliminary contents
Evaluation in Translation Technology: Introduction (editors)
Part I: Translation Tools
- Invited position paper about translation tools by Angelika ZerfaÃ?
(ZAAC)
- Contributed and invited commentaries
- Accepted contributed papers
Part II: Machine Translation
- Invited position paper about Statistical MT by Andy Way & Mary
Hearne (Dublin City University)
- Invited position paper about Knowledge-Based MT by Jean Senellart
(Systran)
- Contributed and invited commentaries
- Accepted contributed papers
Part III: Evaluation
- Invited position paper about meta-evaluation by Chris Callison-Burch
(Johns Hopkins University)
- Contributed and invited commentaries
- Accepted contributed papers

Practical information:

All submitted abstracts are written in English and do not exceed 2000
words, including references

Important dates:

Submission deadline abstracts: June 1, 2008
Notification of acceptance: July 1, 2008
Full article submission deadline: February 1, 2009
Feedback to the authors: May/June 2009
Camera-ready copy due from authors: September 1, 2009
Publication: December 2009/January 2010

Contacts
Please send abstracts to
Walter Daelemans (University of Antwerp)
walter.daelemans@ua.ac.be
or
Véronique Hoste (University College Ghent)
veronique.hoste@hogent.be