Research: Translation / Foreign Media Analysis
I work extensively with translated material in much of my global work, including the approaches to translation, machine versus human translation, and the influence of translation on analysis. Translated material can arrive or be incorporated via many channels. There are many very different approaches to translation workflows and automated translation systems and one must understand the nuances of each when developing a workflow for the use of translated material in a research initiative.
- Vernacular Coding. In some highly-specialized applications, such as scoring a series of news articles or documents by tone, discord between the source and target languages may prevent the translation from permitting accurate measurements of nuance. In these cases native speakers perform the entire coding task using the source text.
- Commercial Translation. Usually single-iteration translation that captures the majority of the text's meaning. Native speakers or trained translators focus solely on converting material from source to target language. Translated material is then sent to highly trained specialists who then analyze and extract needed analysis from material.
- Machine Translation. Similar to commercial translation, but orders of magnitude faster and scalable to unlimited volume levels. Highly useful as a screening mechanism. Can use expert, statistical, or hybrid approaches.
- Hybrid Systems. Systems like the intelligence community's National Virtual Translation Center combine machine translation for screening with human translation for highest accuracy.
- Iterative Translation. Consumer of translated material works hand-in-hand with translator to clarify the most measured nuances of the translation (for example, is it a "no" or a "never").
- Foreign Media Analysis. The use of translated material to examine factual or expressive trends in foreign media content.
I have worked extensively with translated material, from the workflows involved in preparing a 75+ language corpus for translation and assigning and managing large teams of human translators to produce nuanced translations, to the use of machine translation for screening and routing purposes. I've worked with the interpretability of translated material, especially the ways in which different approaches to machine translation affect secondary processes such as automated categorization and data mining. I recently authored the first unclassified comprehensive study of the Western intelligence community's use of foreign news and scientific material over the last 30 years, including its use of iterative translation.
- Open Sources and Foreign Media Analysis: Translation at a Global Scale.
- An Open Source Study of International Media Coverage of the WorldCom Scandal. Journal of International Communication, Vol 14, Issue 2. (2008).
- Stochastic Processes in Language: A Classical Quantification of the Anglo-Estonian Dialect. (An older paper I wrote for a course in 2001 analyzing Anglo-Estonian speech).