Dr Ana Guerberof Arenas
Academic and research departments
Centre for Translation Studies, School of Literature and Languages, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.Biography
I am Senior Lecturer in Translation and Multimodal Technologies the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Surrey.
My research focuses on the impact of language in human computer interaction, translation technology (CAT, machine translation), technology and creativity in translation, and translation training. I have worked in projects covering the following areas:
- Productivity, quality and professional experience in the translation of machine translation and translation memory outputs
- Machine translation usability in software applications
- Creative translation and technology
- Readers' narrative engagement in literary texts translated using different modalities
- Machine translation and underrepresented languages
I am also interested in
- Localisation workflows and processes
- Gender issues in translation and localisation industry
- Augmented and Alternative Communication
- Translation and migration
- Machine Translation usability in health contexts
Areas of specialism
University roles and responsibilities
- Senior Lecturer in Translation and Multimodal Technologies
My qualifications
Grade: Apte “Cum Laude”. Dissertation: “Productivity and quality in the post-editing of outputs from translation memories and machine translation”. Supervisors: Prof. Anthony Pym and Prof. Sharon O’Brien (Dublin City University).
Grade: Excellent. Minor Dissertation: “Productivity and quality in the post-editing of outputs from translation memories and machine translation”. Supervisors: Prof. Anthony Pym and Dr. Ilse Depraetere (Université Lille III).
Previous roles
I obtained a Edge-Marie Curie Research Fellowship in Dublin City University and ADAPT Research Centre to investigate the impact of MT on the final user of translation. The project looked at the correlations between localisation quality and usability on machine and human translated user interface strings using eye-tracking and telemetry.
I have taught to graduate and undergraduate students:
Introduction to specialized translation (English to Spanish), Specialized Translation: legal, technical and audio-visual (English to Spanish), Localization, Machine Translation, Post-production, Project Management, Post-editing, Machine Translation project management, Workflows and Selection Processes.
Localization theory and practice modules.
I taught writing and editing skills for literary and technical texts. I was involved in on-line and off-line courses.
I managed an international production team with teams in Barcelona, China and the US to complete incoming localization projects to specified quality standards.
I supported sales internationally in presentations, request for proposals, and customer meetings.
I coordinated the organization the creation of new solutions: automation, crowd-sourcing and speech transcription.
I managed the Machine Translation group to create a new workflow for MT projects.
I coordinated a production team of up to 20 in-house team members including language coordinators, project managers, localization engineering and DTP to complete all incoming projects in Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro.
I recruited and coordinated a pool of external freelancers consistently evaluating the company’s subcontracting capabilities.
I successfully recruited and trained 60 Language Specialists for more than 18 languages based in Dublin, Ireland, South America, USA, and Europe.
I recruited and trained new Spanish speaking localizers and vendors.
I coordinated multilingual projects.
I translated and edited localization projects for international customers.
Affiliations and memberships
Business, industry and community links
News
In the media
Research
Research interests
Since I began my research career in 2006 as part of the PhD programme led by Prof. Anthony Pym, I have been interested on translation and technology, and more specifically on how this technology impacts users. Initially, I was involved in empirical research that measure translators' productivity, quality and experience in post-editing and look at translators' perception of this technology.
As a logical step to further my research, I have looked at the ultimate user of translation. I have been involved in usability research that involved eye-tracking 84 users of Microsoft Word in Spanish, German, Japanese and English to determine if MT had an impact on users' efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction.
At the same time and to continue this line of research, i.e. to explore human interaction with MT (and NMT), I have collaborated with Dr Sheila Castilho from the ADAPT Centre in Dublin City University, we looked at reading comprehension in Chinese and Spanish participants when the texts were translated using Neural and Statistical MT.
In parallel to this, I am interested to investigate the concept of creativity in relation with MT and in the context of literary translation. In collaboration with Dr. Antonio Toral (University of Groningen) I have been involved in an empirical project that looks at narrative engagement and reception in Catalan participants when reading translated texts using machine and human translation methods. The results from this research can provide data with regards to the extent that NMT can be used effectively to translate creative texts, and the impact that using NMT can have on the readers in terms of their engagement (that is strongly correlated to enjoyment).
Finally, I’m also collaborating with Drs. Antonio Toral and Antoni Oliver (from Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) in a project that uses NMT for the creation of bilingual books intended for helping people to read the original version of a novel.
Research projects
EDGE/MSCA Research Fellow. Dublin City University/Adapt Centre
This research assesses the impact of MT on reading translated literary texts. It focuses on the ultimate user of the translation - the reader - to better understand translation creativity in relation to MT and its impact on the reader of translated literary texts in several language combinations.
Research collaborations
- ProjectTA-U: Users of Machine Translation. Principal Investigators: Dr Olga Torres-Hostench and Dr Pilar Sánchez Gijón. Reference: FFI2016-78612-R. 2017-2019.
- ProjectTA. Translation projects involving Statistical Machine Translation and Post-editing in Spanish Localization Companies. Reference: FFI2013-46041-R. Principal Investigators: Dr Olga Torres-Hostench and Dr Ramon Piqué Huerta: 2015-2017.
I have participated in the following conferences as Keynote Speaker or Speaker:
- Conferences
- Measuring readers’ engagement in literary texts: a study comparing human translation to machine assisted translation. In 9th Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies. Stellenbosch. 9-13/2019. Ana Guerberof Arenas and Antonio Toral.
- Data and translation — a pretty picture? Translating Europe Forum. European Commission Brussels, 8-9/11/2018. Karim Benammar, Annette Schiller, Christos Ellindes and Ana Guerberof Arenas.
- Data sharing - a data market place? Translating Europe Forum. European Commission Brussels, 8-9/11/2018. Muriel Matiussi-Kirchhof, Andrea Losch, Jaap Van Der Meer and Ana Guerberof Arenas.
- How is artificial intelligence transforming society and the translation industry? Translating Europe Forum. European Commission Brussels, 8-9/11/2018. Alison B. Lowndes, Rose Luckin, Lucia Specia and Ana Guerberof Arenas.
- Working with data – the translator's perspective. Translating Europe Forum. European Commission Brussels, 8-9/11/2018. Tanguy Fauchier, Erik Hansson, Miha Zlicar, Gruffydd Jones, Lucas Nunes Vieria and Ana Guerberof Arenas.
- Correlations between localisation quality and usability of machine and human translated user interface strings: a study using eye-tracking and telemetry. 12th annual Irish Human Computer Interaction conference. Poster. Limerick, Ireland. 02/11/2018. University of Limerick.
- Divergent paths: machine and human translation. 1st International e-Conference on Translation. 26-28/09/2018. Universidad de Córdoba – KU Leuven.
- Ghost in the Machine: workshop. Out of the box. 2018 EACWP International Pedagogical Conference. Brussels. European Association of Creative Writing Programmes (EACWP). Jessica Foley and Ana Guerberof Arenas.
- Translators and Technology, a happy marriage that will end up in a bitter divorce? Translating Europe Workshop Rome. Invited Speaker. Rome. 03-04/05/2018. Università degli studi Internazionali di Roma/European Commission.
- Education and the Translators’ future. TAUS QE Summit. Dublin. 03/2018.
- Is Machine Translation post-editing the past? ELIA Together. Berlin. 23-24/02/2017. European Union of Associations of Translation Companies.
- Machine Translation and the Translator. School of Advance Technologies for Translators (SATT). Trento. 09-10/09/2016. Fundazione Bruno Kessler Tipo de entidad.
- Teaching Post-editing Round Table. Second International Conference on Research into the Didactics of Translation. Barcelona. 08-09/07/2014. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Barcelona. Garey Massey, Pilar Sánchez Gijón, Fabio Alves, Sharon O'Brien, Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow and Ana Guerberof Arenas.
- In-country review. LocWorld. Dublin. 05-06/06/2014. Localization World LTD. USA.
- Productivity and quality in post-editing. Translation in transition: Between cognition, computing and technology (CRITT-WCRE Conference). Copenhagen, 30-31/01/2014. Copenhagen Business School.
- Pactera’s DQF Perspective Presentation. TAUS Quality Evaluation Summit. Dublin. 04/2013.
- The coming of age of Translation Technologies in Translation Studies. First International T3L Conference: Translation Technologies & Localization. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. 21-22/06/2011. Rafael Guzmán; Felipe Sánchez; Gerhard Budin; Ana Guerberof Arenas.
- Productivity and quality in the post-editing of outputs from translation memories and machine translation. Translation Automation Conference. Luspio University. 5/04/2011.
- Productivity and Quality in MT post-editing. Machine Translation XII Summit. Ottawa. Canada. 26-30/08/2009.
- Post-editing MT & TM segments. Localization Industry Standard Association (LISA) Forum. Dublin. Ireland. 12/2008.
- Round Table: Standards Impact on the Productivity of Automated Translation Technologies: What works, What doesn't and Why? Localization Industry Standard Association (LISA) Forum. Yves Campollion; Kirti Vashee; Ana Guerberof Arenas.
- Best Practices in Post-Editing MT. Localization World 12. Madison. USA. 10/2008. Contribution: Speaker
Evaluation and organizing committees
- European Association of Machine Translation Conference Translation Track Co-Chair. European Association of Machine Translation. 04/2020
- Machine Translation XVII Summit Translation Track. European Association of Machine Translation. 05/2019
- Barcelona Symposium 2019. European Association of Creative Writing Schools. 23/04-26/04/2019.
- Seminar Eye-tracking for researchers. Organizer and trainer. Dublin City University. 03/2019 - 03/2019
- 21ST Annual Conference EAMT. Translation Track. European Association of Machine Translation. 04/2018.
- Elia Together Technical Committee. European Language Industry Association. Brussels. 05/04/2017 - 23/02/2018
- Revista Tradumàtica Evaluation Committee. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. 2017 – 2018.
- Women in Localization. Barcelona Chapter. Organizing Committee. Barcelona. 2016-2017.
- Organizing Committee Second International T3L Conference: Translation Technologies & Localization. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. 11/10/2016.
- Thesis Defence Johanna Gerlach: Improving Statistical Machine Translation of Informal Language: a Rule-based Pre-editing Approach for French Forums. Université de Genève. Faculté de Traduction et d'Interprétation. Geneva. 03/2015.
- 17th Annual Conference EAMT User Studies. European Association of Machine Translation 01/09/2014 - 30/09/2014.
- XIV MT Summit Nice. Post-editing Technology and Practice. 2013
- AMTA Conference. Post-editing Technology and Practice. 2012
Supervision
Postgraduate research supervision
I am interested in supervising PhD projects mainly in these areas:
- post-editing and machine translation
- translation technologies, especially neural machine translation
- creativity in translation, especially in relation to machine translation
- translation usability
- translation reception (readers' engagement and translation reception)
Postgraduate research supervision
PhD Students
From January 2020, I am co-supervising Jisue Park in her PhD thesis Metaphors in comic books from English into Korean: A study of translation process and final product using different translation modalities. University of Surrey.
From June 2020, I am co-supervising Juyuan Wang in her PhD thesis Design of augmented reading and writing experiences. University of Surrey.
From October 2020, I will be co-supervising Giulia Tarditi in her PhD thesis Translating without source texts: a study of the multilingual transcreation of mobile apps. University of Surrey.
From September 2019, I will be the co-supervisor for Ariana López Pereira in her PhD thesis Cognitive and professional aspects for the improvement of post-editing tasks. Supervisor Dr. Pilar Sánchez Gijón. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Master Students
I am supervising Melanie Tse in her dissertation A comparative analysis of US English and Hong Kong Chinese subtitles of Parasite. University of Surrey (2019-2020).
I am supervising Rachel Pilley in her dissertation The transcreation of the “This Girl Can” website for a Latin American audience and its socio-political implications. University of Surrey (2019-2020).
I have supervised Aoife Skelly in her dissertation Women under Franco's Dictatorship: The translation of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique into Spanish and Catalan. Graduate Dissertation. Dublin City University, Ireland. 05/2019
I have also supervised Alba Arbella Flores with her Master’s Thesis Evaluación de la posedición desde dispositivos móviles [Post-editing evaluation in mobile devices]. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Student: Alba Arbella Flores. 16/06/2017.
My teaching
I have taught different modules at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Dublin City University mainly: introduction to technical and scientific translation (English to Spanish), translation technology, localization and MT, project management, specialized translation (English to Spanish), MT project management, computer aided translation (CAT) tools, and creative writing for translators.
I have also given workshops and seminars on different topics such as post-editing, creative writing, and most recently on eye-tracking.
My publications
Publications
This article presents the results of a study involving the translation of a short story by Kurt Vonnegut from English to Catalan and Dutch using three modalities: machine-translation (MT), post-editing (PE) and translation without aid (HT). Our aim is to explore creativity, understood to involve novelty and acceptability, from a quantitative perspective. The results show that HT has the highest creativity score, followed by PE, and lastly, MT, and this is unanimous from all reviewers. A neural MT system trained on literary data does not currently have the necessary capabilities for a creative translation; it renders literal solutions to translation problems. More importantly, using MT to post-edit raw output constrains the creativity of translators, resulting in a poorer translation often not fit for publication, according to experts.
This paper presents results of the effect of different translation modalities on users when working with the Microsoft Word user interface. An experimental study was set up with 84 Japanese, German, Spanish, and English native speakers working with Microsoft Word in three modalities: the published translated version, a machine translated (MT) version (with unedited MT strings incorporated into the MS Word interface) and the published English version. An eye-tracker measured the cognitive load and usability according to the ISO/TR 16982 guidelines: i.e., effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction followed by retrospective think-aloud protocol. The results show that the users’ effectiveness (number of tasks completed) does not significantly differ due to the translation modality. However, their efficiency (time for task completion) and self-reported satisfaction are significantly higher when working with the released product as opposed to the unedited MT version, especially when participants are less experienced. The eye-tracking results show that users experience a higher cognitive load when working with MT and with the human-translated versions as opposed to the English original. The results suggest that language and translation modality play a significant role in the usability of software products whether users complete the given tasks or not and even if they are unaware that MT was used to translate the interface.
This article presents the results of a study involving the translation of a fictional story from English into Catalan in three modalities: machine-translated (MT), post-edited (MTPE) and translated without aid (HT). Each translation was analysed to evaluate its creativity. Subsequently, a cohort of 88 Catalan participants read the story in a randomly assigned modality and completed a survey. The results show that HT presented a higher creativity score if compared to MTPE and MT. HT also ranked higher in narrative engagement, and translation reception, while MTPE ranked marginally higher in enjoyment. HT and MTPE show no statistically significant differences in any category, whereas MT does in all variables tested. We conclude that creativity is highest when professional translators intervene in the process, especially when working without any aid. We hypothesize that creativity in translation could be the factor that enhances reading engagement and the reception of translated literary texts.
Additional publications
- Journal articles
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana and Joss Moorkens. (January 2019). “Machine translation and post-editing training as part of a master’s programme”. Jostrans The Journal of Specialized Translation. 31. London: London Metropolitan University.
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (November 2014). “Correlations between productivity and quality in a professional environment”. Machine Translation Magazine. 8(3-4), 165-186. Amsterdam: Springer Netherlands.
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (December 2014). “Translation and Localization in the Web”. Machine Translation Magazine. 28(2), 151-154. Amsterdam: Springer Science.
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (January 2013). “What do professional translators think about post-editing”. Jostrans The Journal of Specialised Translation. 19.
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana; Heidi DePraetere and Sharon O'Brien. (January 2012). “What do we know and what we would like to know about post-editing”. Revista Tradumàtica. 0211-0218. ISSN 1578-7559. Citations: Google Scholar 7.
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (December 2010). “Exploring MT on the web”. Revista Tradumàtica. Tradumàtica. ISSN 1578-7559.
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (January 2019). “Productivity and Quality in the post-editing of outputs from translation memories and machine translation”. Localisation Focus. The International Journal of Localisation. 7(1), 11-21. ISSN 16492358.
- Chapters in books
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (14/11/2019). Pre-editing and Post-editing. The Bloomsbury Companion to Language Industry Studies. Bloomsbury Academic Publishing
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (August 2017). Quality is in the eye of the reviewers. Translation in Transition: Between Cognition, Computing and Technology. 187 - 205. Amsterdam: Benjamins Translation Library.
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (March 2014). The role of professional experience in post-editing from a quality and productivity perspective. Expertise in Translation and Post-editing: Processes, Technology and Applications. 51 -76. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. -4. DOI: 10.1075/btl.133.o7gue.
- Articles in conference proceedings
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana; Joss Moorkens and Sharon O’Brien. (August 2019). “What is the impact of raw MT on Japanese users of Word”. Proceedings of XVII Machine Translation Summit. Dublin: European Association of Machine Translation.
- Castilho, Sheila and Ana Guerberof Arenas. (May 2018). “Reading Comprehension of Machine Translation Output: What makes for a better read?”. Proceedings of 21st Annual Conference EAMT. Alicante: European Association of Machine Translation. 79-88.
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (August 2009). “Productivity and Quality in MT post-editing”. In Proceedings XII MT Summit Workshop: Beyond Translation Memories. Ottawa, Canada. American Association of Machine Translation.
- Articles in non-specialized magazines
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (February 2018). “Eye eye: how eye-tracking explores our brains”. Brainstorm. Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Ireland's National Public Service Broadcaster.
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (April 2010). “Project Management and Machine Translation”. Multilingual Magazine. Multilingual Computing 21(3), 34. ISSN 1931-9428.
- Guerberof Arenas, Ana. (September 2018). “Post-editing MT and TM: a Spanish case”. Multilingual Magazine. 19(6), 45-50. Multilingual Computing.