Performance of an automatic translator in translating medical abstracts

The aim of the present paper was to quantitatively assess the performance of a free online translator in translating medical texts from English into Italian. Effectiveness was evaluated and established by analyzing the number and percent of translation errors with respect to the original medical abs...

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Main Author: Franca Daniele
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2019-10-01
Series:Heliyon
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844019363479
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author Franca Daniele
author_facet Franca Daniele
author_sort Franca Daniele
collection DOAJ
description The aim of the present paper was to quantitatively assess the performance of a free online translator in translating medical texts from English into Italian. Effectiveness was evaluated and established by analyzing the number and percent of translation errors with respect to the original medical abstracts. Furthermore, the present study analyzed the total number and the percent of translation errors and their correlation with lexical density, which was assessed using Text analyzer. The mean number of total translation errors was 21. The mean percentage of total translation errors was 15%. The mean lexical density was 66.7%. A direct correlation was found between total translation errors and the lexical density. The findings of the present study indicate a fairly good performance of Google translator in translating words in highly academic writings such as medical abstracts. However, an effective translation is not a matter only of finding a correspondence between words in the source language and the target language, many other aspects are just as important.
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spelling doaj.art-dbf6999ef45d4016b7ca922dd934bc602022-12-21T19:57:19ZengElsevierHeliyon2405-84402019-10-01510e02687Performance of an automatic translator in translating medical abstractsFranca Daniele0Corresponding author.; Department of Medical, Oral and Biotechnological Sciences, “G. d’Annunzio” University, Chieti-Pescara, ItalyThe aim of the present paper was to quantitatively assess the performance of a free online translator in translating medical texts from English into Italian. Effectiveness was evaluated and established by analyzing the number and percent of translation errors with respect to the original medical abstracts. Furthermore, the present study analyzed the total number and the percent of translation errors and their correlation with lexical density, which was assessed using Text analyzer. The mean number of total translation errors was 21. The mean percentage of total translation errors was 15%. The mean lexical density was 66.7%. A direct correlation was found between total translation errors and the lexical density. The findings of the present study indicate a fairly good performance of Google translator in translating words in highly academic writings such as medical abstracts. However, an effective translation is not a matter only of finding a correspondence between words in the source language and the target language, many other aspects are just as important.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844019363479Medical abstractsGoogle translatorTranslation errorsLexical densityLinguisticsComputer science
spellingShingle Franca Daniele
Performance of an automatic translator in translating medical abstracts
Heliyon
Medical abstracts
Google translator
Translation errors
Lexical density
Linguistics
Computer science
title Performance of an automatic translator in translating medical abstracts
title_full Performance of an automatic translator in translating medical abstracts
title_fullStr Performance of an automatic translator in translating medical abstracts
title_full_unstemmed Performance of an automatic translator in translating medical abstracts
title_short Performance of an automatic translator in translating medical abstracts
title_sort performance of an automatic translator in translating medical abstracts
topic Medical abstracts
Google translator
Translation errors
Lexical density
Linguistics
Computer science
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844019363479
work_keys_str_mv AT francadaniele performanceofanautomatictranslatorintranslatingmedicalabstracts