A process study of computer-aided translation

We investigate novel types of assistance for human translators, based on statistical machine translation methods. We developed the computer-aided tool Caitra that makes suggestions for sentence completion, shows word and phrase translation options, and allows postediting of machine translation output. We carried out a study of the translation process that involved non-professional translators that were native in either French or English and recorded their interaction with the tool. Users translated 192 sentences from French news stories into English. Most translators were faster and better when assisted by our tool. A detailed examination of the logs also provides insight into the human translation process, such as time spent on different activities and length of pauses.