The Impact of Text Presentation on Translator Performance

TL;DR

This study evaluates how different text presentation styles in computer-aided translation tools affect translator speed and accuracy, revealing that presentation format influences performance depending on the task.

Contribution

First controlled evaluation of presentation design choices in CAT tools, providing evidence-based recommendations for optimizing translator performance.

Findings

Sentence-by-sentence presentation speeds up reproduction and error detection.

Top-and-bottom arrangement improves reproduction speed over side-by-side.

Unsegmented text yields higher accuracy and efficiency in revision tasks.

Abstract

Widely used computer-aided translation (CAT) tools divide documents into segments such as sentences and arrange them in a side-by-side, spreadsheet-like view. We present the first controlled evaluation of these design choices on translator performance, measuring speed and accuracy in three experimental text processing tasks. We find significant evidence that sentence-by-sentence presentation enables faster text reproduction and within-sentence error identification compared to unsegmented text, and that a top-and-bottom arrangement of source and target sentences enables faster text reproduction compared to a side-by-side arrangement. For revision, on the other hand, our results suggest that presenting unsegmented text results in the highest accuracy and time efficiency. Our findings have direct implications for best practices in designing CAT tools.