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The Sustainable Generation of Bilingual Textual Resources for L2 Learning: A Crowd Translation Experience

Authors:
Noa Talavan at National Distance Education University
Noa Talavan
Maria Jordano
Maria Jordano
Maria Jordano
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Elena Barcena at National Distance Education University
Elena Barcena
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Abstract and Figures

The present study is part of eLITE[1], a research project within the field of Digital Humanities which aims at designing and (re-)creating rich electronic texts from traditional children storybooks, enabling various levels of reading experiences and a flexible adaptation to primary education reader profiles. This project builds on previous initiatives such as the interactive Quixote at the Spanish National Library (http://quijote.bne.es/libro.html), among others[2]. However, eLITE intends to take them one step further by creating both bilingual and multimodal (oral, written, subtitled) versions and an embedded didactic framework that can turn rich digitized texts into effective multilevel literacy and second language learning resources. One of the research premises of this project concerned both the sustainability and the scalability of its own development process. The authors decided to involve alumni of previous online translation courses in a pilot experience which consisted of the translation of the 160-page book Plaga de Dragones by the well-known Spanish author Saturnino Calleja. 52 volunteers signed up voluntarily and were distributed into eight working groups to undertake the English translation of the sixteen short stories that make up this book. To this end, a wiki was created and divided into different working spaces for the groups, which were made up of five to six members. Each group was asked to translate a total number of 20 pages (including illustrations) in four weeks, and then engage in a selective peer revision process prior to the final presentation of their work. The members within a group were in constant contact with each other through a forum attached to their working space, so that they could organize their workload and progress collaboratively, under the supervision and support of the researchers. This paper analyses the data gathered in both the pre- and post-questionnaires provided to students and the researchers’ monitorization of the work undertaken in the wiki, and discusses the potential affordances of crowd translation initiatives in higher education.
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The Sustainable Generation of Bilingual
Textual Resources for L2 Learning: A
Crowd Translation Experience
Noa Talaván, María Jordano and Elena Bárcena
Outline
Introduction
Aims
Background
Methodology
Data
Conclusions
References
2
Introduction
Digital humanities
eLITE-CM, Edición literaria electrónica (H2015/HUM-3426)
ATLAS research group (objective 2–enriched digital edition of children’s literature)
Translation -Didactic needs’ analysis (primary education) – bilingual
audiobook …. ongoing
1st step: Crowd translation (non-professional, didactic, individual and
collaborative work, collective expertise, digital learning and gamification)
3
Aims of this project
Improving L2 skills through reverse translation
Crowd
translation
Collaborative
wiki
ntalavan@flog.uned.es, mjordano@flog.uned
@mbarcena@flog.uned.es 4
Background. Collaborative translation
Technological
advances
Participatory
culture
Community
engagement Crowdsourcing
Peer work
Collective
expertise and
intelligence
Volunteers
Digital
accessibility
CROWD
TRANSLATION
5
State of the art I
The Rosetta Foundation -Translation Commons / Babels
Zaidan and Callison-Burch (2011) / O’Brian (2011)
Pérez-González and Susam-Saraeva (2012) /Olohan (2014)
Talaván & Ávila Cabrera (2016, 2017)
6
State of the art II
A wiki is a Web page that users can modify.
Cummings, R. E. (2008).
One aspect of collaborative writing through wikis that has been embraced is that
of extensive peer-to-peer learning assistance. Rather than having a dialectic
relationship between learner and teacher, wikis create an environment in which
peers assume the role of teachers.
Stoddart et alii. (2016)
... the use of wikis alone does not guarantee successful collaborative learning
activities. Pedagogical design of the integration of wiki into instruction is vitally
important in wiki-based learning activities.
Zheng, B. et alii. (2015)
7
Methodology
Call for volunteers (50-28)
Pre-questionnaire
Project-Wiki
Stage 1 translation-observation / wiki statistics
Stage 2 peer review –students assessment rubric
Post-questionnaire
Researchers' review (ongoing)
8
Data: sample description
-43 years old
-Previous General Translation
Course (lifelong learning)
-62% had never participated in a
wiki project.
9
Data: eLITE wiki interface
Groups / space to edit by students
Menu (additional
pages)
Instuctions given by
the researchers
/coordinators
Forum
Administration options
10
Project procedures (1 month per stage)
Group Tales
1-2 -Plaga de dragones
-La roca de las serpientes
3-4 -Una ciudad de libros
-Las bodas del ratón
5-6 -Veraneo estropeado
-El grumete y la isla
encantada
7-8 -La compostura del dragón
-Los chicos guapos
9-10 -Las monedas de oro
-¡Cuidado con el niño!
11-12 -¡A volar todos!
-El estado de sitio
13-14 -El fenómeno
-¿El menor o el mayor?
15-16 -En el sendero de la guerra
-Las alhajas de la duquesa
Researcher’s daily monitoring and feedback
(General discussion and individual group discussion)
11
1. Translation stage
Transla
tions 1-
2Transla
tions 3-
4
Transla
tions 5-
6
Transla
tions 7-
8
Transla
tions 9-
10
Transla
tions
11-12
Transla
tions
13-14
Transla
tions
15-16
2. Peer-revision stage
PEER REVIEW RESULTS
1,82 1,94 1,88 1,92 1,98
8,19
1. Accuracy (0-2 points)There are
no errors in the translation
2. Organization (0-2 points)
Cohesion and coherence are taken
into account.
3. Effectiveness of communication
(0-2 points)All the sentences are
intelligible
4. Register (0-2 points) The
vocabulary is adequate for
children’s literature
5. Overall comprehension (0-2
points)
Final mark (0-10 points)
Peer-review summary
12
Wiki statistics
(2 months)
13
-18 /more than 100 editions per group.
-Around 600 messages sent in 2
months
-More 700 editions
Post-questionnaire results: translation skills
0246810 12
6
5
4
3
2
Number of students who think that reverse
translation has improved their translation skills
14
1 (easy) – 6
(difficult)
1(disagree) – 6
(totally agree)
Post-questionnaire: collaborative work
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Definitely not Definitely yes Probably not Probably yes
Would you have preferred to translate a
whole tale on your own?
6
7%
5
25%
4
32%
3
22%
2
14%
ASSESS THE EFFICIENCY OF THE
COLLABORATIVE WORK IN YOUR GROUP
FROM 1 TO 6
15
Post-questionnaire results: Satisfaction
16
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Definitely yes Most likely Probably
willing to participate in similar voluntary translation
projects in the future?
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
6
5
4
3
Level of satisfaction with the learning
outcomes /Number of responses
Would you like to carry on
collaborating in this project?
100% Yes
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
6
5
4
3
Students' Evaluation of the eLITE Crowd
Translation Project/ Number of responses
Discussion I
A successful crowd-translation experience altogether in terms of:
(1) rather low abandonment rate
(2) output quality
The majority —> non digital natives and novel experience for them
Factors that had a key impact in the outcome of the project include:
(1) volunteer population: experienced and passionate translators (the
language dimension of the project was more significant than the digital one)
(2) a tightly scheduled experiment with close monitor supervision
The main language aspects that showed gain: translation skills, vocabulary
and writing (interesting margin for incidental learning -a hot topic these days
in technology-based language learning)
17
Discussion II
Areas identified in which there is scope for improvement:
Perception & attitude towards:
(1) collaborative work (persistent dependency on
monitors/tutors) <—> large body of translations undertaken +
continuous interaction in target language (exposure linked to
improvement)
(2) P2P (individualistic attitude to own work) <—> refinement
of translation output
18
Conclusions
Translation as a ‘recovered’ L2 practice & development strategy
Crowd translation as a process that can provide a highly motivational
social working environment
Subjects demonstrated: project engagement, exploratory attitude & good
group ethics
Peer feedback enables highly refined translation output
Close monitorization, gamification and certification to ensure high quality
production and avoid project abandonment
19
References
Cummings, R. E. (2008). What Was a Wiki, and Why Do I Care? A Short and Usable History of Wikis. In Cummings, Robert.E., Barton
(Eds.), Wiki writing: collaborative learning in the college classroom (pp. 1–16). Ann Arbor: Digital Culture Books, Retrieved from
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dcbooks/5871848.0001.001/1:3/--wiki-writing-collaborative-learning-in-the-college-
classroom?g=dculture;rgn=div1;view=fulltext;xc=1
O’Brien, S. (2011). Collaborative translation. Handbook of translation studies, 1, 17-20.
Olohan, M. (2014). Why do you translate? Motivation to volunteer and TED translation. Translation Studies, 7(1), 17-33.
Pérez-González, L. and Susam-Saraeva, Ş. (2012). Non-professionals translating and interpreting: Participatory and engaged
perspectives, The Translator, 18, 2: 149-165.
Stoddart, A., Chan, J. Y. Y., & Liu, G. Z. (2016). Enhancing successful outcomes of wiki-based collaborative writing: a state-of-the-art
review of facilitation frameworks. INTERACTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS, 24(1), 142–157.
http://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2013.825810
Talaván, N. and Ávila-Cabrera, J.J. (2016). Collaborative Networks to Provide Media Accessibility: the Potential of Social Subtitling.
Porta Linguarum, Monográfico 1, 125-138 http://www.ugr.es/~portalin/articulos/PL_monograph1_2016/art_10.pdf
Talaván, N. and Ávila-Cabrera, J.J. (forthcoming). Social subtitling: Providing the university community with accessible videos, in
D.O. Orrego-Carmona and Y. Lee (eds.), Non-Professional Subtitling. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, in press
Zaidan, O.F. and Callison-Burch, C. (2011). Crowdsourcing translation: Professional quality from non-professionals, in O.F. Zaidan
and C. Callison-Burch (eds.), Paper proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics:
Human Language Technologies, 1: 1220-1229. Portland, Oregon, USA, 19-24 June, 2011.
Zheng, B., Niiya, M., & Warschauer, M. (2015). Wikis and collaborative learning in higher education. Technology, Pedagogy and
Education, 24(3), 357–374. http://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2014.948041
20
Thank you
ntalavan@flog.uned.es
mjordano@flog.uned.es
mbarcena@flog.uned.es
... In collaborative writing (Roy, 2017), treat online anxiety (Kassem, 2017;X. Liu, 2010), create contents online, translate (Talaván, Noa;Jordano, María;Bárcena, 2017), elaborating glossaries (Lázaro, Raquel; Pena, 2009) or discuss topics. Other authors perceive them as the perfect context to develop online tasks as a way to substitute the physical presence and connect students from different places (Windsor & Park, 2014). ...
... In collaborative writing (Roy, 2017), treat online anxiety (Kassem, 2017;X. Liu, 2010), create contents online, translate (Talaván, Noa;Jordano, María;Bárcena, 2017), elaborating glossaries (Lázaro, Raquel; Pena, 2009) or discuss topics. Other authors perceive them as the perfect context to develop online tasks as a way to substitute the physical presence and connect students from different places (Windsor & Park, 2014). ...
... In collaborative writing (Roy, 2017), treat online anxiety (Kassem, 2017;X. Liu, 2010), create contents online, translate (Talaván, Noa;Jordano, María;Bárcena, 2017), elaborating glossaries (Lázaro, Raquel; Pena, 2009) or discuss topics. Other authors perceive them as the perfect context to develop online tasks as a way to substitute the physical presence and connect students from different places (Windsor & Park, 2014). ...
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