Date of Award

12-1992

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Abstract

This research sought to identify stylistic guidelines which could be used by the authors and editors of English language texts in order to improve the quality of subsequent machine translations to other languages. A literature review was conducted to provide background information and to determine what guidelines would be appropriate. Nine guidelines were developed on the basis of the review. The guidelines were then tested. They were applied to five paragraphs from a Royal Australian Air Force technical publication by the researcher and an independent volunteer. Both the resulting texts and the original paragraphs were translated into French using the Globalink Translation System and the quality of the translations obtained was evaluated by four human translators. While the translations of the paragraphs which had been edited by the volunteer were significantly better than the translations of the original texts, the translations of the paragraphs edited by the researcher were not. Use of the guidelines by authors and editors cannot be recommended on the basis of this result. However, analysis of the conduct and results of the research suggested potentially fruitful alternative approaches to the development and testing of guidelines. These approaches are presented as specific recommendations for further research.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GIR-DEM-92D-9

DTIC Accession Number

ADA258786

Comments

Presented to the Faculty of the School of Logistics and Acquisitions Management of the Air Force Institute of Technology

The authors' Vita pages are omitted.

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