Difficulties in establishing common ground in multiparty groups using machine translation

ABSTRACT

When people communicate in their native languages using machine translation, they face various problems in constructing common ground. This study investigates the difficulties of constructing common ground when multiparty groups (consisting of more than two language communities) communicate using machine translation. We compose triads whose members come from three different language communities--China, Korea, and Japan--and compare their referential communication under two conditions: in their shared second language (English) and in their native languages using machine translation. Consequently, our study suggests the importance of not only grounding between speaker and addressee but also grounding between addressees in constructing effective machine-translation-mediated communication. Furthermore, to successfully build common ground between addressees, it seems important for them to be able to monitor what is going on between a speaker and other addressees.

REFERENCES

• 1: Milam W. Aiken , Jeanette S. Martin , Joseph G.P. Paolillo , Ashraf I. Shirani, A group decision support system for multilingual groups, Information and Management, v.26 n.3, p.155-161, March 1994 [doi>10.1016/0378-7206(94)90039-6]
• 2: Brennan, S. E. Lexical Entrainment in Spontaneous Dialogue. Proceedings of International Symposium on Spoken Dialogue, 1996, 41--44.
• 3: Brennan, S. E. and Clark, H. H. Conceptual Pacts and Lexical Choice in Conversation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 6, 1996, 1482--1493.
• 4: Clark, H. H. Using Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• 5: Clark, H. H. and Haviland, S. E. Comprehension and the Given-New contract. Discourse Production and Comprehension, 1977,1--40.
• 6: Clark, H. H. and Marshall, C. E. Definite reference and mutual knowledge. Elements of discourse understanding, 1981, 10--63.
• 7: Clark, H. H. and Wilkes-Gibbs, D. Referring as a collaborative process. Cognition, 22, 1986, 1--39.
• 8: Climent, S., More, J., Oliver, A., Salvatierra, M., Sanchez, I., Taule, M., and Vallmanya, L. Bilingual Newsgroups in Catalonia: A Challenge for Machine Translation. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 9, 1, 2003.
• 9: Fussell, S., Krauss, R. Coordination of knowledge in communication: Effects of speakers' assumptions about what others know. Journal of Personality and Social Psych, 62, 3, 1992, 378--391.
• 10: Susan R. Fussell , Robert E. Kraut , Jane Siegel, Coordination of communication: effects of shared visual context on collaborative work, Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.21-30, December 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/358916.358947]
• 11: Garrod, S. and Anderson, A. Saying what you mean in dialogue: A study in conceptual and semantic co-ordination. Cognition, 27, 1987, 181--218.
• 12: Grice, H. P. Logic and conversation. Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts, Seminar Press, 1975, 113--127.
• 13: Toru Ishida, Language Grid: An Infrastructure for Intercultural Collaboration, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Applications on Internet, p.96-100, January 23-27, 2006 [doi>10.1109/SAINT.2006.40]
• 14: Krauss, R. M. and Glucksberg, S. The development of communication: Competence as a function of age. Child Development, 40, 1969, 255--256.
• 15: Robert M. Krauss , Susan R. Fussell, Mutual knowledge and communicative effectiveness, Intellectual teamwork: social and technological foundations of cooperative work, L. Erlbaum Associates Inc., Hillsdale, NJ, 1990
• 16: Langrid Chat: http://langrid.nict.go.jp/en/chat.html
• 17: NPO Pangaea: http://www.pangaean.org/
• 18: Ogden, B., Warner, J., Jin, W. and Sorge, J. Information Sharing Across Languages Using MITRE's TRiM Instant Messaging. 2003.
• 19: Shigenobu, T. Evaluation and Usability of Back Translation for Intercultural Communication. International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII-07), 10, 2007, 259--265.
• 20: Takano, Y. and Noda, A. A temporary decline of thinking ability during foreign language processing. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 24, 1993, 445--462.
• 21: Elizabeth S. Veinott , Judith Olson , Gary M. Olson , Xiaolan Fu, Video helps remote work: speakers who need to negotiate common ground benefit from seeing each other, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.302-309, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.303067]
• 22: Naomi Yamashita , Toru Ishida, Effects of machine translation on collaborative work, Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 04-08, 2006, Banff, Alberta, Canada [doi>10.1145/1180875.1180955]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Synchronous interaction

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Computer-supported cooperative work

General Terms:
Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
computer-mediated communication, grounding, machine translation