User perspective

The continuous development of translation technologies has  fundamentally changed the way users of this area interact with computers. The need for understanding and measuring how a vast number of resources and software applications can impact users and other stakeholders had led to recommendations related to human-computer interaction (HCI), presented as guidelines and best practices. Unfortunately, when developing translation tools limited attention is still paid to usability and ergonomics, be it during the design, implementation or deployment phases. Meanwhile, the level of complexity of corpus-based translation tools has increased in difficulties and diversity, however, this evolution does not take into consideration HCI recommendations yet. The goal of this study is to bridge this gap between corpus-based tools, ergonomics, and usability, by presenting the results of a user-oriented methodology. With this in mind, a corpus analysis software, called COPA-TRAD, was used as the basis for applying some existing methods within usability and ergonomics area. The  proposed study was composed of three main stages: (i) usability questionnaire – administered to participants of this knowledge area; (ii) heuristics analysis – performed by five usability experts; and (iii) ergonomics checklist inspection, to analyze general elements. The results indicated that despite the concern of providing a “user-friendly” interface, the analyzed system had not made use of known usability and ergonomics methods, just guidelines of the third-party software used as part of COPA-TRAD. The study points out directions on which a corpus-based tool can be adapted to user needs and further indicate some
important criteria that require improvement. After applying the  necessary changes, a complementary analysis needs to be carried out to verify if those identified issues were accurately adjusted. We believe translation technology should concern with building adequate interfaces, allowing humans to interact effectively with tools data and facilitating the process of retrieving information.

The continuous development of translation technologies has fundamentally changed the way users of this area interact with computers. The need for understanding and measuring how a vast number of resources and software applications can impact users and other stakeholders had led to recommendations related to human-computer interaction (HCI), presented as guidelines and best practices. Unfortunately, when developing translation tools limited attention is still paid to usability and ergonomics, be it during the design, implementation or deployment phases. Meanwhile, the level of complexity of corpus-based translation tools has increased in difficulties and diversity, however, this evolution does not take into consideration HCI recommendations yet. The goal of this study is to bridge this gap between corpus-based tools, ergonomics, and usability, by presenting the results of a user-oriented methodology. With this in mind, a corpus analysis software, called COPA-TRAD, was used as the basis for applying some existing methods within usability and ergonomics area. The proposed study was composed of three main stages: (i) usability questionnaire – administered to participants of this knowledge area; (ii) heuristics analysis – performed by five usability experts; and (iii) ergonomics checklist inspection, to analyze general elements. The results indicated that despite the concern of providing a “user-friendly” interface, the analyzed system had not made use of known usability and ergonomics methods, just guidelines of the third-party software used as part of COPA-TRAD. The study points out directions on which a corpus-based tool can be adapted to user needs and further indicate some important criteria that require improvement. After applying the necessary changes, a complementary analysis needs to be carried out to verify if those identified issues were accurately adjusted. We believe translation technology should concern with building adequate interfaces, allowing humans to interact effectively with tools data and facilitating the process of retrieving information.