Real-time transcripts generated by automated speech recognition (ASR) technologies have the potential to facilitate communication between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS). Previous studies of ASR have focused on how transcripts aid NNS speech comprehension. In this study, we examine whether transcripts benefit multiparty real-time conversation between NS and NNS. We hypothesized that ASR transcripts would be more beneficial when the transcripts were publicly shared by all group members as opposed to when they were seen only by the NNS. To test our hypothesis, we conducted a lab experiment in which 14 groups of native and non-native speakers engaged in a story-telling task. Half of the groups received private transcripts that were available only to the NNS; the other half received publicly shared transcripts that were available to all group members. NS spoke more clearly, and both NS and NNS rated the quality of communication higher, when transcripts were publicly shared. These findings inform the design of future tools to support multilingual group communication.
Translation of articles in Wikipedia is one of the most prominent methods for increasing the quality of different language Wikipedias. Discussion pages in Wikipedia contribute to a large portion of the online encyclopedia, and are used by Wikipedia contributors for communication and collaboration. Although the discussion pages are the main channel between Wikipedia contributors all over the world, there have been relatively few in-depth studies conducted on communication in Wikipedia, especially regarding translation activities. This paper reports the results of an analysis of discussions about translated articles in the Finnish, French and Japanese Wikipedias. The results highlight the main problems in Wikipedia translation requiring interaction with the community. Unlike in previous work, community interaction in Wikipedia translation activities focuses on solving problems in the translation of proper nouns, transliteration and citing sources in articles rather than mechanical translation of words and sentences. Based on these findings we propose directions for designing supporting tools for Wikipedia translators.
Conversational grounding, or establishing mutual knowledge that messages have been understood as intended, can be difficult to achieve when some conversational participants are using a non-native language. These difficulties in grounding can be challenging for native speakers to detect. In this paper, we examine the value of signaling potential grounding problems to native speakers (NS) by displaying how non-native speakers (NNS) use automated transcripts and bilingual dictionaries. We conducted a laboratory experiment in which NS and NNS of English collaborated via audio conferencing on a map navigation task. Triads of one NS guider, one NS follower, and one NNS follower performed the task using one of three awareness displays: (a) a no awareness display that showed only the automated transcripts, (b) a general awareness display that showed whether each follower was reading the automated transcripts and/or translating a word; or (c) a detailed awareness display that showed which line of the transcripts a follower was reading and/or which words he/she was translating. NS guiders and NNS followers collaborated most successfully with the detailed awareness display, while NS guiders and NS followers performed equally across conditions. Our findings suggest several ways to improve systems to support multilingual collaboration.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.