ComputerScience,1970-2008-Computer Science-2006.jsonl.gz.gz
Computer Science
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TermProfile.com - Supporting a Conference Interpreter’s Workflow

Termprofile.com is a tool that helps you to search for terms on the Internet, distinguishing between the countries of origin of the hits, presenting relative frequency and comparative numbers for alternative terms in one language or different languages at a glance, TermProfile is one of the instruments that can significantly enhance interpreters' (and of course translators') workflow. TermProfile shows whether terms or expressions in a certain language are used in the respective countries. It offers an interface to perform three queries in parallel and then displays the search result figures on one screen. For each query it is possible to enter a second term ("control term") in order to obtain a relative frequency of a term. TermProfile offers a web-statistics profile of terms and expressions with dimensions and relations that far exceed a simple Google search.


THE SITUATION
The Internet is becoming increasingly popular as an instrument for checking the commonness of terms. Translators, interpreters, journalists, technical editors, terminologists and authors all check the frequency of use of terms by entering them in search engines such as Google.
The Internet is a huge text corpus of all languages, countries, topics, population groups -free-ofcharge and in real time. An opportunity. Search engines generally provide hits of all possible origins; there is no linguistic (and certainly not an editorial) check. A risk. This is because seemingly common terms can be based on faulty translations and thus be fairly common.

THE TERMPROFILE PRINCIPLE
TermProfile shows whether terms are also used in countries where the native languages are spoken. In addition, TermProfile provides an at-a-glance list of figures. In other words, a web-statistics profile of the checked expressions with comparative figures for alternative expressions or various countries of origin.
TermProfile presents statistic correlations and orders of magnitude about the use of expressions in countries and language areas, which are not visible with a simple entry in Google. Of course, you can analyse terms both in the narrower sense of "specialist terms", but also as general expressions, sayings, theoretically any possible character sequence.
Not least, TermProfile trains your sense of dimensions of the frequency of use of expressions by language, country and specialist subject.

THE TECHNICAL SIDE
TermProfile is based on an official interface to the data set of Google. Via a so-termed API, short for Application Programming Interface, TermProfile forwards complex queries to the Google database. A part of the information on the results is the statement on the country of origin of the respective web document. Accordingly, the search functions like those in Google also apply, e.g. the use of quotation marks for groups of words and Boolean operators like the automatic "AND" search, the use of "OR" for alternative terms, etc.
TermProfile is in its experimental phase. At this stage, Google enables 1,000 queries a day. Therefore, the availability of TermProfile is not guaranteed. Technical comments and suggestions are highly appreciated.

THE FUNCTION
You can limit the search of a term to certain countries (or in the case of EN and ES, country groups). By way of comparison, you can perform a search for this term in parallel in several countries/country groups and worldwide. The hits for the various country constellations are presented as ratios.

WHAT IT MEANS
-How frequently is a term used in one country in relation to other countries? -How frequent is a second or third term in comparison to this? One indicator for the correctness of the language used is the country of origin of the text, if we assume that there is a greater probability that a native speaker in the respective country has written the text.
If e.g. a term has disproportionately more hits worldwide than in the countries in which this language is spoken, it is less probable that this term is correct. If the term "muñón del eje" is found on only a few or no Spanish-speaking sites, but on a few (numerous) German sites, this indicates that it might be a translation of the German "Achsstummel" (axle end or axle journal) due to lack of a genuine equivalent in the target language, and that it is not a term coined in Spanish-speaking countries. In this case, further investigation is advisable. If an English collocation in relation to the total hits is rarely found in US, UK, AU, CN, it is less probable that this term is correct. Regionalisms (e.g. all Spanishspeaking countries v Spain; US v UK) can also be recognised in this way.
The number of hits for the respective countries in relation to the number of worldwide hits are displayed in the second results column in order to illustrate the specific ratio. The ratio of hits of "muñón del eje" in Germany to hits worldwide is 1:13; in Spanish-speaking countries 1:11 (thus for one hit in Spanish-speaking countries, there are 11 on the whole Internet). The ratio should actually be more in favour of Spanish-speaking countries (thus the number on the right should be lower). If all hits on the whole Internet could be found in this pre-defined group of Spanish-speaking countries, the ratio would be 1:1.

THE FUNCTION
By way of comparison, you can perform a search for several terms in parallel (and then search for these respectively in the various country constellations). The hits for the various terms and countries are presented as ratios.

WHAT IT MEANS
A term may be frequently used in a certain country or a group of countries and still be wrong. That is why it always makes sense to consider whether there are any alternative terms/synonyms in this language which may be more common or more correct. Examples: a) The term "Mund-zu-Mund-Propaganda" appears to have a large number of hits -78,300; but if you perform a check you will see that "Mundpropaganda" -with 275,000 hits -is ten-times as common. b) The English equivalent of "Nutzungspopularität" is "user popularity" and not "usage popularity".

THE FUNCTION
For a term to be checked, you can enter a second control term, which is then searched for in the same selected country constellation. The results of both terms arc presented as ratios.

WHAT IT MEANS
-How frequently is a term used in relation to other words of the same/other language? In order to see the frequency of a term in relation to the overall text stock of the Internet, you can compare the number of hits to the number of hits of a very general, commonly used word such as "and". Absolute numbers of hits can sometimes be misleading: 500 hits in Germany may have a different status to hits in the USA.
The fact that the word Spaltrohrmotor (in connection with the word "Pumpe") is less frequent than the little word "and" goes without saying. But what is the exact ratio? In Germany, in terms of absolute measurements, the words "Spaltrohrmotor" and "Pumpe" (in one document) are used precisely 22times more frequently than in Austria; in relation to the little word "and", the Germany frequency of use is however "only" twice as high (1:680,000 in comparison to 1: 1 270,000, i.e. for 1 x "Spaltrohrmotor" in combination with "pump" in Germany, there are 680,000 x "and", and in Austria 1,270,000 x). The corresponding ratios of the English-speaking countries, the USA and the United Kingdom are fairly homogeneous (approx. 1:550,000). In terms of absolute figures, they are significantly higher, but relatively they are definitely comparable to the German-Austrian values or, in particular, the German value. These ratios should also contribute to you developing a feel for relative frequencies of use of terms.

EQUIVALENCY
The possibilities of using web-statistics methods to find out about the equivalency between two expressions of various languages are relatively limited as equivalency is defined on a semantic level and -in contrast to the country of origin of a document or a frequency of use of a term-is scarcely quantifiable or statistically recordable. Nevertheless, supplementary information is still possible: -A similar web-statistics profile can confirm equivalency or very different frequencies of use may indicate that there has to be another term.
-Context words (in the same search entry field as the term you are actually searching for) help to define the meaning (e.g. search for the word "well" together with "water" to avoid finding "well" as an adverb instead of the noun). Ultimately, a look at several direct application contexts is decisive for determining the equivalency.

RELATIVISING FACTORS
-Various frequencies of use can be related to different kinds of industrial, cultural, political, etc. environments.
-It may be the case that there is not yet a target language equivalent for a term and this has thus previously only been coined by translators and is thus also in use.
-As some countries are multilingual, the selection of countries might not enable you to precisely limit your search to native language texts. The "digital" origin of a document does not guarantee anything with regard to its genuine origin either. The TermProfile figures are thus only indications.
-Some expressions have several meanings in one language (EN: well) and are therefore more frequent than the equivalent in the other language. The origin of a site does not provide any definitive information on the origin of the site operator either, but merely expresses a probability -just like the other figures. The reliability of an Internet text and thus the language can ultimately be somewhat guaranteed only by checking the author (private person, public institution, specialist company).
-For every query which sends a request to Google, another server is addressed. Consequently, repeated, identical queries may also lead to deviating results.

IMPROVEMENT
In the future, there are plans for further possible functions: -Definition of further country groups for French and German.
-An exclusive country group option, e.g. "all countries except Germany". -Search for domain endings, e.g. org in order to exclusively find sites with relatively "official" content.
-Definition of individual user profiles (default country groups).
Hopefully, suggestions for further refinement will come up with the application of TermProfile by language professionals, so to make the best possible use of the Internet as a huge multilingual text corpus.