Translating Electronic Documents: A low-resource story
Details
Our October 25, 2023 online program features Dr. John E. Ortega on "Translating Electronic Documents: A low-resource story."
Abstract: In this talk, Dr. John E. Ortega will cover the task of machine translation (MT): the digital manner of translating documents with a machine. Specifically, John will provide a history of the major paradigms from MT including rule-based, statistical, neural, and transformer systems. Additionally, John will provide several examples of how MT works along with research-focused experimentation that would help a human translator determine what types of systems should be used for different purposes, especially the use of MT systems for translating low-resource languages. John will specifically dive into translations from Quechua (an indigenous language spoken by millions in Peru) to Finnish (a high-resource languages spoken in Finland, northern Europe).
Bio: Dr. John E. Ortega is currently an applied researcher and manager with research interests in the areas of machine learning, natural language processing, machine translation, and financial services. He also serves as a computer science instructor and researcher at New York University and Columbia University. John has started and exited two companies and is actively advising on technical issues as well as worked as a contract senior architect and software developer for companies such as WebMD, Clear Channel (IHeart Radio), Creative Virtual, Buongiorno, and others... He possesses more than 15 years of overall software, system, sales, and marketing experience. In addition to industry knowledge, John has deep academic knowledge and has published many works both for IP and academic purposes. His current areas of research are in machine learning, big data, natural language processing and machine translation. He holds a bachelor's of science in computer science from Augusta State University, a master's of science in computer science from Hofstra University, and has a doctorate in computer science (machine translation) from the University of Alicante, Spain.
Translating Electronic Documents: A low-resource story