Abstract
The problems of outbound translation, machine translation user confidence and user interaction are not yet fully explored. The goal of the online modular system Ptakopět is to provide tools for studying these phenomena.
Ptakopět is a proof-of-concept system for examining user interaction with enhanced machine translation. It can be used either for actual translation or running experiments on human annotators.
In this article, we aim to describe its main components and to show how to use Ptakopět for further research. We also share tips for running experiments and setting up a similar online annotation environment.
Ptakopět was already used for outbound machine translation experiments, and we cover the results of the latest experiment in a demonstration to show the research potential of this tool. We show quantitatively that even though backward translation improves machine-translation user experience, it mainly increases users' confidence and not the translation quality.