What are false positives in ApSIC Xbench report?
Thread poster: Patrycja Dittmann
Patrycja Dittmann
Patrycja Dittmann
Finland
Local time: 10:37
English to Polish
+ ...
Aug 14, 2016

Hi,

one agency stated that a proofreader should "should deliver a commented ApSIC Xbench report (or a report from
a similar tool). The report should contain false positives only."

I am only vaguely familiar with the tool (I have been using it mainly for checking terminology consistency so far), so I am not sure what they meant by that.

Could anyone explain to me what false positives are and what such a report should look like?


 
Stepan Konev
Stepan Konev  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 11:37
English to Russian
False errors Aug 15, 2016

It means that your report may only contain "errors" that obviously are not errors.
For example, your client's glossary dictates you to use a specific term, but your context says that you must translate this term in a different way. Xbench will treat it as an error (because you have to use an alternative translation, other than that in the glossary).
I cannot give an example for your language pair, but in Russian we have words that may mean just opposite things. The word "predanny" ma
... See more
It means that your report may only contain "errors" that obviously are not errors.
For example, your client's glossary dictates you to use a specific term, but your context says that you must translate this term in a different way. Xbench will treat it as an error (because you have to use an alternative translation, other than that in the glossary).
I cannot give an example for your language pair, but in Russian we have words that may mean just opposite things. The word "predanny" may mean both "betrayed by" and "dedicated/devoted to". The translation in this case strongly depends on context.
If your context requirements contradict your client's glossary, you will get the so called false positive.

The same may apply to punctuation. If you have "..!" In your original text, in Russian translation it must be "!.." Xbench recognizes it as a mistake (which is false in terms of grammar rules).

[Edited at 2016-08-15 14:37 GMT]
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Sergei Leshchinsky
Sergei Leshchinsky  Identity Verified
Ukraine
Local time: 10:37
Member (2008)
English to Russian
+ ...
when mistake is NOT a mistake Aug 15, 2016

• "Key term not found" when it is replaced by a pronoun for better style or has a case/plural-form ending.

• "Numeral mismatch" when there are different decimal separators in the source and target languages.

etc.


 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 09:37
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
Not sure what a report should look like... Aug 15, 2016

The report is probably just the list of what has been flagged when you run a check in X-bench.

False positives are technical errors or queries that are not actually incorrect in the translation.

X-bench asks why you have translated the same phrase differently in two different contexts, for instance. That is not necessarily an error or inconsistent, though it may be. I work with Danish, but here are some examples:

Danish has a gender-neutral singular pronoun
... See more
The report is probably just the list of what has been flagged when you run a check in X-bench.

False positives are technical errors or queries that are not actually incorrect in the translation.

X-bench asks why you have translated the same phrase differently in two different contexts, for instance. That is not necessarily an error or inconsistent, though it may be. I work with Danish, but here are some examples:

Danish has a gender-neutral singular pronoun, which has no exact equivalent in English. It has to be translated as either masculine of feminine, or as his/her, or the sentence can be generalised to the plural, but it will not be the same every time.

A false positive often comes up when I translate figures from Danish to English. It is fine in Danish to write 'hver 4. barn' (= every 4th child), but if I translate that as 'one child in four', because English tends to write numbers out rather than use figures, it will be flagged as a missing number.

Danish refers to historical centuries as 'the 1600s' or 'the 1700s' etc. when English prefers 'the 17th century' or 'the 18th century' and so on. Again, it comes up as a false positive in a mechanical check.

In other words, there must be a good reason for everything X-bench flags as a possible error in your translation. With luck the PMs at the agency can check without worrying you, as in the case of the figures.
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Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 09:37
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
It means rerun the test until there are no more errors Aug 15, 2016

Patrycja Dittmann wrote:
One agency stated that a proofreader should "should deliver a commented ApSIC Xbench report (or a report from
a similar tool). The report should contain false positives only." ... I am only vaguely familiar with the tool (I have been using it mainly for checking terminology consistency so far), so I am not sure what they meant by that. ... Could anyone explain to me what false positives are and what such a report should look like?


A "false positive" is something that the tool shows as an error, but which is not really an error.

If the report that you should send to the agency should show only false positives, then it means that you should run the test, then fix all real errors, and then run the test again, so that the only "errors" that show up in the report are not really errors.

If the client did not give you a prescribed glossary in a compatible format, then I think the Xbench report should be run on non-term related tests only. This means, run all of "Basic" and all of "Content" except for "Key Term Mismatch".


 
Patrycja Dittmann
Patrycja Dittmann
Finland
Local time: 10:37
English to Polish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you! Aug 15, 2016

Stepan, Sergei, Christine, Samuel,

thank you all very much for your answers! I found all of them helpful, I think now I know what to do:)


 


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What are false positives in ApSIC Xbench report?







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