# Outbound Translation User Interface Ptakopet: A Pilot Study

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.10835 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10835/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 25 Nov 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Backtranslation Feedback Improves User Confidence in MT, Not Quality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05688/) (2021)
- [Should I Share this Translation? Evaluating Quality Feedback for User Reliance on Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24683/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

It is not uncommon for Internet users to have to produce a text in a foreign language they have very little knowledge of and are unable to verify the translation quality. We call the task "outbound translation" and explore it by introducing an open-source modular system Ptakopvet. Its main purpose is to inspect human interaction with MT systems enhanced with additional subsystems, such as backward translation and quality estimation. We follow up with an experiment on (Czech) human annotators tasked to produce questions in a language they do not speak (German), with the help of Ptakopvet. We focus on three real-world use cases (communication with IT support, describing administrative issues and asking encyclopedic questions) from which we gain insight into different strategies users take when faced with outbound translation tasks. Round trip translation is known to be unreliable for evaluating MT systems but our experimental evaluation documents that it works very well for users, at least on MT systems of mid-range quality.