Domain-specific MT for Low-resource Languages: The case of Bambara-French

Translating to and from low-resource languages is a challenge for machine translation (MT) systems due to a lack of parallel data. In this paper we address the issue of domain-specific MT for Bambara, an under-resourced Mande language spoken in Mali. We present the first domain-specific parallel dataset for MT of Bambara into and from French. We discuss challenges in working with small quantities of domain-specific data for a low-resource language and we present the results of machine learning experiments on this data.

Neural Machine Translation for Extremely Low-Resource African Languages: A Case Study on Bambara

Low-resource languages present unique challenges to (neural) machine translation. We discuss the case of Bambara, a Mande language for which training data is scarce and requires significant amounts of pre-processing. More than the linguistic situation of Bambara itself, the socio-cultural context within which Bambara speakers live poses challenges for automated processing of this language. In this paper, we present the first parallel data set for machine translation of Bambara into and from English and French and the first benchmark results on machine translation to and from Bambara. We discuss challenges in working with low-resource languages and propose strategies to cope with data scarcity in low-resource machine translation (MT).

Assessing Human Translations from French to Bambara for Machine Learning: a Pilot Study

We present novel methods for assessing the quality of human-translated aligned texts for learning machine translation models of under-resourced languages. Malian university students translated French texts, producing either written or oral translations to Bambara. Our results suggest that similar quality can be obtained from either written or spoken translations for certain kinds of texts. They also suggest specific instructions that human translators should be given in order to improve the quality of their work.