Projects Human-Machine Communication

Computational Competencies for Non-Tech Students (CompComp)

The Computational Competences for Non-Tech Students project is a sub-project of the swissuniversities project digibasics.

ongoing, 01/2025 - 06/2026
Translation Apps for Nursing Staff from Abroad – Potential and Needs Analysis

This project, which takes the form of a preliminary study, is working to define the framework conditions for a research project that will be dedicated to exploring the potential offered by so-called speech-to-speech translation (S2ST) for verbal communication between foreign-language nursing staff…

completed, 05/2023 - 12/2023
Machine translation for crisis communication

This project investigates how machine translation services can help employees from administrations, NGOs and education to communicate with refugees. Providing public services to newly arrived refugees is a linguistic challenge: interprets are expensive and not available for all languages. Although…

completed, 09/2022 - 08/2023
The augmented interpreter- a pilot study on the usability of augmented reality in interpreting

Simultaneous interpreting depends on auditory and visual information. This pilot study investigates whether a seamless integration of visual and auditory information, achieved by displaying translations of technical terms on augmented reality glasses (AR), can lower cognitive load in interpreting.

completed, 07/2022 - 12/2022
Accessibility of ZHAW Webpages

Evaluation of e-accessibility with usability testing

completed, 06/2022 - 12/2022
Machine Subtitling of Videos

Automatic Quality Evaluation

completed, 10/2021 - 12/2021
Machine translation for academic texts

The project consists in developing a prototype for a ZHAW neural machine translation system trained on academic texts. Freely accessible systems such as DeepL and Google Translate are not specifically trained on scientific texts and therefore often present issues regarding terminology, text…

completed, 02/2021 - 12/2021
Digital Literacy Skills in University Contexts (DigLit)

Writing in most contexts today is done with digital, computer-assisted support. Technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI) such as intelligent tutoring (IT), automated writing evaluation (AWE), automated text production (ATP) and machine translation (MT) present new opportunities,…

completed, 01/2021 - 12/2024
Machine translation literacy for academics

ObjectivesThis project investigates the potential of neural machine translation (NMT) for academic texts (abstracts, papers...) for publication purposes.Initial situation and hypothesisWell-known issues with neural machine translation are text cohesion, (terminology) and "hedging" (hedge terms).…

completed, 08/2020 - 01/2021
Cognitive Load in Interpreting and Translation (CLINT)

English has become the first truly global lingua franca. Even in multilingual Switzerland, English as a lingua franca (ELF) is replacing the four Swiss languages not only in international but also in intra-national communication. What appears at first glance to be a practical solution to…

completed, 07/2018 - 10/2022
Informed Consent and Comprehensibility Issues

Informed Consent and Comprehensibility Issues Research involving humans as subjects can be problematic from an ethical standpoint, because people’s welfare and personal sphere should be protected. For this reason, legislation regulates that potential participants must be informed about research…

completed, 01/2016 - 12/2020
Cognitive and Physical Ergonomics of Translation

Like many other knowledge workers, professional translators spend much of their day making decisions at a computer: reading texts in one language, searching for background information in many languages, referring to terminology databanks to ensure consistency and appropriacy of lexical choices,…

completed, 01/2013 - 06/2015
Usability study in the area of radiation therapy

completed, 07/2010 - 07/2011