Summary
We present results from a new machine translation comprehension test, similar to those developed in previous work (Jones et al., 2007). This test has documents in four conditions: (1) original English documents; (2) human translations of the documents into Arabic; conditions (3) and (4) are machine translations of the Arabic documents into English from two different MT systems. We created two forms of the test: Form A has the original English documents and output from the two Arabic-to-English MT systems. Form B has English, Arabic, and one of the MT system outputs. We administered the comprehension test to three subject types recruited in the greater Boston area: (1) native English speakers with no Arabic skills, (2) Arabic language learners, and (3) Native Arabic speakers who also have English language skills. There were 36 native English speakers, 13 Arabic learners, and 11 native Arabic speakers with English skills. Subjects needed an average of 3.8 hours to complete the test, which had 191 questions and 59 documents. Native English speakers with no Arabic skills saw Form A. Arabic learners and native Arabic speakers saw form B.