Translog-II
Translog-II is a program to record and study human reading and writing processes on a computer. It is an instrument to acquire objective, digital data of human translation processes. Like their predecessors, Translog 2000 and Translog 2006, Translog-II also consists of two main components: Translog-II Supervisor is used to create a project file and to replay recorded sessions. Translog-II User is used to run text production experiments (a user reads, writes, or translates a text). Translog-II produces log files that contain user activity data of the reading, writing, and translation processes, and which can be evaluated by external tools (see TPR-DB).
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Eyelink tested it with EyeLink 1000 Plus, EyeLink 1K, and portable DUO, all works fine.
Tobii tested this version for Spectrum, Fusion, and Nano, and they all seem to work fine.
also works with our SMI 250mobile tracker
Translog-II (version 2.24) has an Eyelink1000+ interface
In some cases, running a 2 Khz frame rate might cause a few samples to be dropped.
regsvr32 SREyeLink.dll needs to be run as administrator if not registered during Translog-II installation.
Translog-II (version 2.0) has the following new features:
Eyetracking interface with SMI (SensoMotoric Instruments) download flyer: SMI plugin for Translog-II
Recording of spoken language (e.g., for translation dictation, tested with dragon naturally speaking, for English and Japanese)
Logging keystrokes and characters with Chinese and Japanese IME. See the documentation on: Translog-II and IME
Cite:
Carl, Michael (2012). "Translog - II: a Program for Recording User Activity Data for Empirical Reading and Writing Research", In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, European Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Documentation
Translog-II manual 1: Creating and modifying a project
Translog-II manual 2: Opening and running an experiment
Translog-II manual 3: Replaying log files
Translog-II manual 4: Data analysis I
Translog-II and SMI: SMI plugin for Translog-II
Translog-II and IME: Running Translog-II experiments with Chinese and Japanese IME
Translog-II linear view: Configure Linear view in Translog-II
More powerful analysis tools are available in the TPR-DB
Video Tutorials
Translog-II video tutorial 1: Creating a new project
Translog-II video tutorial 2: Opening and running an experiment with Tobii eye-tracker
Translog-II video tutorial 3: Replaying log files
Translog-II video tutorial 4: Data analysis
Use Translog-II with an eye-tracker and Japanese / Chinese IME
Eyetrackers produce gaze sample points1 every couple of ms, according to their sampling rate. Translog-II collects these gaze sample points and processes them in several steps:
Check whether the gaze is within the source or the target window
Compute fixations based on a variant of a dispersion-based algorithm (Salvucci & Goldberg 2000)
Map gaze points and fixation on the closest character on the screen
Find alternative mappings in the line below and above
These steps are usually computed at runtime (and in real-time), during reading and text production. However, in particular, steps 3 and 4 are incompatible with Japanese or Chinese IME. The mechanism of character production in the IME is not accessible from within Translog-II. Trying to map gaze sample points on the characters removes the focus from the IME device which interrupts the character conversion process. However, in order to be able to map the gaze data on the Chinese or Japanese characters, the mapping steps can also be processed in a second run after a translation session is recorded. This offline gaze-to-word mapping requires four extra steps as described below:
tick the offline-mapping box in the project setup
run the reading/writing/translating experiment and save the log file
load the log file in a replay modus and re-run it
save the log file with off-line gaze-to-word mapped information
Enable offline gaze-mapping
When generating the project, tick the box Offline Gaze Mapping. This avoids run-time gaze-to-word mapping
Run the experiment
Run the experiment and save the log file as usual. As the flag Offline Gaze Mapping is ticked, the attribute Win="-2" is automatically set in the Translog-II log file indicating that gaze-to-word mapping has to be processed offline.
<Eye Time="31" TT="0" Win="-2" Xl="678" Yl="277" Xr="678" Yr="277" pl="3.38" pr="3.41" Cursor="0" />
<Eye Time="47" TT="16" Win="-2" Xl="664" Yl="278" Xr="664" Yr="278" pl="3.38" pr="3.43" Cursor="0" />
<Eye Time="62" TT="32" Win="-2" Xl="654" Yl="278" Xr="654" Yr="278" pl="3.38" pr="3.43" Cursor="0" />
<Eye Time="78" TT="49" Win="-2" Xl="658" Yl="279" Xr="658" Yr="279" pl="3.39" pr="3.43" Cursor="0" />
Example 1: eye gaze data points in Translog-II logging file with attribute Win="-2"and Cursor="0"
Gaze-to-word mapping
For offline gaze-to-word, open the log file in the replay tool and run the entire session without interruption. You can set the speed to a higher level so as to shorten the replay duration.
During this replay session, steps 1, 2, and 3 as described above are processed offline, thus no interference with the IME. This results in a re-assignment of the window attribute (e.g., Win="1"), fixation computation, and gaze-to-word mapping. The re-computed mapping information from Example 1 is shown in Example 2, and its visualization is plotted in Figure 2.
<Fix Time="30" TT="0" Win="1" Block="1" X="678" Y="272" Dur="352" Cursor="402" />
<Eye Time="31" TT="0" Win="1" Xl="678" Yl="277" Xr="678" Yr="277" pl="3.38" pr="3.41" Cursor="405" />
<Eye Time="47" TT="16" Win="1" Xl="664" Yl="278" Xr="664" Yr="278" pl="3.38" pr="3.43" Cursor="403" />
<Eye Time="62" TT="32" Win="1" Xl="654" Yl="278" Xr="654" Yr="278" pl="3.38" pr="3.43" Cursor="402" />
<Eye Time="78" TT="49" Win="1" Xl="658" Yl="279" Xr="658" Yr="279" pl="3.39" pr="3.43" Cursor="402" />
Example 2: eye gaze data points and added fixation as computed during the re-mapping step
After the replay has come to an end, do not close the replay window. Save the file (under a different name). The log file can be saved through an option in the “Replay” drop-down menu of the Translog-II Supervisor main window. A replay of the new file will show fixations and gaze-to-word mappings, (if activated under the “Plot” drop-down menu in the replay window).
This figure shows the same segment as in the first figure above. The meaning of the visual annotations is:
Green dots represent gaze sample points (also shown in the first figure)
Blue circles are fixations, which are numbered in the order of their occurrence
Violet squares are mappings from the fixation centers to the closest characters