Maria Symeonaki

h-index29
2papers

2 Papers

CLSep 17, 2024
GOSt-MT: A Knowledge Graph for Occupation-related Gender Biases in Machine Translation

Orfeas Menis Mastromichalakis, Giorgos Filandrianos, Eva Tsouparopoulou et al.

Gender bias in machine translation (MT) systems poses significant challenges that often result in the reinforcement of harmful stereotypes. Especially in the labour domain where frequently occupations are inaccurately associated with specific genders, such biases perpetuate traditional gender stereotypes with a significant impact on society. Addressing these issues is crucial for ensuring equitable and accurate MT systems. This paper introduces a novel approach to studying occupation-related gender bias through the creation of the GOSt-MT (Gender and Occupation Statistics for Machine Translation) Knowledge Graph. GOSt-MT integrates comprehensive gender statistics from real-world labour data and textual corpora used in MT training. This Knowledge Graph allows for a detailed analysis of gender bias across English, French, and Greek, facilitating the identification of persistent stereotypes and areas requiring intervention. By providing a structured framework for understanding how occupations are gendered in both labour markets and MT systems, GOSt-MT contributes to efforts aimed at making MT systems more equitable and reducing gender biases in automated translations.

CLMar 6, 2025
Assumed Identities: Quantifying Gender Bias in Machine Translation of Gender-Ambiguous Occupational Terms

Orfeas Menis Mastromichalakis, Giorgos Filandrianos, Maria Symeonaki et al.

Machine Translation (MT) systems frequently encounter gender-ambiguous occupational terms, where they must assign gender without explicit contextual cues. While individual translations in such cases may not be inherently biased, systematic patterns-such as consistently translating certain professions with specific genders-can emerge, reflecting and perpetuating societal stereotypes. This ambiguity challenges traditional instance-level single-answer evaluation approaches, as no single gold standard translation exists. To address this, we introduce GRAPE, a probability-based metric designed to evaluate gender bias by analyzing aggregated model responses. Alongside this, we present GAMBIT, a benchmarking dataset in English with gender-ambiguous occupational terms. Using GRAPE, we evaluate several MT systems and examine whether their gendered translations in Greek and French align with or diverge from societal stereotypes, real-world occupational gender distributions, and normative standards