Earticle

This study addresses the evaluation of simultaneous speech translation (SimulST), a technology whose rapid development and growing commercialization have substantially expanded its reach well beyond that of human interpreting. On the basis of characterizing SimulST as a distinctive language processing technology that combines elements of both interpreting and translation, existing evaluation approaches for SimulST are critically reviewed and directions for assessing the quality of SimulST services are discussed in view of their growing visibility among general users. The study argues for moving beyond system-level performance metrics and linguistic quality assessment toward a more comprehensive evaluation framework that incorporates user experience in real-world communicative contexts. To this end, the study proposes a comprehensive evaluation framework for SimulST services grounded in the concept of contextualized robustness, which encompasses three steps: use case identification, authentic input data composition, and robustness testing of the output. The framework calls for the participation of multiple stakeholders — including clients, technical experts, interpreting professionals, and potential end users— at varying levels across these steps. Additionally, the study suggests that the concept of non-inferiority, adapted from medical research methodology, may provide a useful guiding principle for implementing the proposed evaluation framework.