Multilingual search (Translation interns) 2025

LINKS

• Usability test slide deck

Monica’s docs:

• Multilingual search notes document

• Template for the evaluation of multilingual search (filled)

• Evaluation of multilinguality in Polish and Hungarian

17 June 2025 - Joanna (Polish translation intern)

DISCOVERY QUESTIONS

1. How do you use the search on Europeana?

   1. For work, comparing English and Polish translations

2. How often do you use the website?

   1. Every few weeks

3. How do you access the website?

   1. Laptop, on Opera usually, sometimes Chrome

USABILITY TEST

Speak aloud as you go along:

1. Go to Europeana.eu

2. Select site language = Polish

   1. Already knew how to change the site language (puts in ‘/pl’ in the URL bar - quickest way to switch languages in the site; was shown by Maggy; doesn't use button in footer, doesn't know where it is)

3. Enter a search term you would commonly use [in Polish]

4. Review the results: ‘pływacki’ ('swimming' in Polish)

5. PROMPTS HER TO LOGIN FIRST - WHY???? - I couldn’t recreate…

   1. She doesn’t remember her Europeana email and password off the top of her head so that’s a big barrier

   2. Is it because she already has it on by default?

   3. Total # of results retrieved = around 31 000

   4. (Activate ‘list view’) - NOT FOUND IMMEDIATELY but did find it eventually

   5. Number of different languages in the first 10 results = pretty good

   6. How many of the first 10 items are relevant to your search query?

      1. Are there any that are not relevant? there is a science study about male swimmers that doesn't seem as related - clicking on the ‘sport swimming’ entity was a bit slow; it looks pretty relevant too, except for one item about more of a beach

      2. How would you define ‘relevant’? Any item related to the sport of swimming, or the history of the sport of swimming

6. Now, click the multilingual search component to turn it OFF

   1. Log in / join (already did)

   2. Number of results didn't change? - I couldn’t recreate…

7. Compare the results with the previous search:

   1. Total # of results retrieved =

   2. Number of different languages in the first 10 results =

   3. How many of the first 10 items are relevant to your search query?

      1. Are there any that are not relevant? Only one

8. Try another query:

9. Kopernicus - multilingual off = 989 results

   1. Suffixes and prefixes on verbs - everything that was related to swimming was searched properly which was good

   2. In this case, it only searched the original name of kopernicus

10. Kopernicus - multilingual on = 21000 results

    1. there is a lot of material on this film from one provider, a Polish one

    2. Prompted to use the filters to exclude this one film/provider

    3. Selected media type = text (but the numbers next to them don’t match the results)

    4. themes filter didn't seem relevant

11. Try another query:

    1. rękopis [manuscript] (multilingual search OFF)

       1. Total # of results retrieved = ABOUT 400000

       2. Number of different languages in the first 10 results =

       3. How many of the first 10 items are relevant to your search query?

          1. Are there any that are not relevant?

    2. rękopis [manuscript] (multilingual search ON)

       1. Total # of results retrieved = 593 000

       2. Number of different languages in the first 10 results = (still almost all Polish)

       3. How many of the first 10 items are relevant to your search query?

          1. Are there any that are not relevant?