BLEU Metric (2002) › A Note on the Name
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The acronym BLEU (Bilingual Evaluation Understudy) contains a subtle wordplay that reflects the metric's purpose. In French, "bleu" means "blue," but in English, the phrase "understudy" evokes the theater, where an understudy is an actor who learns a role to substitute for the main performer when necessary. The name cleverly suggests that BLEU serves as a stand-in for human evaluators, playing their role when they cannot be present but ready to step aside when the primary evaluators are available. This linguistic flourish hints at the metric's intended position: a useful proxy for human judgment, not a replacement for it.