Understanding ROI with Machine Translation Technology
As the use of machine translation gathers momentum in the professional translation world, it is interesting to see that much of the essential economic rationale for effective deployment of this technology is still somewhat muddy and unclear. MT use on it's own does not guarantee ROI. The MT system has to produce output that actually improves the production process to generate meaningful ROI. Poor quality MT impacts goodwill, reputation and is also a waste of time, effort and money. There are many in the industry who continue to view machine translation (MT ) with the same “project-oriented mentality” that is common with traditional translation work that sometimes involves the production use of translation memory (TM ). However, MT is fundamentally different, and I think it requires a different mindset in design and technology deployment to maximize economic benefits. TM is often used as a way to reduce costs and often MT is seen as a new way to lower costs without any real ...