TechGist05

This is a post by Vassilis Korkas on the quality assurance and quality checking processes being used in the professional translation industry . (I still find it really hard to say localization, since that term is really ambiguous to me, as I spent many years trying to figure out how to deliver properly localized sound through digital audio platforms . To me, localized sound = cellos from the right and violins from the left of the sound stage. I  have a strong preference for instruments to stay in place on the sound stage for the duration of the piece.  )   As the volumes of translated content increase, the need for automated production lines also grows. The industry is still laden with products that don't play well with each other, and buyers should insist that vendors of the various tools that they use enable and allow easy transport and downstream processing of any translation related content. Froom my perspective automation in the industry is also very limi...

The issue of rapidly understanding the MT output quality as precisely as possible BEFORE post-editing begins, is an important one. Juan Rowda from eBay provides an interesting way to make this assessment based on linguistic criteria and provides a model that can be further refined and defined by motivated users. Automated metrics like BLEU used by MT system developers provide very little of value for this PEMT effort assessment. This approach is an example of the kinds of insightful tools that can only be developed by linguists who are engaged with a long-term MT project and want to solve problems that can add real value to the MT development and PEMT process. I think it is interesting that somebody outside of the "translation industry" came up with this kind of practical innovation, that can facilitate and greatly enhance efforts in a project involving translation of several hundred million new w...