TechGist05

With the continued growth in the use of MT, it has become increasingly important for translators to understand better when it is worth getting involved, and when it is wise to stay away from post-editing opportunities that come their way.  This is still a very fuzzy issue for most translators and I think it might be useful to share some information with them to highlight some of the key variables they could use to determine the most rational action given the facts at hand. For some, post-editing will never be palatable work, but for those who look more closely and see that PEMT is now just another variant of professional translation work that is much like other translation work, which can be economically advantageous when one is working with the right partners and the right technology in this case.   We have seen that in the early days of MT use that there has been much cause for dissatisfaction all around, especially for translators who have been asked to post-edit sub-s...

It has been sometime since I first wrote a blog post about MT humor primarily because I really have not been able to find anything worth the mention, until now, and except for some really lame examples about how MT mistranslates (sic) I have not seen much to laugh heartily at. It seems a group of people on the web have discovered the humorous possibilities of MT in translating song lyrics which might be difficult even for good human translators. (It really seems strange to be saying “human translator”.)  I should point out that in all these recent cases one does have to work at degrading the translation quality by running the same text through a whole sequence of preferably not closely related languages. It has often surprised me that there are some in the MT industry who use “back translation” as a way to check MT quality, as from my vantage point it is an exercise that can only result in proving the obvious. MT back translation by definition should result in...

I saw some interesting comments to a blog post by Kevin Lossner that I thought would be good to share with the community that reads this blog, as it raised some cogent points I thought. The comments basically talk about a larger more complex translation market than many of us might believe exists based on market research available. I do not claim to have real insight or knowledge of this larger translation market, but I am definitely aware that the largest translation initiatives in the world are generally overlooked by traditional market research e.g the many branches of the US government (DoD, NSA, CIA, FBI, DIA, State and even Commerce), the EU and I expect many of the clandestine “intelligence” operations around the world, especially amongst the G20 governments. I would also bet that the really big, almost nation-like, Fortune 100 corporates also have captive and hidden translation operations that are buried and invisible within PR, Marketing and Investor Relations somewhere to tr...

We have reached a phase where there is a relatively high level of acceptance of the idea that machine translation can deliver value in professional translation settings. But as we all know the idea and the reality can often be far apart. It would be more accurate to say this acceptance of the idea that MT can be valuable, is limited to a select few among large enterprise users and LSPs (the TAUS community) and has yet to reach the broad translator community who continue to point out fundamental deficiencies in the technology or share negative experiences with MT.   So while we see growth in the number of attempts to use  MT, as it has gotten mechanically easier to do, there is also more evidence that many MT initiatives fail in achieving sustainable efficiencies in terms of real translation production value. In a typical TEP (Translate-Edit-Proof) business translation scenario, A "good" MT system will provide three things to be considered successful: 1) Faster completion...

There has been much talk amongst some translators about how MT is a technology that will take away work and ultimately replace them, and thus some translators dig in their heels and resist MT at every step. The antagonistic view is based on a zero-sum game assumption that if a computer can perform a translation that they used to do, it inevitably means less work for them in future. In some cases this may be true, however this presumption is worth a closer look. While stories of MT mishaps and mistranslations abound, (we all know how easy it is to make MT look bad) , it is becoming increasingly apparent to many in the professional translation business, that it is important to learn how to use and extend the capabilities of this technology successfully, as the technology also enables new kinds of translation and linguistic engineering projects that would simply be impossible without viable and effective implementations of expert MT technology . Generally, MT is not a wholesale replaceme...

In the many discussions by different parties in the professional translation world involving machine translation, we see a great deal of conflation and confusion because most people assume that all MT is equivalent and that any MT under discussion is largely identical in all aspects. Here is a slightly modified description of what conflation is from the Wikipedia. Conflation occurs when the identities of two or more implementations, concepts, or products, sharing some characteristics of one another, seem to be a single identity — the differences appear to become lost. [1] In logic , it is the practice of treating two distinct MT variants as if they were one, which produces errors or misunderstandings as a fusion of distinct subjects tends to obscure analysis of relationships which are emphasized by contrasts. However, there are many reasons to question this “all MT is the same” assumption, as there are in fact many variants of MT, and it is useful to have some general understanding...

While we see that MT technology adoption continues to grow, hopefully because of clearly demonstrated benefits and measured production efficiencies, we still see that the dialogue between the technology developers / business sponsors and translators/post-editors is often strained, and communications can often be dysfunctional and sometimes even hostile. While there is a growing volume of material on “how-to-use” the technology, much of this material is of questionable quality , there is still very little discussion about managing human factors around successful use of the technology. The growth of instant, do-it-yourself (DIY) tools only unleashes more low quality MT output into the world and there are translators who are expected to often edit (fix) very low quality MT output for a pittance. Getting good quality MT output requires real skill, expertise and preferably some considerable experience. The actual translator experience with “good MT” is not going to be so different from work...