TechGist05

I found an interesting series of blog posts by Christelle Maignon that I thought articulated translator perspectives on MT and the increasing use of technology in translation work very well. She herself was driven away from translation work towards coaching because PEMT was just not her cup of tea from what I could gather. Anyway I thought it would be good to highlight her work in case you are not aware of her blog. Some posts that readers of this blog may also find interesting are listed below: Why machine translation creates so much anger and how to deal with it This post references Dr Kübler-Ross study of grief. She describes the five stages of emotions which are experienced by people who are approaching death or dealing with the death of a loved one. Her model was widely accepted and it was found to be valid for other forms of losses, as well as situations relating to change (for instance, the loss of a job or of a familiar way of doing things). Her model has been used as a ...

  This is a guest post by Romina Kohei . She is the co-founder of GliderPath, a SaaS product that helps translation companies owners run and grow their business, and of GliderPath Academy, an online learning platform for translation & localization professionals. She is the founder of Cool Project Management, a website where I aim to give information to help people get started in project management, excel in leadership and venture into entrepreneurship.   Romina is originally from Rosario, Argentina and has lived in Czech Republic for the past six years. Romina has more than 10 years of experience in the translation and localization industry, having worked in various project management and sales positions prior to starting her own endeavor with GliderPath. All opinions and statements are hers and I have not edited or changed them in any way. Her Twitter handle is @ GliderPath ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

This is a guest post by Romina Kohei . She is the co-founder of GliderPath, a SaaS product that helps translation companies owners run and grow their business, and of GliderPath Academy, an online learning platform for translation & localization professionals. She is the founder of Cool Project Management, a website where I aim to give information to help people get started in project management, excel in leadership and venture into entrepreneurship. Romina is originally from Rosario, Argentina and has lived in Czech Republic for the past six years. Romina has more than 10 years of experience in the translation and localization industry, having worked in various project management and sales positions prior to starting her own endeavor with GliderPath.   All opinions and statements are hers and I have not edited or changed them in any way. Her Twitter handle is @ GliderPath ===================================================== What’s the best way for agencies and freelancers t...

This is a guest post to provide an alternate and independent perspective on issues I have discussed in this blog. It is unedited and may or may not be consistent with my own views, but I think it is always useful to hear other views on these issues. I invite others who may wish to share their opinions on these MT related issues to also voice their opinions, especially those with very different views. I have added very few clarifications (in italics). My own views are outlined in this recent post and this older post which is still one of the most popular posts on this blog. With thanks to @MattBramowicz for this submission. ======================================================= If you ask a professional translator, chances are they will tell you that they’ve been requested at one time or another to provide post-editing or revisions for machine translated text. When this happens, more often than not many translators either begrudgingly accept or refuse the project altogether. This can ...

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...