By HT Localization on Thursday, 05 April 2012
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Linguistic Technologies

We will save time, which means you will save money

CAT tools (Computer Aided Translation) make translation an interactive process between human and computer.  Industry surveys report that using CAT tools allow linguists to work 40% times faster.  

Our team uses industry leading CAT software tools for faster and more accurate turnaround of your content.  By using CAT technology, you can be assured that less time is spent on manual transactions to your content, and more time is devoted to quality of translation.  

The case for Machine Translation

When creativity is important it is better to trust actual linguists for your translation needs.  However Machine Translation (MT) can be appropriate for some content, we will work with you to ensure the success of your program whether MT is part of the process or not.

MT is a process. To give acceptable results the MT engine must first be fed with content specific to the domain and then be trained with iterative round of reviews (post editing) by human translators. This approach requires a certain amount of scale to deliver at a lower cost without sacrificing quality.

 


Frequently Asked Questions


How can I save money using Machine Translations (MT)?

Machine Translation is software that provides quick, easy and inexpensive translations of text. However, as with anything that is purely automated, the delivered quality may not be exactly on par with human translations.  

We are accustomed to thinking that computers & software are productivity-enhancing tools, and MT promises to accelerate and decrease the cost of the translation of any text from any language to any other language. In addition, with the accessibility of free online MT tools like Google Translate, it is becoming ubiquitous. Now, the reality today is that the technology behind machine translation has made big progress but it is still not perfect, and in many cases proves disappointing if not used carefully. 

For clients who already use machine translations, we provide services of human review, post editing, and QA processes.  If you are interested in using machine translation for your business we will review the characteristics of your program to investigate the feasibility of implementing MT successfully. 


Is MT the same as using “Google Translate” or “BING”?

There are lots of opinions about using free translation software for machine translations such as Google or Bing, or some other free online tool.

Google Translate is a free translation tool that provides instant translations covering 64 different languages.

It can translate words, sentences and web pages. When Google Translate generates a translation, it looks for patterns in hundreds of millions of documents to help decide on the best translation for you. This process of seeking patterns in large amounts of text is called "statistical machine translation". Since the translations are generated by machines, not all translation will be perfect.  Source: Google Translate  

Bing Translator (previously Live Search Translator and Windows Live Translator) is a translation portal provided by Microsoft as part of its Bing services to translate texts or entire web pages into different languages. All translation pairs are powered by Microsoft Translator statistical machine translation platform and web service, developed by Microsoft Research, as its backend translation software.

Be warned, according to Microsoft:

Language translation is extremely difficult, as the meaning of words and phrases often depends on the context and specialized knowledge of the domain area or culture. Sentence structures and grammatical rules vary significantly between two languages, which adds to the complexity of the translation challenge. Currently, it still requires human skills to translate sentences without errors. The quality of today's most advanced translation software is well below the accuracy and fluency of a professional translator, and many sentences are simply not understandable. Researchers are continuously working on improvements, but it may be many years before high quality translation can be consistently offered by a computer.  Source: Microsoft Translator


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