Computers - Computer-Aided-Translation: Virtues and Vices
Translation memory (TM) technologies, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the translation and cultural compliance of electronic content (e-content) for local markets. The idea behind TM systems is to store in a computer system the original e-content and the translation that has been produced by human translators; the stored translated version of the source text has been broken down into short portions, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The priorities of using CAT systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and raise translation quality by proving that terminology and sentences are used consistently within and across translation works. Users in industry and transnational agencies submit a 25–60% rise in work throughput. Yet, it must be stated that the use of TM systems may also have negative effects on translation quality. One of the major discouraging things of TM systems is that they usually operate at sentence level. That’s why, there is a real danger that the translator will focus too much on separated sentences, possibly disregarding the contexts in which the sentences are introduced. Moreover, the matching algorithms of TM systems are based on very plain formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. Thus, the human translator’s notion of the degree of similarity between a segment to be translated and a piece retrieved from the database may differ considerably from the degree of similarity calculated by the TM system. This may lead to situations wherein exact matches produce wrong translations, or one translation of a fuzzy match requires little or no adjustment but another fuzzy match with the same similarity degree is not useful at all (for a discussion on the aspects of evaluating the retrieval mechanisms of memory systems, see Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards (1996), Whyman and Somers (1999), and Reinke (2000a, 2004). Despite the vices, it should be noted that TM systems generally incorporate into the translation routine relatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the actual translation work, while liberating them from routine work and keeping translation as a creative activity whenever the adaptation resourcefulness of a human being is required. For more info, visit us at: HQ-translate company
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