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T A I W A N B u s i n e s s . E U l services l production l support
Artificial intelligence
in technical translations
We asked Mr László Jankovics, the representative of
the STAR Group, a translation and software agency
with 51 branches on 4 continents, if efficient and highquality translation of technical documentation is possible using modern technologies.
p How long
have you been
translating technical
documentation and what
exactly do you do?
We celebrate our 33rd anniversary this
year: our parent company STAR AG Switzerland was founded in 1984, we have
been operating in the Czech and Slovak
markets for 19 years. In short, we help our
clients communicate in foreign languages.
We offer our clients comprehensive services that they need to communicate in
a foreign language, whether
internal or with customers, in both the
written and spoken forms. We do localise
the texts: We take into account the customs and traditions of the local cultural
environment for which the material is intended. We work with native speakers in
the target country; the final product is
special 2020 T + T Technika a trh
then a fully understandable, stylistically
and technically correct text.
We mainly translate technical documentation, manuals, catalogues, service
books, localize software, but also provide
other services such as interpreting, audio
recordings, audio-visual applications and
software solutions. The translations are always done by professionals familiar with
the specific sectors who understand the
technical texts they work on. There is nothing worse than a translator, even with
the best possible language skills, who does not understand the subject of translation – this creates the 'translation howlers'.
p What technical subjects do
you translate and how do you
choose your translators?
Automotive, mechanical engineering, automation, electronics, home appliances,
manual tools, agricultural machinery,
pharmacy, IT, optics and many other sectors. Any technical, but also legal, economic, business, or marketing text. Choosing the right translators is a very
demanding and time-consuming task. We
are actively looking for them at different
forums, institutions or universities, and
they also contact us themselves. Each
candidate goes through a detailed testing
process and we choose those who do
well in terms of factual and technical correctness as well as in terms of stylistic and
linguistic correctness. The ratio of those
who contact to us and those we choose
speaks volumes: 60:1. We translate into
about 50 languages, in the last few years
increasingly into Asian languages.
p Do you use special
translation software?
Yes, for more than 20 years now, we have
been using our in-house developed software Transit NXT for Computer-Aided
Translation (CAT) with fuzzy logic. For large and long-term orders, "artificial intelligence," i.e. machine translation, comes in,
however, producing a completely different quality than that produced by free