STAR Group: AI in technical translations (2. strana)
Artificial intelligence in technical translations
www.taiwanbusiness.eu
19
TAIWAN Business.EU l
services
l
production
l
support
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 soft-
ware Transit NXT for Computer-Aided
Translation (CAT) with fuzzy logic. For lar-
ge and long-term orders, "artificial intelli-
gence," i.e. machine translation, comes in,
however, producing a completely diffe-
rent quality than that produced by free
translation software. Transit does not re-
place the work of a translator; it only ma-
kes his work more efficient and more
accurate. The software remembers every
translated sentence the translator has ever
written. When an identical sentence
occurs in the future, it is automatically pre-
translated (with the possibility of being
checked by the translator). For texts with
repeated passages (technical documenta-
tion is the ideal case) we can in this way
achieve considerable time and financial
savings that we share with the client in the
form of discounts. Another advantage is
the consistency of translation and termi-
nology throughout the documentation,
which is highly desirable for the text quali-
ty. If the software does not find a 100%
identical sentence in memory, it may find
a sufficiently similar sentence; for example,
a sentence which is nearly identical but
with two different words. The translator
gets a so-called fuzzy offer, in which he
immediately sees the colour-highlighted
differences in that particular sentence. He
may then accept the translation offered
and only do additional translation of the
two words. The result is a consistently
translated document and work which is
more efficient and of better quality – our
primary goal. Time and cost savings range
between 30 to 80 %.
p When does
the mentioned machine
translation come
into the game?
We have been developing the STAR MT
statistical translation system in cooperati-
on with university professors of compu-
ter linguistics for several years. For large
and long-term projects, we prepare for
our clients an individual algorithm from
bilingual and monolingual corpuses and
client terminology. The result is a very ef-
ficient solution that effectively comple-
ments the above-mentioned CAT sys-
tem. Suggestions from the translation
memory and the fuzzy offer are comple-
mented by machine translation suggesti-
ons that the translator will review and
possibly edit. Our client thus obtains
considerable time and financial savings
while preserving the quality of the docu-
ment translation.
p What can you offer
to new clients interested
in your services?
A short sample translation free of char-
ge, so that the potential new client can
see the quality of our work. Detailed sta-
tistics showing the exact number of words
in the new text, identical text, and text si-
milar to an earlier translation. For identical
and similar texts, each client gets a 50%
and 75% discount. A lot of other agencies
use CAT software but do not share its be-
nefits with clients, charging a flat rate for
each translation. We have a different app-
roach: we are committed to long-term
partnerships with our clients, we appro-
ach them fairly, and we always try to find
the most effective way to deliver a high-
quality product. It is not a coincidence
that our customer base includes compani-
es such as Bosch, Siemens, BMW (for
over 20 years) and others. To those inter-
ested we are happy to send a customer
reference list or some of the case studies
of the required technical subject.
Thank you for the interview.
Contact: Ing László Jankovics
laszlo.jankovics@star-group.net
tel +420 608 320 100
www.star-group.net