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Artificial Intelligence:
Cutting Down Translation and
Technical Documentation Costs
More and more companies today are searching for
ways to save on costs for translation and localization
of technical documentation and marketing materials
into foreign languages, as well as into Czech. Some
are going about it by hiring cheaper translators and
agencies but as we all know, a low price also often
means low quality. In the competitive world, however,
companies can hardly afford to sell their products with
poor quality documentation. It has a direct, and very
perceptible, impact on customer satisfaction, which
of course, also affects the saleability of these products.
The solution is to secure translation and localization
of documentation that is of a high quality but is carried
out efficiently to decrease costs.
Software support for translators of technical documentation and other company
materials (e.g. catalogues, fliers and manuals) has already taken off in countries to the
west of our border. This software enables
computer-aided translation (CAT), with the
speciál 2020
T+T Technika a trh
goal of making the work of a professional
translator more effective, while increasing
the final output quality through the use of a
translation memory, fuzzy logic and terminology management. As opposed to the
standard 8 to 10- pages per day, with this
software, a translator is able to translate
about 30 to 70% more, all the while maintaining a high quality level of the translation
(even increasing the quality, thanks to the
advanced functionalities). BMW for example, is one of the pioneers in this respect, as
it has been using CAT software to localize
its user and service manuals into 27 languages for quarter of a century already. Representatives from the German headquarters report that the company saves
hundreds of thousands of Euros each year
and that the completion time for the different language versions of the manuals is reduced greatly. Let us look at the basic CAT
software principles, which significantly improve the localization process in terms of
efficiency and quality.
A Few Important
Reminders to Start
d
CAT software does not replace the translator. It merely makes the translator's work
more effective, all the while improving the
quality of the work. It uses a translation
memory, thanks to which the software remembers every translated sentence that
the translator ever wrote. When this identical sentence appears again, it is automatically pre-translated (with the option for
the translator to check it, of course). This
function saves, both, time and money, especially in texts where certain passages
are repeated over and over again (this is
typical of technical documentation). Another advantage of this functionality is
the consistency of the
translation and terminology