Technika a trh

rail transport l services l production support

of Euros every year, and the time required

for the completion of different language

versions of manuals has also been significantly reduced. Let us look at the basic

principles of CAT software, which significantly supports the effectiveness and quality of the localisation process.

First of all, it should be emphasised that

CAT software does not replace the work

of the translator, it only makes their work

as efficient and precise as possible. It uses

a translation memory, allowing the software to remember every previously translated sentence. If an identical sentence

occurs in the future, it will be automatically pre-translated (obviously with the possibility of proofreading by the translator).

With this function, significant time and financial savings can be achieved for texts

where some passages often repeat (typically in technical documentation). Another advantage of this functionality is consistency of translation and terminology

throughout the documentation, which

is very desirable for the overall quality of

the text.

If the software does not find a 100%

identical sentence in the translation memory, it can find a sufficiently similar sentence instead, i.e. the "fuzzy logic" is applied. For example, if only one or two

words have changed in a long sentence

while the rest of the sentence is identical.

In this case, the translator is offered a "fuzzy match", in which they can immediately

see colour-highlighted differences in both

of the sentences. Then, they can accept

the proposed translation and only translate the different words. Again, this leads

to higher efficiency and consistency of translation throughout the documentation, i.e.

more effective and higher quality translation work. The aim is to re-use the translator's work using a sophisticated comparison algorithm, achieving typically 30-70%

savings in the time and costs involved in

technical documentation translations.

Translation quality is also supported by

a feature for maintaining terminology consistency, which is especially important for

technical translations.

We should also mention a recent, rapidly developing technology. Everyone has

heard of Machine Translation (MT), or has

at least tried a free online translator.

These often produce funny translations

and cannot be relied on if precise wording

is important, which is obviously required

in the case of technical documentation,

contracts, or marketing materials. Therefore, translators need not worry about losing their jobs; however, the way they

work is gradually changing. After two decades of using translation memory and

fuzzy logic, specialised machine translation systems tailored to a specific subject

area and a specific client's needs are becoming increasingly common. We have

been developing the STAR MT machine

translation statistical system for several years in cooperation with university professors of computational linguistics. For our

clients' large and long-term projects, we

prepare individual algorithms from bilingual and monolingual corpora and client

terminology. The result is a very effective

solution, where proposals from the translation memory and fuzzy matches are

supplemented with machine translation

proposals which the translator checks

and, if necessary, modifies. Our client thus

achieves significant time and cost savings

while maintaining the high quality of documentation translations.

For the MT technology to be effective,

the project should have a certain size and

continuity: at least around 500 to 1,000

pages of new text per year. The content

of the text should be simple, factual, and

instructional, e.g. user manuals or technical documentation, intended for accurate

and direct translation, instead of literary

and creative. The original text should be

of a good quality: with uniform terminology, formatting, style, abbreviations, etc.

We expect a literal and direct translation

from the machine translation. For this

technology to save time and costs, we

cannot expect the translator to rearrange

texts or significantly change sentence

structures when editing the machine

translation proposals. Not all language

combinations provide identical results.

Romance and Germanic languages provide good results, and so do some Slavic

languages. However, forget about Hungarian or Estonian, the MT systems cannot

comprehend the complexity of these languages yet. The use of machine translation should be one of the intermediaries

of the whole process, from the efficient

and high-quality creation of source text

through the use of translation memory,

fuzzy matches, and terminology, up to the

application of machine translation and its

regular improvement by importing new

texts into the MT algorithm.

Another emerging trend is the optimisation of technical documentation preparation. There are cutting-edge software tools which help the technical

documentation author to formulate the information presented, e.g. in a technical

manual, as efficiently as possible. Based

on the sentence being written, the smart

software proposes similar texts from previous documentation, on which the author can draw. In addition, a notification

function for forbidden terminology is available, proposing a suitable synonym. All

of these functionalities, including morphological analysis, are also available for

documentation authors in the Czech language. The result is documentation with

a uniform style and terminology, the subsequent translation of which into the target languages is faster and cheaper, as the

proposed texts already have their translation in the translation memory.

Whether you need a translation for your

products as an exporter, or for products

imported from abroad, you can save a lot

of costs and time by streamlining the localisation process. Also, in the Czech Republic, you can obtain CAT software and

tools for optimising the preparation of documents for your documentation department and have your in-house translators

and authors trained. When outsourcing

translations, choose an agency which uses

CAT software and is willing to share its

financial benefits with you.

Ing. László Jankovics

laszlo.jankovics@star-group.net

tel.: +420 608 320 100