AI: Savings in translation and technical documentation (2. strana)

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 www.star-group.net www.technikaatrh.cz 27