Computers - Computer-Aided-Translation: Yes or No
Translation memory (TM) technologies, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the proofreading and international adaptation of electronic content (e-content) for local markets. The idea behind TM systems is to store in a computer system the original e-content and the translation that has been produced by human translators; the stored translated version of the source document has been broken down into smaller parts, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The priviledges of using TM systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and increase translation quality by ensuring that terms and sentences are used consistently within and across translation works. Users in business and international companies convey a 25–60% rise in productivity. Yet, it must be stated that the use of TM systems may also have negative effects on translation quality. One of the major disadvantages of TM systems is that they usually perform at sentence level. Therefore, there is a severe danger that the translator will focus too much on standalone sentences, possibly disregarding the contexts in which the sentences are built-in. Moreover, the matching algorithms of TM systems are based on very ordinary formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. Thus, the human translator’s notion of the degree of similarity between a part to be translated and a part retrieved from the database may differ considerably from the grade of similarity calculated by the CAT system. This may follow to situations wherein exact matches result in wrong translations, or one translation of a fuzzy match requires little or no adjustment but another fuzzy match with the same similarity level is not useful at all (for a discussion on the aspects of evaluating the retrieval mechanisms of CAT systems, see Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards (1996), Whyman and Somers (1999), and Reinke (2000a, 2004). Despite the vices, it should be noted that TM systems generally integrate into the translation run comparatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the actual translation work, while relieving them from routine work and supporting translation as a creative activity whenever the translation resourcefulness of a human being is required. For more information, visit us at: HQ-translate company
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