Computer-assisted translation

Computer-assisted translation
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v · translation wherein a human translator translates texts using computer software designed to support and facilitate the translation process.

Computer-assisted translation is sometimes called machine-assisted, or machine-aided, translation.

Contents

Computer-assisted translation and machine translation

Some advanced computer-assisted translation solutions include controlled machine translation (MT). This type of technology is widely known amongst professional translators and terminologists and also available to any individual translators who wish to invest in such technology. Higher priced MT modules generally provide a more complex set of tools available to the translator, which may include terminology management features and various other linguistic tools and utilities. Carefully customized user dictionaries based on correct terminology significantly improve the accuracy of MT, and as a result, aim at increasing the efficiency of the entire translation process.

Overview

Computer-assisted translation is a broad and imprecise term covering a range of tools, from the fairly simple to the more complicated. These can include:

  • Spell checkers, either built into word processing software, or add-on programs;
  • Grammar checkers, again either built into word processing software, or add-on programs;
  • Terminology managers, allowing the translator to manage his own terminology bank in an electronic form. This can range from a simple table created in the translator's word processing software or spreadsheet, a database created in a program such as FileMaker Pro or, for more robust (and more expensive) solutions, specialized software packages such as LogiTerm, MultiTerm, Termex, etc.
  • Dictionaries on CD-ROM, either unilingual or bilingual
  • Terminology databases, either on CD-ROM or accessible through the Internet, (such as TERMIUM Plus or Grand dictionnaire terminologique from the Office québécois de la langue française)
  • Full-text search tools (or indexers), which allow the user to query already translated texts or reference documents of various kinds. In the translation industry one finds such indexers as Naturel, ISYS Search Software and dtSearch.
  • Concordancers, which are programs that retrieve instances of a word or an expression and their respective context in a monolingual, bilingual or multiligual corpus, such as a bitext or a translation memory.
  • Bitexts, a fairly recent development, the result of merging a source text and its translation, which can then be analyzed using a full-text search tool or a concordancer.
  • Project management software that allows linguists to structure complex translation projects, assign the various tasks to different people, and track the progress of each of these tasks.
  • Translation memory tools (TM tools), consisting of a database of text segments in a source language and their translations in one or more target languages.

Concepts

Translation memory software

Translation memory programs store previously translated source texts and their equivalent target texts in a database and retrieve related segments during the translation of new texts.

Such programs split the source text into manageable units known as "segments". A source-text sentence or sentence-like unit (headings, titles or elements in a list) may be considered a segment, or texts may be segmented into larger units such as paragraphs or small ones, such as clauses. As the translator works through a document, the software displays each source segment in turn and provides a previous translation for re-use, if the program finds a matching source segment in its database. If it does not, the program allows the translator to enter a translation for the new segment. After the translation for a segment is completed, the program stores the new translation and moves onto the next segment. In the dominant paradigm, the translation memory, in principle, is a simple database of fields containing the source language segment, the translation of the segment, and other information such as segment creation date, last access, translator name, and so on. Another translation memory approach does not involve the creation of a database, relying on aligned reference documents instead.

Some translation memory programs function as standalone environments, while others function as an add-on or macro to commercially available word-processing or other business software programs. Add-on programs allow source documents from other formats, such as desktop publishing files, spreadsheets, or HTML code, to be handled using the TM program.

Language Search Engine Software

New to the translation industry, Language Search Engine software is typically an Internet based system that works similarly to Internet search engines. Rather than searching the Internet, however, a language search engine searches a large repository of Translation Memories to find previously translated sentence fragments, phrases, whole sentences, even complete paragraphs that match source document segments.

Language search engines are designed to leverage modern search technology to conduct searches based on the source words in context to ensure that the search results match the meaning of the source segments. Like traditional TM tools, the value of a language search engine rests heavily on the Translation Memory repository it searches against.

Terminology management software

Terminology management software provides the translator a means of automatically searching a given terminology database for terms appearing in a document, either by automatically displaying terms in the translation memory software interface window or through the use of hot keys to view the entry in the terminology database. Some programs have other hotkey combinations allowing the translator to add new terminology pairs to the terminology database on the fly during translation. Some of the more advanced systems enable translators to check, either interactively or in batch mode, if the correct source/target term combination has been used within and across the translation memory segments in a given project. Independent terminology management systems also exist that can provide workflow functionality, visual taxonomy, work as a type of term checker (similar to spell checker, terms that have not been used correctly are flagged) and can support other types of multilingual term facet classifications such as pictures, videos, or sound[1].

Alignment software

Alignment programs take completed translations, divide both source and target texts into segments, and attempt to determine which segments belong together in order to build a translation memory database with the content. Many alignment programs allow translators to manually realign mismatched segments. The resulting translation memory file can then be imported into a translation memory program for future translations.

Interactive machine translation

Interactive machine translation is a paradigm in which the automatic system attempts to predict the translation the human translator is going to produce by suggesting translation hypotheses. These hypotheses may either be the complete sentence, or the part of the sentence that is yet to be translated.

Comparison of various Translation Memory tools

(Alphabetical order, free software first, proprietary solutions second.)

Tool Supported File Formats OS Price License
GlobalSight Text ANSI / ASCII / Unicode for Windows, Text for Apple Macintosh, HTML, XML (ASP.NET, ASP, JSP, XSL), SGML, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), MS Word for Windows, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, RTF, RC, QuarkXPress, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe PageMaker, Interleaf /Quicksilver, Adobe InDesign Cross-platform (Java) Apache License 2.0
gtranslator PO POSIX GPL
Lokalize Gettext PO, Qt ts, XLIFF Cross-platform GPL

OmegaT

 Plain text, HTML, XHTML, StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, OpenDocument (ODF), MS Office Open XML, Help & Manual, HTML Help Compiler (HCC), LaTeX, DokuWiki, QuarkXPress CopyFlow Gold, DocBook, Android Resource, Java Properties, Typo3 LocManager, Mozilla DTD, Windows RC, WiX, ResX, INI files, XLIFF, Gettext PO, SubRip Subtitles, SVG Images Cross-platform (Java) GPL

OmegaT+

 Plain text, HTML/XHTML, StarOffice/OpenOffice.org, OpenDocument (ODF), MS Office Open XML, Help & Manual, HTML Help Compiler (HCC), LaTeX, DokuWiki, QuarkXPress CopyFlow Gold, DocBook, Android Resource, Java Properties, Typo3 LocManager, Mozilla DTD, Windows RC, WiX, ResX, INI files, XLIFF, Gettext PO, SubRip Subtitles Cross-platform (Java) GPL
Open Language Tools XLIFF, HTML/XHTML, XML, DocBook SGML, ASCII, StarOffice/OpenOffice/ODF, .po (gettext), .properties, .java (ResourceBundle), .msg/.tmsg (catgets) Cross-platform (Java) CDDL
Poedit Gettext PO Cross-platform MIT license
Pootle Gettext PO, XLIFF, OpenOffice GSI files (.sdf), TMX, TBX, Java Properties, DTD, CSV, HTML, XHTML, Plain Text Cross-platform (Python) GPL
Virtaal XLIFF, Gettext PO and MO, TMX, TBX, Wordfast TM, Qt ts
Many others via converters in the Translate Toolkit		 Cross-platform (Python) GPL
Proprietary software
AnyMem MS Word Plug-in Windows €89 (1 license) Proprietary
CafeTran MS Office, OpenOffice, Plain Text, HTML, XML, AbiWord, Kword, TMX, Trados TTX, XLIFF, Adobe InDesign (INX and IDML), Adobe FrameMaker (MIF), AutoCad (DXF), iWork, Java Properties, Windows .NET Resources (ResX), Mac OSX/iOS String Resources, Unclean RTF (saved as DOCX or ODT) Windows, Mac, Linux €80 Proprietary
Fluency Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, OneNote, OpenOffice, InDesign, Framemaker, PDF, HTML, XML, XLIFF, Help & Manual, Trados TTX, TXML, Resource Files Windows $299 (freelance) - $399 Proprietary
MetaTexis for Word MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, all documents that can be opened by MS Word, tagged documents of many kinds Windows €39 (Lite), €99 (Pro), €139 (NET/Office) Proprietary
NeuroTran MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, all text-based documents Windows, Mac US$69 (Basic), US$149 (Standard), US$449 (PRO) Proprietary
SDL Trados Features four translation environments: dedicated TagEditor, MSWord Interface, SDLX, and - as the latest development - the new SDL Trados Studio 2009. Additional filters for translating with TagEditor available: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenOffice, InDesign, QuarkXPress, PageMaker, Interleaf, Framemaker, HTML, SGML, XML, SVG, .... Includes SDL MultiTerm for terminology management and Project Management Dashboard for automating tasks and tracking. Windows €795 (freelance) - €4995 (LSP; floating license) Proprietary
STAR transitNXT Features one consistent editing environment for all files, total integration of the terminology tool TermStar, synchronized PDF view for all major file formats, synchronised view of HTML and XML files, integration to automatic workflow engine or machine translation systems, concordance searh in both source and target, etc. The Professionhal version includes complete project management features. System covers all major file formats (MS Office, Adobe FrameMaker and InDesign, QuarkXpress, MS Visio, AutoCad, Interleaf/Quicksilver, all tagged format etc. Terminology tool included and integrated. Windows €75 (rented freelance version 3 months) - server license as quoted Proprietary
Swordfish Translation Editor Translation Editor on XLIFF 1.2 standard released by OASIS. Supported standards: XLIFF, TMX, SRX, TBX. Supported general document formats: Abiword, Adobe InDesign, HTML, Microsoft Office 2007/2010, Microsoft Visio, MIF, OpenOffice.org, Plain Text, RTF, SDLXLIFF, Tagged (unclean) RTF, Trados TTX, TXML, XML (Generic plus configurations for: DITA, DocBook, SVG, XHTML, Word 2003). Software document types: JavaScript, Java Properties, PO (Portable Objects), RC 9Windows C/C++ Resources), ResX (Windows .NET Resources), TS (Qt Linguist translation source). Windows, Linux, Mac €240 (freelance) - €96 (students) - €2640 (20 users site license) Proprietary
WebTranslateIt MS Word .docx, Powerpoint .pptx, Gettext .po/.pot, XLIFF, Java .properties, Qt .ts, JSON, MS .resx/.aspx, Ruby .yml, Apple .strings, Android .xml, Blackberry .rrc, HTML, PHP .ini/.conf, PHP array .php, NSIS .nsh, text files (plain text, textile, Markdown), YouTube .sbv, Subrip .srt... View complete list of supported formats Any (web based) From €14 to €149 per month Proprietary
Wordfast Classic MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint (for Windows and Mac); tagged documents Microsoft Office Word addin €330/165 (for both Wordfast Classic and Wordfast Pro bundle); 50% discount for translators from low-income countries Proprietary
Wordbee MS Word, Excel, Excel Multilingual, PowerPoint, Open Office, RTF, XML, XLIFF,HTML, XHTML, PHP, JSP and other web pages, ASP, Code files, XSL Stylesheets, POT/PO, Photoshop, Adobe InDesign... and others... See special features online Wordbee Any Freelancer Edition €169/€290 and Team Edition (request a quote online) Proprietary
TM-database Plain text (.txt), EFI BIOS strings (.uni), Java resources (.properties), Smali files (.smali), Android UI strings (.xml), Microsoft resources (.res/.resx), Qt(.ts), Indesign (.inx), PHP sources, XLIFF, HTM, TMX, Microsoft Excel, XML Windows Free Proprietary
Crowdin Plain text, HTML, XHTML, XLIFF, GetText .po, Java .properties, Android strings, iOS strings, Bada, Windows Phone, Symbian, BlackBerry, .NET .resx, Qt .ts, XUL DTD, Chrome .json, SubRip srt, YouTube Subtitles .sbv and more... complete list of supported formats Any from US $9 Tiny subscription plan to US $139 Extra Large Proprietary

According to a survey done by the Imperial College, in 2006 the most popular systems were (in decreasing order):[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ See page 26 in "Imperial College London Translation Memories Survey". 2006. http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/portal/pls/portallive/docs/1/7307707.PDF.  (PDF). (Permalink)

External links


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