Computers - Computer-Aided-Translation: Virtues and Vices
Translation memory (TM) arrangements, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the proofreading and cross-border 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 text has been broken down into smaller units, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The priorities of using translation memory systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and enhance translation quality by securing that terminology and sentences are used consistently within and across translation works. Users in governmental and cross-border agencies state a 25–60% rise in performance. Yet, it must be stated that the use of TM systems may also have negative effects on translation quality. One of the major discouraging things of TM systems is that they usually work at sentence level. That’s why, there is a serious danger that the translator will focus too much on separated sentences, possibly disregarding the contexts in which the sentences are embedded. Moreover, the matching algorithms of TM systems are based on very simple formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. Thus, the human translator’s notion of the level of similarity between a piece to be translated and a piece retrieved from the storage base may differ considerably from the level of similarity calculated by the CAT system. This may follow to situations wherein exact matches imply wrong translations, or one translation of a fuzzy match requires little or no adjustment but another fuzzy match with the same similarity value is not useful at all (for a discussion on the aspects of evaluating the retrieval mechanisms of TM systems, see Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards (1996), Whyman and Somers (1999), and Reinke (2000a, 2004). Despite the negative sides, it should be noted that TM systems generally incorporate into the translation routine comparatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the real translation work, while relieving them from routine work and maintaining translation as a creative act whenever the linguistic resourcefulness of a human nature is required. For more remarks, visit us at: HQ-translate company
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