Articles for Translators
and Translation Companies
Machine Translation
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Automatic
Translation in Multilingual Electronic Meetings
Electronic meetings, e.g., chat rooms and bulletin boards, can be more
efficient and effective than traditional, oral discussions, but
until only recently, online groups speaking many languages could
not benefit from machine translation (MT). Although it is possible
for linguists to provide translations for the group members as they
read comments during a multilingual discussion, this is not feasible
for large groups and many languages...
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the full article…
The
Language Software Revolution
The continued expansion of the global market, and the realization that
English may have already reached its zenith as the global internet
language, requires transnational corporations to utilize multilingual
means of reaching new markets. In the process of accessing new audiences
for their products, transnational corporations must ensure that
the messages in marketing ads are grammatically and culturally correct...
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the full article…
The
possibility of language: a discussion of the nature of language,
with implications for human and machine translation
L’heure de vérité a sonné, Melby en est conscient.
Les résultats de plusieurs années de recherche sont
convaincants. Pour le moment, la substitution définitive
du traducteur par la machine est irréalisable et celle de
la traduction humaine par la traduction automatique de haute qualité
reste ponctuelle...
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the full article…
Machine
Translation Used by the US Government
This time, we look at the "parallel
universe" of government translation work and how machine translation
and some variants are employed there. Many of the new developments
reported in this series came from the AMTA (Association for Machine
Translation in the Americas) conference held October 21-25, 2008
in Hawaii...
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the full article…
Machine
Translation: Ingredients for Productive and Stable MT deployments
- Part 2
Before we dive into current trends in Machine Translation research,
I'd like to clarify the part of the translation problem that is
usually addressed by MT research - the fully-automated translation
of digitized text sentences from one language to another. Processes
or "software solutions" that incorporate MT may involve other research-worthy
steps just to get the input into digitized text form…
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the full article…
Machine
Translation: Ingredients for Productive and Stable MT deployments
- Part 1
This is the first of three planned articles reporting on Machine
Translation industry developments that emerged at the AMTA (Association
for Machine Translation in the Americas) conference held in Honolulu,
Hawaii, October 21-25, 2008. AMTA conferences are held every other
year, and have the goal of bringing together users, developers and
researchers on MT…
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the full article…
Transfer-based
machine translation
Transfer-based machine translation
is a type of machine translation, it is based on the idea of interlingua
and is currently one of the most widely used methods of machine
translation...
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the full article…
Comparison of machine translation applications
Basic general information for popular
Machine translation applications - Name; Official Website; Platform;
License; Price; Latest stable release...
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the full article…
List of research laboratories for machine
translation
The following is a list of research
laboratories that focus on machine translation - Corporate Labs;
Government Labs; University Labs...
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the full article…
Evaluation of machine translation
Various methods for the evaluation
for machine translation have been employed. This article will focus
on the evaluation of the output of machine translation, rather than
on performance or usability evaluation. Before covering the large
scale studies, a brief comment will be made on one of the more pervasive
evaluation techniques, that of round-trip translation (or "back
translation")...
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the full article…
Interlingual machine translation
Interlingual machine translation
is one of the classic approaches to machine translation. In this
approach, the source language, i.e. the text to be translated is
transformed into an interlingua, i.e., an abstract language-independent
representation. The target language is then generated from the interlingua.
Within the rule-based machine translation paradigm, the interlingual
approach is an alternative to the direct approach and the transfer
approach...
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the full article…
Example-based machine translation
The Example-based machine translation
(EBMT) approach to machine translation is often characterized by
its use of a bilingual corpus with parallel texts as its main knowledge
base, at run-time. It is essentially a translation by analogy and
can be viewed as an implementation of case-based reasoning approach
of machine learning...
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the full article…
Statistical machine translation
Statistical machine translation (SMT)
is a machine translation paradigm where translations are generated
on the basis of statistical models whose parameters are derived
from the analysis of bilingual text corpora. The statistical approach
contrasts with the rule-based approaches to machine translation
as well as with example-based machine translation. The first
ideas of statistical machine translation were introduced by Warren
Weaver in 1949, including the ideas of applying Claude Shannon's
information theory...
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the full article…
Making Machine Translation Easier:
Using Language Software to Identify GUI Strings
In the
last three decades, major companies have attempted to improve the
comprehensibility of their technical publications by implementing
various types of Controlled Language (CL). A CL places particular
restraints on lexicon, grammar, and style to improve the clarity,
consistency, and translatability of texts…
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the full article…
Dispelling the myths of machine translation
It is not surprising that myths,
half-truths, and misunderstandings abound regarding machine translation:
It seems as if the experience most players in the translation field
have with this technology does not go beyond toying a little with
one of the free online translation tools. In the hope of setting
the record straight, here is a closer look at some of the most common
myths about machine translation...
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the full article…
Wikipedia about machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred
to by the abbreviation MT, is a sub-field of computational linguistics
that investigates the use of computer software to translate text
or speech from one natural language to another. At its basic level,
MT performs simple substitution of words in one natural language
for words in another. Using corpus techniques, more complex translations
may be attempted, allowing for better handling of differences in
linguistic typology...
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the full article…
The Rise of the Machine! (Machine Translation,
that is)
One of the original anticipated uses
of computers was machine translation. By Machine Translation (MT),
we mean the automation of the translation process. As early as the
1950’s a primitive experiment of translating sixty Russian sentences
into English was deemed a success and resulted in a period of significant
funding for research which through various ebbs and flows continues
to this day…
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the full article…
Is
machine translation a choice?
When a translator works upon a translation, a complex series of
operations belies the ostensibly simple process that is taking place.
It has long been the goal of computational linguists to achieve
fully automatic high quality machine translation, but to date that
goal is some way off, nevertheless, with the means at our disposal
today, is machine translation a viable choice?…
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the full article…
Machine Translation Vs Human Translation
Much have been said about translation
as being one of the most effective, if not the only, means of communication
especially among cultures of different languages. Translation as
a concept has existed hundred years ago, but it is only during the
second half of the twentieth century that it emerged as an independent
academic discipline called Translation Studies and taught at universities…
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the full article…
Interlingual
Machine Translation: Prospects and Setbacks
This study, in an attempt to rise above the intricacy of 'being
informed on the verge of globalization,' is founded on the premise
that Machine Translation (MT) applications searching for an ideal
key to find a universal foundation for all natural languages have
a restricted say over the translation process at various discourse
levels. Our paper favors not judging against the superiority of
human translation vs. machine translation or automated translation
in non-English speaking settings…
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the full article…
Statistical
Machine Translation and Translation Memory: an Integration Made
in Heaven
High quality machine translation (MT) of human languages has been
a quest for more than five decades. Almost as soon as computers
were invented, developers and business people could imagine the
solutions automated translation would provide in supporting international
business, aiding communications, and furthering collaboration in
the medical and research communities…
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the full article...
Machine
Translation (MT) - the 80% Solution?
In 2000 LISA Director Michael Anobile and then Newsletter Editor
Deborah Fry spoke with Tom Lueck, CEO of veteran machine translation
company Logos, about machine translation, the Internet and the future
of the language technology market. We are running this article from
the 2000 Archives to allow readers to decide what progress, and
how much, has been made during the last three years in the field
of MT …
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the full article…
The development and use of machine translation systems and computer-based
translation tools
This survey of the present demand and use of computer-based translation
software concentrates on systems designed for the production of
translations of publishable quality, including developments in controlled
language systems, translator workstations, and localisation; but
it covers also the developments of software for non-translators,
in particular for use with Web pages and other Internet applications,
and it looks at future needs and systems under development. The
final section compares the types of translations that can be met
most appropriately by human and by machine (and computer-aided)
translation respectively …
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the full article…
Machine
translation and human translation: in competition or in complementation?
Ever since the idea of using computers to translate natural languages
was first proposed in the 1940s and since the first investigations
were begun in the 1950s, translators have watched developments either
in scorn or in trepidation. Either they have dismissed the very
notion that anyone could even believe that translation could be
mechanized, or (at the other extreme) they have feared that their
profession would be taken over entirely by machines …
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the full article…
Towards a new vision for MT (Machine translation)
The MT Summit series of conferences began nearly fifteen years ago,
in 1987 at Hakone, Japan. Much has changed in the field of MT since
then. Many of the methods, systems and techniques that are familiar
to us today have emerged in the last fifteen years. For example,
in the late 1980s there were no example-based MT systems, no statistics-based
methods, there were no translation memories, there was no text alignment,
there was no localization industry …
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the full article…
Machine translation today and tomorrow
The field of machine translation (MT) was the pioneer research area
in computational linguistics during the 1950s and 1960s. When it
began, the assumed goal was the automatic translation of all kinds
of documents at a quality equalling that of the best human translators.
It became apparent very soon that this goal was impossible in the
foreseeable future …
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the full article…
MT
and Language: Conflicting Technologies?
In a previous piece (Where Do Translators Fit Into Machine Translation?),
I sought to direct a variety of philosophical, linguistic, and practical
questions to members of the MT community during one of their major
international conferences. Since response to these questions has
been less than deafening, I would now like to suggest a few possible
answers and speculations of my own concerning these matters …
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the full article…
Where Do Translators Fit into Machine Translation?
Here are the original questions for this panel as submitted to the
speakers:
1. At the last MT (Machine Translation) Summit, Martin Kay stated
that there should be "greater attention to empirical studies of
translation so that computational linguists will have a better idea
of what really goes on in translation and develop tools that will
be more useful for the end user." Does this mean that there has
been insufficient input into MT processes by translators interested
in MT? …
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the full article…
Two
German Books About Machine Translation
These slick, green paperbacks could not be more business-like in
their appearance. They are clearly serious books intended to deal
with serious issues. And their twenty assembled authors carry out
this intent in an uncompromising fashion without a hint of the history
behind their subject. And herein perhaps lies the chief fault in
these competent but circumscribed volumes …
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the full article…
Machine
Translation
"Automatic translation" or "machine translation" systems have been
available for a number of years. The underlying assumption is that
a computer can translate as well as a human translator.
We have recently tried out two machine translation systems available
on the internet. We tested their ability to translate two short
texts: one financial, the other legal…
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the full article…
Machine
Translation: Ingredients for Productive and Stable MT deployments
- Part 3
This is the final part of the first in a new series of articles
on how to achieve successful deployments of machine translation
in various use cases. Different types of source documents and different
uses for the translations lead to varying approaches to automation.
In the first part of this article, we talked about why it is so
important to automate translation of knowledge bases…
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the full article…
Useful Machine Translations of Japanese
Patents Have Become a Reality
The article continues the
previous (Reflections of a Human Translator on Machine Translation)
publication on the usefullness of Machine Translations…
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Reflections of a Human Translator
on Machine Translation or Will MT Become the "Deus Ex Machina"
Rendering Humans Obsolete in an Age When "Deus Est Machina?"
Every now and
then Federal Express delivers a thick envelope to my home office
with at least a dozen Japanese patents and a cover letter from a
patent lawyer asking me to provide a price quote for translating
the whole package. After the initial rush that comes from seeing
big dollar signs when I am done counting the pages and multiplying
them by my estimate for the number of words to arrive at the dollar
figure, I try to calm down as I prepare a fax to the lawyer. More
often than not, the price is too high and the lawyer has to find
a way to argue the technological aspects of a patent case without
knowing all the details of what is in all those patents…
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Machine Translation and Computer-Assisted
Translation: a New Way of Translating?
This paper begins with a brief
analysis of the importance of translation technology in different
spheres of modern life, followed by a concise history of machine
and computer-assisted translation. It then describes the technology
available to translators in this first decade of the twenty-first
century and examines the negative and positive aspects of machine
translation and of the main tools used in computer-assisted translation:
electronic dictionaries, glossaries, terminology databases, concordances,
on-line bilingual texts and translation memories. Finally the paper
considers the impact of these new technologies on the professional
translator, concluding that s/he will need to acquire new skills
in order to remain efficient and competitive in the field.
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The
Interpretive Model and Machine Translation
For a long time,
translation formed part of linguistic studies (see G. MOUNINs works).
However, during the last few decades, it has been institutionally
associated with Language Sciences, which represent a vast and very
dynamic field in which interdisciplinarity plays a key role. This
association has led to the burgeoning of a translation science (traductology
or translation studies) within the field of Language Sciences which
does not deal specifically with translation but with translation
operations and process, thus reflecting the change in perspective
adopted to approach the study object. Our aim is to put forward
an epistemological analytical grid of the field in question i.e.
the works related to the analytical study of translation and its
natural processing as a prelude to machine translation or computer-assisted
translation. However, delimiting a field requires one or several
perspectives in order to define its axes, issues, methods and aims…
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