This month ClientSide news looks at a case study featuring @PROMT Professional 7. 0 and how it can help companies of all sizes. This case study begins in France with ACS Production, owned by Alain Champagne. He specializes in the translation of manuals. Mr. Champagne manages all work by himself including: fast, high quality translation of 20+ pages of manuals and other technical documentation every week.

Alain Champagne is a musician, a webmaster and the owner of a small company, ACS Production, which specializes in custom-made audio-video systems. His primary occupation is the localization of manuals for different music companies and (sometimes) for individual customers. He translates both to and from English and French. His main clients are: Best Service France (Garritan Personal Orchestra, GigaStudio 3), East West (Symphonic Choirs), Vienna Symphonic Library (Vienna Instruments), etc. which he handles all translation work by himself.

THE CHALLENGE

Alain is a freelancer who needed to maximize the amount of translation work that he handled each day. As the number of orders from music companies and other customers grew, he needed to improve productivity without sacrificing quality. However, because ACS Production is a small business, Alain could not afford to hire specialist translators and still turn a profit.

"Hiring specialist translators for a field in which I am already an expert didn’t make sense to me," said Alain. The average amount of work that he handles each week is about 20 to 30 pages of text files in different formats, including PDF files. "Usually, it is closer to 30 pages per week - 20 when the translation needs more focus and research," he added.

Not being a professionally-trained translator himself, Alain was finding that manually translating all of the work by himself was leaving him without time for other aspects of his business.

So, he reviewed the skills that he had and the skills that he would need to find elsewhere to enable him to manage his work effectively. While he had a good understanding of the subject matter, he was encountering problems, such as a lack of common terminology. This, in turn, led to some misunderstandings in the source material. These unresolved issues were showing up as a less-than-acceptable quality of translation for standard document types, such as contracts and technical manuals.

THE SOLUTION

Having reviewed the options open to him, Alain determined that machine translation (MT) software would be his best solution in order to move forward. While MT cannot completely replace human translation, it is an effective solution for improving throughput and standardizing the use of terminology in specific document types. "One of the biggest benefits for me is the ability to get a quick read on the source document before I embark on the translation," says Alain.

He started experimenting with different types of MT software five years ago and settled on @PROMT Professional two years ago. @PROMT Professional 7.0 integrates with Alain’s MS Office applications efficiently, and the customizable options and self-training capabilities have proved particularly valuable. "PROMT software gives me the best results and the most accurate translations every time."

To make the best use of his investment in MT, Alain translates documents with the @PROMT software, then reads through the draft and makes the necessary corrections in style and vocabulary. For postediting improvements, he uses special @PROMT tools - dictionaries, reserved and unknown words, and the personal dictionary option.

To optimize the quality of the draft, Alain uses the dictionary tool in @PROMT to choose the most suitable type of specialized dictionary. This ensures that the program translates documents using standard terminology for the subject matter at hand.

The reserved words tool enables him to create lists of words that do not need to be translated, or should be transliterated in the output document. Once created, this list of reserved words is available for future translations and can be updated at any time to take account of changes in terminology in a particular field.

The unknown words tool lets Alain see a list of words that were not translated because no equivalent words were found in the selected dictionary. He can look through this list, find the appropriate terms manually, and easily add them to the document. Again, once saved, this list can be used and edited in the future as required.

The personal dictionary tool enables Alain to create his own lists of words and phrases for the text, as well as specific requirements for any individual translation project. These lists can also be saved and applied to future projects.

"I created my personal dictionary (music terms, music companies, instruments, etc.) and, time after time, PROMT gives me the right translations. Having this task handled automatically means I can spend more time simplifying the resulting document so that it’s as comprehensible as possible to the reader," says Alain Champagne.

Gradually, Alain can build his dictionary to increase the accuracy of his translations and minimize the amount of time that he has to spend ‘fixing’ the MT results manually.

CONCLUSION

The usage of @PROMT software has enabled Alain Champagne and ACS Productions to increase by more than 50% the total amount of translation work that he handled without deducting the expense of human translators from his bottom line. When there’s a need for fast and accurate translation of documents, including PDF files, @PROMT translation software provides precision and accuracy, together with the tools to improve consistency and to keep on improving over time.

"@PROMT learns my translation style," says Alain. "It’s the perfect employee - it requires no salary and is on duty 24x7."

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