Poll: Do you use Machine Translation tools for professional purposes? 论题张贴者: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Do you use Machine Translation tools for professional purposes?".
This poll was originally submitted by Marco Cevoli
View the poll here
A forum topic will appear each time a new poll is run. Fo... See more This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Do you use Machine Translation tools for professional purposes?".
This poll was originally submitted by Marco Cevoli
View the poll here
A forum topic will appear each time a new poll is run. For more information, see: http://proz.com/topic/33629 ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jocelyne S 
法国
Local time: 13:13
French法语译成English英语
+ ...
| No, and I doubt I ever will | Sep 3, 2009 |
I don't think that MT will ever be suited to the kind of things I translate, which tend to be academic papers, assessments, reports, etc.
Although I may be way off, I presume that MT is better suited to things like specifications, lists, and other things that I'm quite unfamiliar with.
Maybe I'll be proved wrong in the coming years; until then, my CAT will keep me company for segmenting and glossary purposes and I probably won't give a second thought to MT.
... See more I don't think that MT will ever be suited to the kind of things I translate, which tend to be academic papers, assessments, reports, etc.
Although I may be way off, I presume that MT is better suited to things like specifications, lists, and other things that I'm quite unfamiliar with.
Maybe I'll be proved wrong in the coming years; until then, my CAT will keep me company for segmenting and glossary purposes and I probably won't give a second thought to MT.
I know that there are some good translators on here who use MT and I would be interested in trying again to understand how it helps them (and what it actually does).
Best,
Jocelyne ▲ Collapse
| | | | Rebekka Groß (X)
Local time: 12:13
English英语译成German德语
...I post-edit machine translated texts.
| | | | | It's on the way... | Sep 3, 2009 |
Rebekka Groß wrote:
...I post-edit machine translated texts.
I must admit that since the conference in London in November I have started looking at it and taking it seriously.
It is still largely a source of gibberish in my working pairs, but it is certainly not to be dismissed out of hand. People are working on it and getting almost usable results in some contexts. The syntax is often a pain, so I am beginning to use it as an argument for explaining to clients that I need to be paid a decent rate for post-editing.
Danish, like German, must have the finite verb in the second position in a main clause, but the rest of a compound verb can be placed in several positions... while English rules are less clear cut.
This sort of thing makes for sentences that are not strictly incorrect, but they are not at all easy to read or idiomatic either!
Considering that English is often a foreign language to the reader, there is no need to make it more difficult than it already is.
There are other traps in MT, but there is no way we can ignore it.
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Αlban SHPΑTΑ
美国
正式会员 (自2008)
English英语译成Albanian阿尔巴尼亚语
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| Sometimes yes | Sep 3, 2009 |
Only to understand certain emails or text written in languages other than the ones I can handle.
| | | | neilmac
西班牙
Local time: 13:13
Spanish西班牙语译成English英语
+ ...
Somebody gave me a copy of Systran many years ago and although it usually comes up with unmitigated balderdash, I found it can sometimes help with a certain kind of text and saves on keystrokes.
As I have pointed out before on forums, I think an MT tool similar to Systran but with the possibility to "train" it to correct its mistakes, sort of a combination of Systran and WF / I'm afraid I don't know how the tech side works / would be a useful aid and if it was simple and worked I'd even co... See more Somebody gave me a copy of Systran many years ago and although it usually comes up with unmitigated balderdash, I found it can sometimes help with a certain kind of text and saves on keystrokes.
As I have pointed out before on forums, I think an MT tool similar to Systran but with the possibility to "train" it to correct its mistakes, sort of a combination of Systran and WF / I'm afraid I don't know how the tech side works / would be a useful aid and if it was simple and worked I'd even consider paying for it.
There are people out there "translating" with the Google and Babelfish type free MT programs so why not have a proper functioning one for professionals, without it becoming too complex for "technoidiot" users like myself to get to grips with, or taking forever to learn /pax trados / ...
BTW please excuse my dodgy punctuation, today I'm using a UK interface with a Spanish keypad and don't know where most of the puntuation items like brackets and question marks are ... ▲ Collapse
| | | | Gina W
美国
Local time: 07:13
正式会员 (自2003)
French法语译成English英语
If I did, I'd probably end up making more work for myself, having to completely re-do the text then.
| | | | Amy Duncan (X)
巴西
Local time: 08:13
Portuguese葡萄牙语译成English英语
+ ...
Well, "sometimes" actually means once, so far. I was working on a long document about psychological business training techniques, and just for the fun of it, I thought I'd pop a paragraph into Google translate. I was quite surprised at how accurate the translation was (with some weird things, of course), and it even gave me a couple of ideas of words/expressions I hadn't thought of. I ended up using it for most of this translation and found it very helpful. Since then, however, I haven't found i... See more Well, "sometimes" actually means once, so far. I was working on a long document about psychological business training techniques, and just for the fun of it, I thought I'd pop a paragraph into Google translate. I was quite surprised at how accurate the translation was (with some weird things, of course), and it even gave me a couple of ideas of words/expressions I hadn't thought of. I ended up using it for most of this translation and found it very helpful. Since then, however, I haven't found it useful for other types of jobs I've been working on. I can't explain why, because these jobs seem similar in many ways. I'll probably try it again at some point to see if it will work the way it did with that one text. It was great for that one, because I was able to work much faster and even more accurately. ▲ Collapse
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i started out using it but finally have gotten wordfast...now just transferring it to my new computer.
| | | | | No, but I'm keeping an open mind | Sep 4, 2009 |
I once worked with another translator on a large job and he sent me an MT of the entire job, which I kept in the background for reference. For the text in question, it was easier to translate from scratch, than post-edit, but like Amy points out there were in fact a few useful terms.
Over time, I expect post-editing to become a more substantial part of our work. There are some proprietary MT programs out there that are producing pretty decent stuff, that we can't simply dismiss with... See more I once worked with another translator on a large job and he sent me an MT of the entire job, which I kept in the background for reference. For the text in question, it was easier to translate from scratch, than post-edit, but like Amy points out there were in fact a few useful terms.
Over time, I expect post-editing to become a more substantial part of our work. There are some proprietary MT programs out there that are producing pretty decent stuff, that we can't simply dismiss with a black-and-white attitude.
As long as I'm being paid properly for my time, I'm open-minded to working with the upper end of the MT market, if it means increasing my productivity (like CAT tools and speech recognition do -- to me, it's just like another spanner in my toolbox, I know what to use when, and what to charge).
This, obviously, rules out any gibberish texts (I have a short fuse) but those who've seen good proprietary MT results will know what I'm referring to here. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Postedit MT for a client? | Sep 4, 2009 |
If the question means "postedit machine translation for a client," I have done so on a regular basis since 1979 - many millions of words. I do it because my employer (and later a major client), the Pan American Health Organization, uses MT almost exclusively.
One day I woke up and realized that I am often faster, more fluent, and more accurate without MT, but that varies depending on the nature of the text, and no doubt much of the improved speed and fluency comes with professional ... See more If the question means "postedit machine translation for a client," I have done so on a regular basis since 1979 - many millions of words. I do it because my employer (and later a major client), the Pan American Health Organization, uses MT almost exclusively.
One day I woke up and realized that I am often faster, more fluent, and more accurate without MT, but that varies depending on the nature of the text, and no doubt much of the improved speed and fluency comes with professional development over a period of 30 years.
My preference is to not use MT or any other tools, but I will work with MT and get the job done. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jeff Allen
法国
Local time: 13:13
Multiplelanguages多语种
+ ...
| yes indeed have used for such tasks | Sep 5, 2009 |
neilmac wrote:
Somebody gave me a copy of Systran many years ago and although it usually comes up with unmitigated balderdash, I found it can sometimes help with a certain kind of text and saves on keystrokes.
As I have pointed out before on forums, I think an MT tool similar to Systran but with the possibility to "train" it to correct its mistakes, sort of a combination of Systran and WF / I'm afraid I don't know how the tech side works / would be a useful aid and if it was simple and worked I'd even consider paying for it.
Neil,
What version of Systran do you have? All of the major MT commercial systems today provide ways for end users to train the system at any moment with the terminology and grammatical structure that are available in the content that is translated. Some are easier to use than others.
Systran v4 onward (desktop version now at v6, the Enterprise/Corporate version just changed to v7) started providing the dictionary module for users
Promt-based software v3 onward (now at v8) has progressively improved interfaces with dictionary module that lets you simply display and choose in pop-up windows the conjugation and declension formats as well as grammatical structures for noun and verb phrases.
Answer to poll question:
Examples of domains and topics for which I have created MT dictionaries and conducted MT + postediting for translation work (off top of my head, there are more as well):
* Telecommunications Wireless Networks documentation (software test acceptance plan, RFI/RFQ replies, etc)
* software training course materials
* Software application descriptions
* Software localization projects
* marketing brochures for software applications
* weekly project management meeting minutes (software field)
* response for bids/proposals (software)
* general computer science field dictionary
* automotive field dictionary
* construction heavy-machinery and engines
* corporate project reports
* Company web site localization (different sectors)
* job announcements
* Legal documents (French law with regard to the Reduced Work week, Child Adoption texts)
* general communication e-mails on various topics
I've shown examples (in articles, presentations, etc) of where I can take sample texts and in 15-30 min it is possible to analyze the content and enter in dictionary entries in another 30-45 minute to produce customized translation for 2000+ word sets of content with high customer-facing impact. Another example was a 8,000 word document with critical sales impact with was completed in 9hours, including all dictionary entry creation, validation across all examples, and postediting.
An example of marketing press releases with a fine-tuned process took 19 hours for full cycle content analysis, terminology identification, dictionary entry, full cycle terminology testing across the entire corpus, especially on highly variable text including lots of addresses (street names, abbreviations), company names & product names (multiple variants of both). All of this on the press releases was performed manually (on purpose) to provide a baseline time effort, and stated that the use of existing terminology extraction tools (which I also have used on projects) and other batch processing tools, + using existing TMs on related content, can speed up the process. Yet, the baseline was established based on 32 timed sessions ranging from 10 min to 2 hours, done on different platforms (on Pocket Pc, laptop, desktop computer), in different environments (standing up in subway, sitting on train, sitting in backyard, sitting at desk, etc). All info about each session was logged with relevant details and the entire 19 hours including logging the info on the Excel sheet).
Each session during the dictionary creation stage led to a separate dictionary, of which 9 separate dictionaries where merged into a single consolidated dictionary, and double-checked for risk of dual entries.
1100 potential terminology candidates were streamlined down to under 600 dictionary entries of which approximately 50/50% were translatable terms vs Do not Translate terms.
All of the details are logged in the final report about the project, including the source content and the translated output (both raw output and translation results as well as with the consolidated dictionary used for processing).
See the following post for more about these several projects and links to the reports about them:
http://www.proz.com/forum/proofreading_editing_reviewing/133180-machine_translation_postediting_translators_views_needed.html#1123567
[Edited at 2009-09-05 15:45 GMT]
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