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IT AND TRANSLATION

IT AND TRANSLATION. INTRODUCTION. Rationale for IT Applications to Translation. “A computer is a device that can be used to magnify human productivity. Properly used, it does not dehumanize by imposing its own Orwellian stamp on the products of human spirit ……….

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IT AND TRANSLATION

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  1. IT AND TRANSLATION INTRODUCTION

  2. Rationale for IT Applications to Translation “A computer is a device that can be used to magnify human productivity. Properly used, it does not dehumanize by imposing its own Orwellian stamp on the products of human spirit ………. ………..Translation is a fine and exacting art,but there is much about it that is mechanical and routine, if this were given over to a machine, the productivity of the translator would not only be magnified but this work would become more rewarding, more exciting, more human.” Martin Kay (1987)

  3. COURSE OVERVIEW • ESSENTIALS • TEXT PROCESSING • MT • TM • WORKING WITH CORPORA • TERMINOLOGY EXTRACTION AND GLOSSARY PRODUCTION (MONOLINGUAL AND BILINGUAL CORPORA)

  4. COURSE OVERVIEW - DETAILS • 1) ESSENTIALS: • Types of computer aides • CAT vs. MT • History of CAT tools • General principles of working with CAT tools • Reference materials • Localization and internationalization • UNIX SOME OF THIS TODAY!

  5. COURSE OVERVIEW - DETAILS • 2) TEXT PROCESSING • Word and WordPad (tips and tricks) • Fonts, code pages, keyboard layout, language tools in Windows XP and Office • Speech recognition software • Scanning • OCR • File types (essential info on the most common file types and file conversion utilities)

  6. COURSE OVERVIEW - DETAILS • 3) MT • How it works, brief exhibition: • Systran Pro • Prompt • Neuro Tran • Babelfish DESKTOP BASED SUPPORTS CROATIAN (partially Serbian) WEB BASED

  7. COURSE OVERVIEW - DETAILS • 4) TM: • Overview (what it is, standards and file formats) • Desktop vs. server based TM programs • WinAlign • WordFast • Trados (nowadays SDL Trados) – Freelance edition • Sisulizer

  8. COURSE OVERVIEW - DETAILS • 5) WORKING WITH CORPORA • Essentials • Concordancing (WordSmith, Concordancer, AntConc) • Advanced corpora analysis: WordSmith, TigerSearch • Lemmatization and annotation • Parallel corpora: ParaConc

  9. COURSE OVERVIEW - DETAILS • 6) TERMINOLOGY EXTRACTION AND GLOSSARY PRODUCTION • Essentials • Doing it automatically: Trados (i.e. SDL) MultiTerm (Desktop and Extract) • Doing it semi-automatically: ParaConc, Concordancer

  10. COURSE REQUIREMENTS • Basic computer literacy • Positive outlook: • Computers don’t bite • CAT tools are not complex, they are actually made to make you more efficient • Interest in translation • Willingness to become several times more efficient in doing translations

  11. SCHEDULE • HONESTLY, WE DON’T KNOW FOR CERTAIN! • THAT’S WHY WE NEED YOUR EMAIL ADDRESSES, SO THAT WE CAN KEEP YOU UPDATED WITH THE LATEST SCHEDULE DEVELOPMENTS • PROBABLY: LOCATION: 25 (lectures) and 38 (computer lab), SATURDAYS, at16:00 O’CLOCK

  12. LITERATURE • Geoffrey Samuelsson-Brown, A Practical Guide for Translators (Topics in Translation), Multilingual Matters, 4th edition (May 28, 2004) • H. L. Somers (Editor), Computers and Translation: A Translator's Guide (Benjamins Translation Library, 35), John Benjamins Publishing Co, 1st edition (May 2003) • Bert Esselink, A Practical Guide to Localization (Language International World Directory), John Benjamins Publishing Co, Revised 1st edition (September 2000) • Silvia Pavel and Diane Nolet, Handbook of Terminology, Translation Bureau of Canada, 1st edition (2001) • Frank Austermuhl, Electronic Tools for Translators (Translation Practices Explained), St. Jerome, 1st edition, (April 2001)

  13. COURSE OVERVIEW - GRADING • This is a hands-on course • You will be graded on the basis of the results of your practical assignments: • Creating TMs from parallel texts (fiction and non-fiction e.g. a book and a manual) – in a way, you will be also creating a parallel corpus • Translating two short passages (fiction and non-fiction) using your newly created TMs

  14. IT AND TRANSLATION ESSENTIALS AND MORE ABOUT THE COURSE

  15. TYPES OF COMPUTER AIDES • Computer aides / tools that are relevant to translators can be roughly classified into three groups: • Basic input and editing tools • Reference tools • Productivity tools WORD PROCESSORS Electronic books (desktop & web) Electronic dictionaries Web (Eurodicautom, onelook, etc.) Software-based reference materials (encyclopedias, e-Bible, etc.) TM tools MT tools Speech Technology (i.e. voice recognition)

  16. CAT vs MT • As soon as you start using computer software in the process of translating, you are entering the realm of COMPUTER-AIDED TRANSLATION, or CAT in short. • In other words, CAT is a form of translation wherein a human translator translates texts using computer software designed to support and facilitate the translation process.

  17. CAT vs MT (continued) • The problem is that COMPUTER-AIDED TRANSLATION, is sometimes also called COMPUTER-ASSISTED TRANSLATION, MACHINE-AIDED TRANSLATION or MACHINE-ASSISTED TRANSLATION. • Due to the latter two terms, CAT is sometimes confused with MACHINE TRANSLATION, or MT in short.

  18. CAT vs MT (continued) • Although these two concepts are related and similar in some aspects, CAT and MT denote two diametrically different processes: • In CAT, the computer program merely supports the translator, so the translator translates the text himself/herself, making all the essential decisions involved. • In MT, the translator supports the machine, that is to say: the computer (i.e. program) translates the text, which is then edited by the translator, or, in most cases, not edited at all.

  19. CAT vs MT (continued) • Graphically represented, the difference is: Translation Technology Continuum automation human involvement Computer-aided Translation (CAT) Unaided Translation Automatic Translation/ Machine Translation Translation process aided by electronic tools such as (most typically) Translation Memory Translation process automated by use of Machine Translation Translation process not aided by any electronic tools Adapted from Hutchins & Somers (1992)

  20. CAT – its scope WRONG!!! • CAT is traditionally associated with large-scale / corporate translations: • manuals and technical documentation • software localization • “Typewriter-assisted” (i.e. traditional) translationis usually associated with small-scale / individual translations (done by freelancers): • fiction books, scientific papers, etc.

  21. CAT – its scope (continued) • This is notion of CAT being restricted to corporate translation projects dates back to the 90s and is based exclusively on financial criteria: • during the early and mid 90s a combination of a high-end computer and a high-end CAT tool cost as much as a new car • from their very beginnings CAT tools were designed to be capable of handling both big- and small-scale projects, but initially no freelance translator could afford them

  22. CAT – its scope (continued) • Even for a freelance translator, CAT route is nowadays the only possibility if one wants to provide high-quality, 100% terminologically consistent and efficiently produced translations. • A testimony to that is the industry-standard TM program Trados: Trados Freelance edition has been the company’s best-selling TM program for a number of years.

  23. CAT tools – a bit about their history • CAT tools were developed after (very) disappointing initial experiments with MT tools. • So, in order to give you a proper overview of how we got where we are now, we have to start with the history of MT tools

  24. MT History – how we switched to CAT • MT research began in 1950’s – Warren Weaver’s 1949 Memo: • “When I look at an article in Russian, I say: This is really written in English, but it has been coded in some strange symbols. I will now proceed to decode.” (in Locke and Booth 1955:18)

  25. MT History – how we switched to CAT Initially based on some misconception about human translation: • knowledge of two language systems suffices • it is merely a matter of looking up dictionaries • it is easy to define “a good translation” • there is only one correct translation possible

  26. MT History – how we switched to CAT MT history milestones: pre-ALPAC • 1954: Georgetown system demo • successful translation of 49 Russian sentences into English • 1955-1966: $50m spent in 20 research centres in USA • 1966:Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC) Report concludes: • ”...MT is slower, less accurate and twice as expensive as Human Translation...” • “...there is no prospect of useful MT either immediately or in the future...”

  27. MT History – how we switched to CAT MT history milestones: post-ALPAC • 1969 – privately funded projects • Logos system (1969); Weidner-CAT (1977); ALPS (1980) • 1975 – Météo project in Canada • 1976– European Commission acquires Systran • 1979 – Eurotra project in Europe for Multilingual system • 1980 – PC-based system • 1990 – data-driven system; WebMT

  28. MT History – how we switched to CAT • 1975 Météo project in Canada • Automatic translation of weather forecasts (En -> Fr) • Sublanguage approach (domain-specific MT) • Most successful MT application to date • public broadcasting since 1977 • Fr -> En available since 1989 • only 4% of output needs post-editing • rapid translation staff turnover no longer a problem

  29. MT History – how we switched to CAT • Technological factors • specifically: prevalence of PC with improved processing power • Translation market factors • official bilingualism/multilingualism create institutional needs • globalisation creates huge commercial needs • Advances in computational linguistics • More realistic user expectations • Internet creates casual access to multilingual information • Renewed interest in MT in late 80s and early 90s:

  30. MT History – how we switched to CAT • However, translations produced by MT were still not reliable and accurate enough for large-scale commercial applications. • So, it became evident that the human translator cannot be eliminated and replaced by computers. • Actually, it became obvious that computers programs should be used as TOOLS which only HELP the translator.

  31. History of CAT Tools • Unreliability of MT tools -> large corporations hire translation agencies • Translations agencies find it difficult to cope with the increasing demand • Translation agencies develop their own in-house CAT tools • Translation agencies begin to sell their CAT tools

  32. History of CAT Tools • Two major players in the domain of CAT tools development Trados and STAR Group both started as: • TRANSLATION AGENCIES!!! STAR AG was founded as a small translation agency in 1984 by Josef Zibung and HanspeterSiegrist in the northern Swiss city of Stein am Rhein near Schaffhausen. It won and keept customers from the automotive, machine tool, computer and aeronautics industries like ABB, AT&T, BMW, Dornier, IBM, Mazda, Mercedes, Nissan, Saab and Siemens. TRADOS was founded in 1984 by Jochen Hummel and IkoKnyphausen in Stuttgart, Germany to provide translation services for IBM.

  33. TRADOS – timeline 1990 - first version of TRADOS's main component, MultiTerm was created for DOS 1992 -TRADOS developed the first MultiTerm for Windows (v3.1) 1992 – TRADOS’s Translator's Workbench with linguistic fuzzy-matching on translation memories for DOS 1994 - TRADOS’s Translator's Workbench for Windows

  34. TRADOS – timeline (continued) 1997 – BREAKTHROUGH : Microsoft decides to base its internal localization memory store on TRADOS 1998 – Microsoft acquires a share of 20% in TRADOS TRADOS becomes a de-facto industry standard CAT tool!!! That’s why we will mostly work with TRADOS in this course (as far as TM is concerned). But we will also work with WordFast, because not all people can afford Trados.

  35. WHAT WE WANT TO TEACH YOU HERE? TWO PRACTICAL EXAMPLES OF COMMON TRANSLATION PROBLEMS

  36. IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE: • (quite obvious) the book has an index = YOU (i.e. the translator) are supposed to make it in the translated version of the book • a vast index = a lot of terminology • some index terms appear on several pages that are not necessarily in the same chapter (e.g. pg. 36, pg. 92 and pg. 255) = a very serious problem for the consistency of you translation

  37. General principles of working with CAT tools • The main goals are EFFICIENCY and CONSISTENCY • CAT tools = TM tools (in this case only) • The basic idea is fairly simple: • Documents, especially technical ones, contain a large amount of content that is similar or identical to information already contained in earlier versions or similar documents that have been translated before. • that applies to the source editing language (SL) as well as the target translation languages (TL).

  38. General principles of working with CAT tools • So, wouldn’t it be great to re-use previously translated content as valuable reference material for new translations as well so as to obtain consistency of terminology and phrasing? • That is exactly what CAT tools do! • CAT tools make it possible for translators to work only on content that is being created for the first time. Existing text and text similar to existing text is taken from the available. reference translations (i.e. from TM= translation memory).

  39. General principles of working with CAT tools • So, wouldn’t it be great to re-use previously translated content as valuable reference material for new translations as well so as to obtain consistency of terminology and phrasing? • That is exactly what CAT tools do! • CAT tools make it possible for translators to work only on content that is being created for the first time. Existing text and text similar to existing text is taken from the available. reference translations (i.e. from TM= translation memory).

  40. TRADOS - a screenshot

  41. TO ENJOY ALL THE BENEFITS OF CAT TOOLS FIRST YOU HAVE TO CREATE A TM AND A TERMINOLOGY DATABASE: • either from your old translations • or from new translations (i.e. creating a TM from scratch) A DREAM COME TRUE? NOT REALLY  THAT IS WHERE OTHER CAT TOOLS (i.e. NON-TM CAT tools) STEP IN TO SAVE THE DAY!!!

  42. REUSING YOU OLD TRANSLATIONS • The best way to make a TM: • reliable source (YOU did the translation) • readily available (stored on you PC)

  43. A BRIEF DIGRESSION • The term LOCALIZATION has often popped up in previous slides • What is LOCALIZATION?

  44. WHAT IS LOCALIZATION? • Localization is the process of adapting, translating and customizing a product (software) for a specific market (for a specific locale or cultural conventions; the locale usually determines conventions such as sort order, keyboard layout, date, time, number and currency formats). In terms of software localization, this means the production of interfaces that are meaningful and comprehensible to local users. • The Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) defines localization as: “Localization involves taking a product and making it linguistically and culturally appropriate to the target locale (country/region and language) where it will be used and sold.” • Typically, this involves the translation of the user interface (the messages a program presents to users) to enable them to create documents and data, modify them, print them, send them by e-mail, etc.)

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