Using the Trados 2007 Automated Translation (Beta)
Thread poster: Siegfried Armbruster
Siegfried Armbruster
Siegfried Armbruster  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 15:30
English to German
+ ...
In memoriam
Jan 11, 2009

I just bought Trados 2007 and am experimenting with its new features including the Automated Translation (beta) feature (EN-DE).

Up to now, my impression is - this is MT at its worst.

Not only does it have no settings that can be used to adapt it to a specialty or to influence the style of the generated output, the output itself is complete nonsense. It does not recognize standard terms, is unable to produce a correct German grammatical structure etc...
The resu
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I just bought Trados 2007 and am experimenting with its new features including the Automated Translation (beta) feature (EN-DE).

Up to now, my impression is - this is MT at its worst.

Not only does it have no settings that can be used to adapt it to a specialty or to influence the style of the generated output, the output itself is complete nonsense. It does not recognize standard terms, is unable to produce a correct German grammatical structure etc...
The results produced by Google Translate, Langenscheidt T1 or Prompt are much better (and their results are unusable IMO).

I have a few questions:

Any ideas how to improve the output?
Any ideas how to connect a different MT solution to Trados 2007 and if so, does it produce better results?
Any ideas if the corrected TU is sent back to SDL (this would be a major break of confidentiality)

In my opinion the current (beta) implementation is so bad that it is damaging our profession. I'm convinced that many so called translators are not only experimenting with this feature, but use it in their production processes. I do accept that SDL is looking into MT, but SDL should not implement such a feature (Beta or not) in a professional tool before it produces at least acceptable output. I also don’t understand the intentions of SDL when implementing this feature. To me, it just presents a picture of SDL as being extremely unprofessional and not concerned about quality at all (they do understand quality issues, IMO their new Quality Checker 2.0 is an excellent and powerful tool).

What is your opinion about this feature?
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Marina Soldati
Marina Soldati  Identity Verified
Argentina
Local time: 11:30
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
My experience, too! Jan 11, 2009

Siegfried Armbruster wrote:

Up to now, my impression is - this is MT at its worst.



That´s my impression too with EN>ES translations.
It takes a lot of time to access the database and find the translations for single words (maybe my internet connection is too slow). It doesn´t produce correct Spanish grammar, either.
I`ve found that it´s faster to think and type than too correct the terminology and the grammar mistakes.

I haven´t tried it with general text, but when a few technical terms are involved...



I have a few questions:

Any ideas how to improve the output?
Any ideas how to connect a different MT solution to Trados 2007 and if so, does it produce better results?
Any ideas if the corrected TU is sent back to SDL (this would be a major break of confidentiality)

In my opinion the current (beta) implementation is so bad that it is damaging our profession. I'm convinced that many so called translators are not only experimenting with this feature, but use it in their production processes. I do accept that SDL is looking into MT, but SDL should not implement such a feature (Beta or not) in a professional tool before it produces at least acceptable output. I also don’t understand the intentions of SDL when implementing this feature. To me, it just presents a picture of SDL as being extremely unprofessional and not concerned about quality at all (they do understand quality issues, IMO their new Quality Checker 2.0 is an excellent and powerful tool).

What is your opinion about this feature?


I don´t have the answers to your questions, but I was also wondering whether the corrected TU was sent back to SDL, so I stopped using it until I can find out (though don´t know where to find that information).

I hope other colleagues can put some light into this matter.

Regards,
Marina


 


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Using the Trados 2007 Automated Translation (Beta)







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