neilmac Spain Local time: 02:20 Member (2007) Spanish to English + ...
It is what it is
Nov 2, 2011
Jabberwock wrote:
neilmac wrote:
Chris S wrote:
If MT really was that bad, people wouldn't use it.
I'm afraid I have to disagree there. Just as many shop in the UK at Lidl or Aldi because they can't afford Waitrose or Claridge's every day, many clients will go for the cheapest option available, especially in times of recession (or whatever you wish to call the current quagmire).
But what are you disagreeing with?
I disagreed with Chris's assertion that "If MT really was that bad, people wouldn't use it".
I did not mean to suggest that Aldi or Lidl are low quality (I often shop there myself and am happy with the quality/price ratio of their goods), but that they are perceived as "chavvy" (= cheap and nasty) in the UK and not as good quality or reputable as the more upmarket chains.
What I meant was that some clients will simply go for the cheapest option, whether or not the quality is (supposedly) guaranteed by coming under a known brand name.
Or (in the case of translation) whether or it comes from a reputable, competent, native-speaker professional translator, or someone working an MT program in a sweatshop somewhere.
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neilmac Spain Local time: 02:20 Member (2007) Spanish to English + ...
Develop this
Nov 2, 2011
polyglot45 wrote:
But collectively refusing to post-edit MT is no solution. There will always be someone who will do it. A 100% boycott is utopian. It doesn’t matter to me but for those of you likely to be affected, I would say: “Get real and get ready”. Develop new services (creative copywriting, for example). It will be extra added value that will make the difference.
I have too many issues with the assertions/assumptions in the post to deal with here.
Suffice it to say that I, for one, reserve the right to refuse to post-edit whatever I see fit. As for the suggestion to "develop new services" my immediate response is "why should I?". We are not all desperate and grasping.
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Nicole Rodrigues Sweden Local time: 02:20 English to Portuguese + ...
Bloopers
Nov 2, 2011
Hello Giulia,
I read the article you suggested. Thank you for sharing.
“Human-engineered” translation is just as inadequate in more important domains. In our courts and hospitals, in the military and security services, underpaid and overworked translators make muddles out of millions of vital interactions. Machine translation can certainly help in these cases. Its legendary bloopers are often no worse than the errors made by hard-pressed humans.”
(...)
"Google Translate, which can so far handle 52 languages, sidesteps the linguists’ theoretical question of what language is and how it works in the human brain. In practice, languages are used to say the same things over and over again. For maybe 95 percent of all utterances, Google’s electronic magpie is a fabulous tool."
It is a shame they have to go this far to make people think they can actually use a machine to help in courts and hospitals instead of a human translator, as if saying that: "mistakes will come up anyway, so we might as well pay for the cheaper option."
This fight/cause/campaign (at least it should be a campaign) is not against the existence or use of MT, but against the belief that it can be a substitute for us. And articles like this are the real problem, specially when posted in the likes of the New York Times.
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Attila Piróth France Local time: 02:20 Member English to Hungarian + ...
Survey on translation automation among professional translators
Nov 2, 2011
Jared wrote:
54% of translators asked state they are using MT in some way. This percentage was 30% in 2010. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it is being used as a productivity tool. Another use is, for example, in illustrating the difference in quality between MT and HT to clients who ask about it.
It is indeed quite important to see how MT is used by professional translators. To prepare for the ProZ-Taus debate on translation automation, I conducted a survey among professional translators, and received 180 replies. A 19-page report is available at http://www.pirothattila.com/APiroth_MT-Survey.pdf .
One of my questions probed in some depth the point raised by Jared:
Q3. In which ways do you use / have you used machine translation (MT) in your (paid) professional work? (Multiple choices)
The answer option that came out on top was "I never use machine translation (MT)", with about 45% - which is perfectly compatible with Jared's finding.
The second most chosen answer (about 25%) was "Only to get information (read news that are written in languages I do not master, etc.)" – which is a way of using MT in a non-professional context.
Then came the various options that described using MT in a professional setting. The options being nonexclusive, the numbers do not add up to 100%.
"I use it practically as a dictionary: I translate individual terms or parts of sentences using MT, then insert them into my sentence" had about 20%, while "In most of my projects, I translate several full sentences using MT, then revise them." and "The machine translation option is regularly ticked in my CAT tool. I revise the pretranslation produced by MT" had about 10% each. These two options fall clearly within the scope of productivity tools, as mentioned by Jared - but I would not classify using MT as a dictionary as such.
Best,
Attila
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Jeff Whittaker United States Local time: 20:20 Member (2002) Spanish to English + ...
Feds Botched Interpretation, Used Google Translate
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RobinB Germany Local time: 02:20 German to English
Actually....
Nov 2, 2011
... this whole "debate" reminds me of the huge (and sometimes quite violent) fuss about TM technology back in the early to mid-1990s. There were people who simply raged against the machine, and people who - quite reasonably - took exception to many agencies abusing TM by putting pressure on prices. Nowadays, very few translators would like to do without TM, though of course there are still a lot of issues surrounding the pricing models.
MT is certainly getting better as we watch, and I'm pretty sure it won't be long before at least some of us at the high end of the market can effectively use MT (in conjunction with TM) for complex narrative text translation to improve our own productivity and hence help secure our incomes on a sustainable basis. However, the pricing model issue is now very prominent, and I think there is scope for collective efforts to ensure that high-quality MT isn't just a technology for big agencies with deep pockets.
Ultimately, I don't think this is really an argument about technology at all. It's about power.
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Jabberwock Poland Local time: 02:20 Member (2004) English to Polish
Quality vs. non-quality
Nov 2, 2011
neilmac wrote:
What I meant was that some clients will simply go for the cheapest option, whether or not the quality is (supposedly) guaranteed by coming under a known brand name.
Or (in the case of translation) whether or it comes from a reputable, competent, native-speaker professional translator, or someone working an MT program in a sweatshop somewhere.
You make it sound as there are only two options: perfect quality and no quality at all. And if the clients are so gullible that they can't tell one from the other and are constantly being duped by unscrupulous vendors.
In my opinion it is just the opposite - the clients know perfectly well what they are paying for... By the way, they don't go for the cheapest option - you can't really beat the price of Google Translate, can you? Instead, they select the best quality-to-price ratio... They do not want the perfect quality (or, to be more precise, they do not want to pay for the perfect quality) - they want the quality they can get away with...
As I said it before here, nobody (even the language-loving, accuracy-obsessive translators!) has ever returned a toaster because they did not like the translation quality of the user manual. Therefore it makes no sense at all to pay for a good translation of the manual - barely understandable will do nicely! Of course, as long as the client's house does not burn down... correction: as long as the number of clients' houses which do burn down does not impact the financial results of the toaster maker.
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