Pre-translation software? Thread poster: Chris Bruton
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Chris Bruton 
United States
Local time: 00:28
Member (2006)
Spanish to English
We all have seen them: those dull clinical trial reports or legal documents whose language is predictable but varied enough not to be completely recognized by Trados or other CAT tools. So you end up having to translate them sentence by sentence. In the interest of saving time and thus increasing productivity, is anyone familiar with software that ACCURATELY (i.e. better than Google or Babelfish) pre-translates such generic texts, so that you only need to review and edit them?
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| Have you tried DéjaVu? | Oct 27, 2008 |
Hi Chris,
I think DéjaVu has a pre-translation function. There's also a 30-evaluation version, so that you can try out all its features. I've downloaded it and was amazed by it, although I haven't tried this particular function yet.
You can dowload it here:
http://www.atril.com/default.asp
Hope it helps.
Romina
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| MT can help with systematic text | Oct 27, 2008 |
I think that machine translation is very well suited for texts like the ones you mention: the vocabulary is standard, sentence and document structures are homogenous, etc.
I hear the new Trados has a machine translation thingy built into it. However, I have also tried @promt and have a good impression of it. It will not replace human translation and it is not suitable for all kinds of texts, but when you are working with technical texts and the subject is always more or less the sam... See more I think that machine translation is very well suited for texts like the ones you mention: the vocabulary is standard, sentence and document structures are homogenous, etc.
I hear the new Trados has a machine translation thingy built into it. However, I have also tried @promt and have a good impression of it. It will not replace human translation and it is not suitable for all kinds of texts, but when you are working with technical texts and the subject is always more or less the same, it can boost your productivity, much like Dragon Naturally Speaking does. In fact, @promt seems to use the same learning technique Dragon uses: you add words to its dictionary as you go and it adapts its style and vocabulary gradually. I think you can still get a 30-day trial - the license is around $500 for a bilingual version, and a bit more for multilingual. You can also buy extra dictionaries, one of which happens to be a medical dictionary.
All the best! ▲ Collapse
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Chris Bruton
United States
Local time: 00:28
Member (2006)
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER | Trados has built in machine translation? | Oct 27, 2008 |
That is news to me. I have the new version of Trados 7 and I have not found this feature.
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| DVX assembly function | Oct 27, 2008 |
Romina Fanzini wrote:
I think DéjaVu has a pre-translation function.
Actually, the key here with respect to Déjà Vu X is its "assembly" function, which can be used not only for pretranslation but also for segment-by-segment work. What may be important for good results for the type of text being described here is storing the subsegments that are repeated and adding terminology to the termbase as you work. You'll have to pay careful attention to the settings under Tools > Options for this to work well, however.
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Spiros Doikas
Local time: 08:28
Member (2002)
English to Greek
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| Machine translation programs can be "trained" | Oct 27, 2008 |
That means you can adjust them to your needs by inputting your preferred translations. Check the programs which are available for your language pair(s). Other than DVX, MetaTexis has a function to replace terminology on the fly (you can add any word or phrase you want as terminology).
[Edited at 2008-10-27 18:09]
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Vito Smolej
Germany
Local time: 07:28
Member (2004)
English to Slovenian
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SITE LOCALIZER
Viktoria Gimbe wrote:
I think that machine translation is very well suited for texts like the ones you mention: the vocabulary is standard, sentence and document structures are homogenous, etc.
I would second Victoria - my experience with @prompt in EN<>DE pair was quite favourable. For Trados-minded: it got texts to about 70% fuzzy - and it was legalese. AND no extra translation memory on my side - so with learning it could probably get closer and closer to 100%.
I admit it is an absolutely scary - and exhilarating - experience to see one whole page in front of your very eyes dissolve into the target language, something you have been used to do in 10 minutes or so...
[urejeno ob 2008-10-27 21:12]
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Chris Bruton
United States
Local time: 00:28
Member (2006)
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER
Good stuff and thanks to all. I looked at the @promt website and was wondering if you must get the Expert version of the software? It runs about $500.
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| It depends - do you use Trados? | Oct 27, 2008 |
Chris Bruton wrote:
...wondering if you must get the Expert version of the software?
As far as I know, the only difference between Pro and Expert is that the latter has a Trados plug-in which means you can use it together with Trados (@promt will automatically translate no match segments and add them to the TM, so the @promt translations are automatically inserted when you open segments using Trados - this seems to be a really nice timesaver). The other major advantage over the Pro version is that you can create @promt dictionaires by extracting content from TMs and TDBs. This helps to speed up @promt's learning process. It also seems that the Expert version has built-in features that will let you browse and search your TMs, whether you use @promt for translation or not.
In short, if you use Trados, the Expert version is probably well worth the higher price. If you don't use Trados, don't get the Expert version, as it seems to be specifically geared at translators using Trados.
If you do get the Expert version, please, do post here in a while to let us know how useful it is.
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A project I worked on with the features you described was so well handled by Déjà Vu that once I had entered each of the characteristic recurring phrases and linking words into the termbase, it virtually translated itself, and very little editing was needed. It was like magic!
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Jeff Allen
France
Local time: 07:28
Multiplelanguages
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| Using Promt software | Nov 11, 2008 |
Chris Bruton wrote:
...wondering if you must get the Expert version of the software?
Viktoria Gimbe wrote:
As far as I know, the only difference between Pro and Expert is that the latter has a Trados plug-in which means you can use it together with Trados (@promt will automatically translate no match segments and add them to the TM, so the @promt translations are automatically inserted when you open segments using Trados - this seems to be a really nice timesaver). The other major advantage over the Pro version is that you can create @promt dictionaires by extracting content from TMs and TDBs. This helps to speed up @promt's learning process. It also seems that the Expert version has built-in features that will let you browse and search your TMs, whether you use @promt for translation or not.
In short, if you use Trados, the Expert version is probably well worth the higher price. If you don't use Trados, don't get the Expert version, as it seems to be specifically geared at translators using Trados.
If you do get the Expert version, please, do post here in a while to let us know how useful it is.
I have been using the Promt software for many years (versions 3 through 7), am officially certified on the product range, and have written a number of software review and case study articles about using it.
There is an another difference between Pro and Expert version. The terminology extractor in the Expert version is definitely worth the difference. This is a key feature for accelerating the processing steps which are described in my case study articles.
Software reviews at the Language Technology Evaluation site (http://www.geocities.com/langtecheval/)
All of my articles, including the case studies and productivity studies, are at the recently updated MT postediting site
(http://www.geocities.com/mtpostediting/)
Let me know if you have problems accessing any of those documents.
Jeff
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