@promt and trados Thread poster: Kieran Sheehan
|
|---|
Kieran Sheehan 
Germany
Local time: 21:19
Member (2008)
German to English
The latest version of the machine translation software @prompt boasts many features that tie in with Trados. I was wondering if any translators have experience in using the two together and if the results match the advertising claims.
| | | |
Alexey Ivanov
Russian Federation
Local time: 22:19
English to Russian
| All that glitters is not gold | Oct 6, 2006 |
I bought both 3-4 years ago and am totally disapponted in Promt and its boasted ability to link with Trados. First of all Promt machine translation is of rather poor quality especially when translating from languauges with a modest flection system (described in liguistics as analytical languages) like English into a language which has much more developed flection system (called synthetic languages) like Russian. To improve the quality you have to edit the topic dictionaries. And the work is time... See more I bought both 3-4 years ago and am totally disapponted in Promt and its boasted ability to link with Trados. First of all Promt machine translation is of rather poor quality especially when translating from languauges with a modest flection system (described in liguistics as analytical languages) like English into a language which has much more developed flection system (called synthetic languages) like Russian. To improve the quality you have to edit the topic dictionaries. And the work is time consuming and not always successful due to the limitations of the proprietory algorythm. Promt does, however, one thing better than any other program I know: extraction of terminology from bilingual text. But then again you can export the terms only into Mutiterm 5.5. To use it with the later versions of MT you have to run a conversion using MT Convert. Promt is not too bad when translating very general texts, but not very good when translating very specialized text. Also I have found quite a lot of mistakes in their English-Russian dictionaries.
As to their application Promt4Trados which is part otheir package "PromtExpert" it is totally useless for a professional translator unless you use user created dictionaries (see above about complexity of the job of editing/creating dictionaries). Editing a text converted into Trados after the machine translation in Promt takes a lot of time as it creates a translation with approximately 35% of correctly translated segments. The rest requires editing. Funnily enough translation from Russian into English when the text is rather general is much better up to 60-65% of correct translation. When I was using Promt (I do not use it anymore) I found that it is better to edit the translation in Promt rather than run a text through Promt4Trados. Takes less time. I suspect that with other language combinations it may work better, but not much. ▲ Collapse
| | | |
ZZZZZZ (X)
Local time: 21:19
German to English
| After reading this thread ... | Oct 7, 2006 |
I downloaded the free test version of 2006 @prompt Professional (German / English).
It only brought back memories of how bad machine-translation programs are. It even translated "übersetzen" in German (i.e. "to translate") as "gear reduction" or the like, which may be proper in the transmission of a car, but not in the sense of the text I fed in. In fairness, I had checked all of the dictionaries, so it may pull up the right word if I leave out the technical dictionaries.
<... See more I downloaded the free test version of 2006 @prompt Professional (German / English).
It only brought back memories of how bad machine-translation programs are. It even translated "übersetzen" in German (i.e. "to translate") as "gear reduction" or the like, which may be proper in the transmission of a car, but not in the sense of the text I fed in. In fairness, I had checked all of the dictionaries, so it may pull up the right word if I leave out the technical dictionaries.
But even easy texts were very questionable in terms of word order and the like. There would be more work involved in cleaning up the sentences that are produced than would be involved in just writing them.
I guess I'll go back to ignoring these types of programs for another 5 years. ▲ Collapse
| | | |
Kieran Sheehan
Germany
Local time: 21:19
Member (2008)
German to English
TOPIC STARTER | A little more background... | Oct 9, 2006 |
I would like to thank both Alexey Ivanov and Reinicken for their comments. To provide a little more background to the reason for my enquiry I should mention that some of the texts I translate are specifications for the building trade that contain a good deal of repetitious material. I have been using Trados for years and am very pleased with the results I achieve on such texts. However, I would like to go one step further and integrate some measure of machine translation into the process. Having... See more I would like to thank both Alexey Ivanov and Reinicken for their comments. To provide a little more background to the reason for my enquiry I should mention that some of the texts I translate are specifications for the building trade that contain a good deal of repetitious material. I have been using Trados for years and am very pleased with the results I achieve on such texts. However, I would like to go one step further and integrate some measure of machine translation into the process. Having read the above comments about @promt I am somewhat skeptical about the chances of success, even though the @prompt software has been rated highly in some computer magazines here in Germany. On the other hand Alexey states that he purchased the program 3-4 years ago, so it might be that a lot of progress has been made in the meantime. Reinicken downloaded the professional version, but it is I believe the "Expert" version that goes furthest toward integrating Trados. To know for sure I suppose I will have to ask @promt for a trial version and see how well it works. Given the approx. € 600 price tag on the software I don't want to commit myself unless it can actually deliver the results. ▲ Collapse
| | |
|
|
|
Alexey Ivanov
Russian Federation
Local time: 22:19
English to Russian
| I am not sure that the newer versions are much better | Oct 10, 2006 |
Kieran Sheehan wrote:
On the other hand Alexey states that he purchased the program 3-4 years ago, so it might be that a lot of progress has been made in the meantime.
Kieran,
Last year I got their latest updated version Promt Expert 7.0. Not much difference except the graphic user interface. And still the results of term extraction are exported into Multiterm 5.5 nearly obsolete now. The 'Promt4Trados' feature has not changed a bit.
The idea of integrating machine translation into the process is tempting. That's why I spent a lot of time experimenting with Promt. I found it is quite useful when translating very long texts. Then when you edit the translation inside Promt using global find and replace you save some time on typing. And then again you can find some use of their 'Associated Memory" feature if you have a lot of repetitions. But it picks up only 100% matches and its creation is a pain in the... you know where. I gave up using it in favour of Trados and SDLX.
But try it yourself before buying. Maybe in your language combination you will get better results.
| | | |
Kieran Sheehan
Germany
Local time: 21:19
Member (2008)
German to English
TOPIC STARTER | When in doubt... | Oct 20, 2006 |
Put it off for another little while... I suppose.
Thanks to all who contributed here.
| | | |
To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator:
You can also contact site staff by
submitting a support request » 
Login to reply/comment 
Translation news
