ITP Purchases Language Weaver’s Automated Translation Software After Tests Prove 30 Percent Time Sav Thread poster: Mohamed
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Mohamed 
United States
Local time: 19:38
English to Arabic
+ ...
I believe this is a serious threat that we will be all facing sooner or later. So, do not be surprised if a client or a translation agency asks you to edit a machine-translated text.
ITP becomes first translation and publishing services company in Europe to incorporate statistical machine translation technologies
LOS ANGELES – Language Weaver, a leading software company developing enterprise software for the automated translation of human languages, today announced i... See more I believe this is a serious threat that we will be all facing sooner or later. So, do not be surprised if a client or a translation agency asks you to edit a machine-translated text.
ITP becomes first translation and publishing services company in Europe to incorporate statistical machine translation technologies
LOS ANGELES – Language Weaver, a leading software company developing enterprise software for the automated translation of human languages, today announced it has fulfilled an order of its French and Spanish software translation modules for ITP, a global provider of translation, data processing and publishing solutions. Almost 85 percent of ITP’s business consists of developing technical and marketing publications in multiple languages for major Japanese and other Asian automotive manufacturers, including one of the largest automotive companies worldwide.
To read the full story, please go to:
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20061107005243&newsLang=en
[Edited at 2006-11-12 23:48] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 04:38
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
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Perhaps they should try their software by translating this press release into Finnish. I'm ready to get impressed
Cheers
Heinrich
| | | | Williamson
United Kingdom
Local time: 02:38
Flemish to English
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| Professional editors | Nov 12, 2006 |
Consequently, we will become "professional editors" (native speakers only).
The only thing LW has to do is market itself on a massive schale on this site and introduce a trados-like reduction scheme for accuracy to its end-customers.
Then we will see offers appearing with "Language Weaver" required and "send us your best rates". Some will even consider owing a LW-license and giving reductions according to the scheme, dreamt up by LW's marketing department as a sign of professionalism... See more Consequently, we will become "professional editors" (native speakers only).
The only thing LW has to do is market itself on a massive schale on this site and introduce a trados-like reduction scheme for accuracy to its end-customers.
Then we will see offers appearing with "Language Weaver" required and "send us your best rates". Some will even consider owing a LW-license and giving reductions according to the scheme, dreamt up by LW's marketing department as a sign of professionalism.
[Edited at 2006-11-12 10:28] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Wait a minute... | Nov 13, 2006 |
... Have you seen the prices these guys are charging?
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Ivana UK
United Kingdom
Local time: 02:38
Member (2005)
Italian to English
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Barnaby Capel-Dunn wrote:
... Have you seen the prices these guys are charging?
can't seem to find the price anywhere!
| | | | RobinB
United States
Local time: 20:38
German to English
| Price/benefit | Nov 13, 2006 |
Barnaby Capel-Dunn wrote: ... Have you seen the prices these guys are charging?
Right, you could buy a couple of dozen Trados licences for that money. But who'd want to do something as foolish as that? (rhetorical, I'm just taking a break from revising 500+ pages).
I'd guess that given the time you need to learn and feed the system, the total cost of ownership (TCO) in the first year would be in the region of USD 60k for a single-language licence. But that's not much more than the TCO of a staff translator here in Germany. And MT systems don't go sick, or get married and have kids and move to southern Patagonia. Or get bolshie when you suggest that because they've spent the last 2 hours on e-Bay, they really ought to consider putting in some overtime so that the customer won't kill you. And MT systems get updated regularly, too. Wouldn't it be great to strap a translator in to a chair, stick some sort of prongy thing into their head, and Whazooom! - not only do they remember all that terminology you've been trying to drum into their heads for months, they also know instinctively that in almost every case, nouns in the singular take singular verbs. And that the presence of adverbs generally indicates that there's a verb lurking around somewhere, too.
Williamson wonders whether translators will be MT editors in the future. I doubt that very much. Most translators can't translate in the first place, so they're unlikely to be able to edit, given that an editor must actually know *more* than the system (or person) that translated the text in the first place. I do a lot of revision myself, and I know how heart-breaking it can be. At least MT tends to make consistent mistakes that follow some sort of logical pattern. Unlike human translators. A good MT system may not always get little words like "not" in the right place, but at least they're generally there. Unlike with so many human translators.
Language Weaver appears to be an example-based MT system, so presumably it has a heuristic function that allows it to learn from new input. I wish we had consistent example-based human translation, which would be a great leap forward. But in my experience at least, most human translators have the short-term memory (say, a couple of weeks) of a six-month old Golden Retriever, i.e. zilch. And they're not exactly as much fun as having a properly house-trained six-month old Golden Retriever. Come to think of it, six-month old Golden Retrievers are less resistant to learning than most translators, too. Plus, with humans there's the "fuzzy matching encourages fuzzy thinking" problem which means that, no matter how good the TM might be, you still have to read every damn word through again.
So unless I can teach the dog to translate, I think I might give Language Weaver a ring....
Robin
[Edited at 2006-11-13 22:39]
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