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Systran and Daimler-Chrysler Thread poster: williamson (X)
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williamson (X)
Local time: 11:48
Dutch to English
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| The Spanish version is not better | Jul 27, 2002 |
Incredible that they dare to show this kind site in the Net.  
Dinorah
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Jerzy Czopik 
Germany
Local time: 11:48
Member (2003)
Polish to German
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| I looked at the German version | Jul 27, 2002 |
and I still do not know, if I shall laugh or better cry  .
Jerzy
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| I looked at the French and the German version... | Jul 27, 2002 |
Affreux, fürchterlich, horrible...
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Clarisa Moraña
United States
Local time: 04:48
Member (2002)
English to Spanish
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| The author is a PhD! | Jul 27, 2002 |
Ms. Flanagan might be an expert \"on applications of translation technology for colloquial text and holds a Ph.D. Computational Linguistics\" but I wouldn\'t trust a translation to her!
And they are spending lot of money in the project!
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| Would you care to see what I've just done? | Jul 28, 2002 |
Gentlemen:
In connexion with the job posting appearing on your web page, let me tell you I have read you Spanish version ... time and again, but failed to make either heads or tails of it! Spanish is my native tongue; I have been a professional translator for 26 years and have never ever come across such a bad piece.
However, it is very inspiring. Next time one of my prospective clients asks me to use a CAT tool, such as Systran, I\'ll advise them they\'d better a... See more Gentlemen:
In connexion with the job posting appearing on your web page, let me tell you I have read you Spanish version ... time and again, but failed to make either heads or tails of it! Spanish is my native tongue; I have been a professional translator for 26 years and have never ever come across such a bad piece.
However, it is very inspiring. Next time one of my prospective clients asks me to use a CAT tool, such as Systran, I\'ll advise them they\'d better ask my cat. (You just have to click on my link below to find him). Plus, I might even direct them to your Spanish site. No need for further comments. They will realize immediately what the consequences would be.
Please excuse my frankness. I do not mean to be offensive, just fair. Translators who use CAT tools often offer lower rates. Decision makers are pretty glad to save, but they do not realize the fatal consequences a poor translation may have in certain fields like medicine, veterinary, architecture or engineering, to name but a few.
Sincerely,
Mónica Colangelo
Legal, Literary & Tech/Sci. Translator
www.proz.com/translator/25014 ▲ Collapse
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| Frightening! | Jul 28, 2002 |
Sorry that I don\'t completly share your disgust, but for me this is frightening.
I agree that compared to a human translation it is absolutely sub-standard, but compared to the gobbledegook, other machine translation systems produce, this is EXCELLENT, because it makes sense over long stretches. The reader can comprehend, what the original text wants to say. And it would be possible to rewrite it.
Having worked recently on the translation for a 100,000... See more Sorry that I don\'t completly share your disgust, but for me this is frightening.
I agree that compared to a human translation it is absolutely sub-standard, but compared to the gobbledegook, other machine translation systems produce, this is EXCELLENT, because it makes sense over long stretches. The reader can comprehend, what the original text wants to say. And it would be possible to rewrite it.
Having worked recently on the translation for a 100,000 words machine translation dictionary, I know too well that machines will for a long time will not completely replace the human translators, but as we experience it already with CAT systems and TMs, which have completely taken away my bread and butter business of the 1980s (car and motor cycle service and user manuals), in a not too far future the human translator will be degraded to a proofreader, whose task it is to brush up the machine translation and make decisions at points, where the machine cannot judge or makes a wrong judgement.
The result? As with CATs, which have reduced the value of my work by around 70% (you know the percent rules - 100% full pay, otherwise reduced by.... - for CAT translations imposed by the agencies), the same amount of text output will create less and less income for the human translator than now.
Most standard texts are earmarked to be taken away from us as translation work, leaving just literature, subtitles or other specialized texts. And here translators in the industrialized countries face the competition from translators in low cost areas as well. Internationalization of competition through the Internet will heat up.
So, don\'t be too optimistic - it can become a hard landing. The future is not rosy.
How long are people working seriously on machine translations? 30 years, 40 years? Just considering the last 3 to 4 years, the improvements are stunning, and the pace seems to be accellerating.
My guess is that we will be safe for the next 10 to 20 years, but...that is not for granted. ▲ Collapse
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| Has any of you sent a text to translate? | Jul 28, 2002 |
I have. The translation was available instantly. It was a short piece from \"Volpone\" by Ben Johnson. I had a good laugh really. It came out with words in English, words in Spanish, all tangled...
If you´re in for a laugh do it. Just send a short text to translate.
Regards.
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williamson (X)
Local time: 11:48
Dutch to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Beam me up, Scotty | Jul 28, 2002 |
I agree: consider this:
Data width MIPS
Year
8080 1974 6,000 6 2 MHz 8 bits 0.64
Year
Pentium 4 2000 42,000,000 0.18 1.5 GHz 32 bits 64-bit bus ~1,700
and have a look at this
http://www.howstuffworks.com/dna-computer1.htm
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In the 70ies, I was a Star-Trek... See more I agree: consider this:
Data width MIPS
Year
8080 1974 6,000 6 2 MHz 8 bits 0.64
Year
Pentium 4 2000 42,000,000 0.18 1.5 GHz 32 bits 64-bit bus ~1,700
and have a look at this
http://www.howstuffworks.com/dna-computer1.htm
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In the 70ies, I was a Star-Trek fan. The people, who starred in Star-Trek used some funny devices: A wireless telephone, a universal translator, a transporter-beam.
I remember my father calling these things dreams and rubbish. Tell me: who does not have a wireless telephone today? The transporter beam is far away, but the very first test in that direction has been done. As for the universal translator: have a look at etaco.com. It is a first step.
In a Star-Trek movie of 1984, Mr.Spock spoke to a Macintosh computer. He was used to machines answering him. I do not know whether this gave some people in the Low-Lands by the name of Lernout and Hauspie (now taken over by Dragon), the idea to develop speech-technology?
In 1984 you were considered a weirdo if you wanted to give up a secure job at a bank and work for the local outlet of a software company called Microsoft.
In 1980, I had never heard of Trados.
A graduate at the school for T&I, who worked at \"Eurodicautom\" taught us how to use this databank and talked about an MT-system called \"Systran\". The weird thing was that nobody used Eurodicautom. The computer connected to it stood idle. Everybody sat in the library bowed over dictionaries and considered me a weirdo because I sat before a computer screen from dawn till dawn till dusk. Finished my graduation paper a year earlier.
Evolution in technology does not stop.
So those who jumped on translation because they saw it earned more money than let say journalism might be forced to return to their former profession within 10 to 15 years.
When I look at the pictures most of you are in their 30s, full of enthusiasm about translation. Some have arrived at translation because they decided to go to a T&I-school and are certified and some have chosen the profession because they rolled into it, others by opportunism (because it earns more than a daily job).
Could all those enthusiasts answer the question: where will this profession stand in 2012 (when you are in your 40ies), 2022 (when you are in your 50ies) and 2032 (when you will retire) given the evolution of technology? What if it has become a mere proofreading profession?
The esteem (and hence payment) and understanding of the general public of the profession is not too bright right now. How do you think that you, the proofreader will be viewed?
Who of us will still be a translator in 2012?
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Agree with Hans-Henning. I have checked the Spanish translation of the document and it had a surprising quality for a MT text.
The Spanish sentences, full of errors, were nevertheless syntactic. And that is more than any other MT system I have known accomplishes.
This system is able to translate \"properly\" written service manuals, requiring only a low intensity human editing and proofreading.
<... See more Agree with Hans-Henning. I have checked the Spanish translation of the document and it had a surprising quality for a MT text.
The Spanish sentences, full of errors, were nevertheless syntactic. And that is more than any other MT system I have known accomplishes.
This system is able to translate \"properly\" written service manuals, requiring only a low intensity human editing and proofreading.
Hans
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williamson (X)
Local time: 11:48
Dutch to English
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TOPIC STARTER | M.T.and C.A.T | Jul 28, 2002 |
Studied this year with a bunch of engineers. They do not want a perfect text, but a text that makes sense to them. Often there are people in-house (certainly at Daimler-Chrysler) who know the target language and the subject well enough to proofread and adapt the text for internal company needs. I use systran myself. You get a rough idea of what is meant. Then it boils down to polishing up that idea and put it in the right phrases. Combine M.T.and CAT and you can work a lot faster.
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One of my clients sends me texts for proofreading that have been written in (not translated into) Spanish by English native speakers. Sometimes they are good enough, but most of the time they are not. The Spanish translation obtained by this machine looks like one of these not so good texts.
The text, for a linguist, is a horror. There are many things that were only understandable for me because I speak English, and others are not understandable at all. By the end of the tex... See more One of my clients sends me texts for proofreading that have been written in (not translated into) Spanish by English native speakers. Sometimes they are good enough, but most of the time they are not. The Spanish translation obtained by this machine looks like one of these not so good texts.
The text, for a linguist, is a horror. There are many things that were only understandable for me because I speak English, and others are not understandable at all. By the end of the text there are a lot of personal pronouns in uppercase (ÉL, ELLA) I could not make head or tails of. I checked out the English and I found the machine had translated IT (Information Technology) as a personal pronoun.
But then, who knows? I\'m not going to dismiss the possibility of these things replacing us some day. I have seen too many things predicted in sci-fi coming true to do that. On the other hand, when my dad was a kid there were these magazines that predicted that in the year 2000 everybody would use solar-energy cars and there would be colonies in Mars. Now, in 2002, the solar-energy car is a joke and we cannot even send a probe to Mars that does not break down two days later.
Williamson, you may be interested in reading this article: http://ssdoo.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/just_for_fun/startrek.html
written by a NASA scientist about how accurate the Star Trek science is. I liked what he says about the Universal Translator... There is always hope he\'s right
[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-07-28 21:09 ] ▲ Collapse
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Andreia Silva
Portugal
Local time: 10:48
English to Portuguese
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| And the Portuguese version.... | Jul 28, 2002 |
NO COMMENTS!
Andreia Silva
Portugal
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williamson (X)
Local time: 11:48
Dutch to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Warp drive... | Jul 29, 2002 |
First: I am not stating that Star Trek is reality. It is indeed a view of the creator of the series and the scenario-writers as to how it may be within 300 -400 years from now (time-frame in which the series is set is 2300-2450)
Many here laugh at M.T. as it is now.
They cite examples based upon present knowledge!!
With what pc.and word processor were you working in 1990? Right: probably WordPerfect 5.0 and a 386 or 486 Intel-Processor, perhaps with Trados 1.0.... See more First: I am not stating that Star Trek is reality. It is indeed a view of the creator of the series and the scenario-writers as to how it may be within 300 -400 years from now (time-frame in which the series is set is 2300-2450)
Many here laugh at M.T. as it is now.
They cite examples based upon present knowledge!!
With what pc.and word processor were you working in 1990? Right: probably WordPerfect 5.0 and a 386 or 486 Intel-Processor, perhaps with Trados 1.0.
What I am trying to say is: how hard will you laugh in 10 or 20 years (the time most of you will have to exercise this profession before they can retire) given the technological evolution and AI.
A useful link on how about an idea can evolve into reality
hhtp://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/html/warp/
warpstat.htm
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