| Pages in topic: [1 2 3 4 5 6 7] > | The "Crime" of Using MT Thread poster: Michelangela
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Michelangela
United States
Local time: 14:07
German to English
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Dear fellow translators,
Is it a "crime" using MT (machine translations) as part of the translation process?
Professionally, I am a software engineer, and I'm fluent in 4 languages. I love translating.
Because of my background, the most fast and effective process for me is using MT and editing, sometimes completely rewriting the automated translation.
What's wrong with that?
Do you feel that it's better to fully translate directl... See more Dear fellow translators,
Is it a "crime" using MT (machine translations) as part of the translation process?
Professionally, I am a software engineer, and I'm fluent in 4 languages. I love translating.
Because of my background, the most fast and effective process for me is using MT and editing, sometimes completely rewriting the automated translation.
What's wrong with that?
Do you feel that it's better to fully translate directly, without the use of CAT (computer-aided translation) tools available today?
I'd like to hear from you.
Thanks 
[Edited at 2014-06-17 05:36 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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As long as you arrive at an accurate, natural translation then I don't suppose it really matters how you got there, does it?
| | | | Paulinho Fonseca 
Brazil
Local time: 18:07
Member (2011)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
| Just quoting Orrin Cummins | Jun 17, 2014 |
Orrin Cummins wrote:
As long as you arrive at an accurate, natural translation then I don't suppose it really matters how you got there, does it?
| | | | Phil Hand
China
Local time: 05:07
Chinese to English
| Not a crime, but... | Jun 17, 2014 |
Many of us find that the MT+revision process has two problems.
1) By providing you with a (bad) version, it interrupts your own natural thought processes. MT works on sentences; people write texts. If you're constantly looking at MT output, you never develop a flow, you never get into the feel of the text, so you don't produce a cohesive target.
2) Revising MT just takes longer. Typing a new sentence doesn't take very long. Editing a sentence takes longer - for me, if t... See more Many of us find that the MT+revision process has two problems.
1) By providing you with a (bad) version, it interrupts your own natural thought processes. MT works on sentences; people write texts. If you're constantly looking at MT output, you never develop a flow, you never get into the feel of the text, so you don't produce a cohesive target.
2) Revising MT just takes longer. Typing a new sentence doesn't take very long. Editing a sentence takes longer - for me, if there are more than two errors in a sentence, it would literally be quicker to type it from scratch than to use mouse/cursor keys to go to error 1, delete, correct, then use mouse/cursors to go to error 2, delete, correct. And MT translations never have less than 2 errors per sentence. So physically, MT revision is always slower.
The reason many of us (including me) are suspicious of MT is that we think MT users don't correct enough. I've asked on this forum before for examples of "good MT", and an MT enthusiast showed me a "good" translation from Dutch to English. In less than 30 words, there were 5 errors, two of them major. Like I say, the correction process physically takes longer - and it would still be a bad translation, because that only fixed the gross errors. I'm not yet talking about style or flow. To fix those, you'd have to rewrite completely.
So if you're going to rewrite completely, what's the benefit?
My process: 1) Read source 2) Write target
MT process: 1) Read source 2) Read target 3) Realise target is unusable 4) Delete target 5) Rewrite target
One of those processes is obviously more efficient.
So when I hear someone say "I use MT", I'm afraid that I assume they don't do enough editing, and they are satisfied with poor quality texts.
Obviously, it takes all types. Maybe for you, in your field, MT does work well. But there are good reasons for not bringing MT into a translation flow. You can do what you want, but you're going to have to live with the fact that many of us will treat it with suspicion for a good few years yet. ▲ Collapse
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Michelangela
United States
Local time: 14:07
German to English
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TOPIC STARTER | What's the point? | Jun 17, 2014 |
So if you're going to rewrite completely, what's the benefit?
First of all, thank you for expressing very good reasons why MT doesn't work well for you. I greatly appreciate your thoughts.
Using MT is a matter of editing (read "typing") skills as well.
The huge benefit I see is that I feel that MT provides synonyms that work better than some words I come up with, initially. I'm not talking about translating novels or literature in general, but technical texts.
Also, especially when translating from German to English, by "beautifying" the language too much, the translation ends up with technical inaccuracies.
[Edited at 2014-06-17 05:38 GMT]
[Edited at 2014-06-17 05:39 GMT]
| | | | Michelangela
United States
Local time: 14:07
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
As long as you arrive at an accurate, natural translation then I don't suppose it really matters how you got there, does it?
Well, it seems that some people feel that even after editing the machine-translated text, you end up with a sub-optimal translation.
| | | | | MT is a waste of time and effort | Jun 17, 2014 |
I can't say anything that is more convincing and expressive. Only those who experienced the waste of time and effort MT bring would understand this.
Not to mention if we have to delete and correct a bit here and there, it is prone to leave some errors and the text lose its flow. The most we need is the glossary or terms.
Phil Hand wrote:
Many of us find that the MT+revision process has two problems.
1) By providing you with a (bad) version, it interrupts your own natural thought processes. MT works on sentences; people write texts. If you're constantly looking at MT output, you never develop a flow, you never get into the feel of the text, so you don't produce a cohesive target.
2) Revising MT just takes longer. Typing a new sentence doesn't take very long. Editing a sentence takes longer - for me, if there are more than two errors in a sentence, it would literally be quicker to type it from scratch than to use mouse/cursor keys to go to error 1, delete, correct, then use mouse/cursors to go to error 2, delete, correct. And MT translations never have less than 2 errors per sentence. So physically, MT revision is always slower.
The reason many of us (including me) are suspicious of MT is that we think MT users don't correct enough. I've asked on this forum before for examples of "good MT", and an MT enthusiast showed me a "good" translation from Dutch to English. In less than 30 words, there were 5 errors, two of them major. Like I say, the correction process physically takes longer - and it would still be a bad translation, because that only fixed the gross errors. I'm not yet talking about style or flow. To fix those, you'd have to rewrite completely.
So if you're going to rewrite completely, what's the benefit?
My process: 1) Read source 2) Write target
MT process: 1) Read source 2) Read target 3) Realise target is unusable 4) Delete target 5) Rewrite target
One of those processes is obviously more efficient.
So when I hear someone say "I use MT", I'm afraid that I assume they don't do enough editing, and they are satisfied with poor quality texts.
Obviously, it takes all types. Maybe for you, in your field, MT does work well. But there are good reasons for not bringing MT into a translation flow. You can do what you want, but you're going to have to live with the fact that many of us will treat it with suspicion for a good few years yet.
| | | | | Take a good look at your own translation skills | Jun 17, 2014 |
Michelangela wrote:
The huge benefit I see it that I feel that MT provides synonyms that worked better that some words I came up with, initially. I'm not talking about translating novels or literature in general, but technical texts.
Also, especially when translating from German to English, by beautifying the language too much, the translation ends up with technical inaccuracies.
I don't mean offense, but I'm afraid you're just an inexperienced translator. If you cannot think of a synonym that MT can... Given that MT only has 1 shot at it, and you have an unlimited number of attempts... Well, you have a long way to go.
Case in point, you should also brush up on your English grammar. You just mixed up two subjects by writing "...by beautifying the language too much, the translation ends up with technical inaccuracies"; this wording suggests that the translation beautifies the language.
P.S. "experienced" corrected to "inexperienced" thanks to Egils.
[Edited at 2014-06-17 06:53 GMT]
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Michelangela
United States
Local time: 14:07
German to English
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TOPIC STARTER
What I'm saying is that under time pressure, MT *sometimes* helps me a lot. And again, I'm talking about technical translations.
Of course, one could find plenty of synonyms.
What's wrong with MT coming up with a good, precise term the first time?
I think it's a pity that some people express their own experience as the absolute truth, when in fact there are facets. We are different, having different talents, skills, experience.
| | | | | MT is a crutch | Jun 17, 2014 |
I agree with Phil Hand's post 100 per cent. At the same time, I know a couple of translators who have trained their MT engine with highly specialized glossaries to be useful in their secluded niche (examples include Geology and Legal). Obviously, 'useful' here means that MT helps you achieve better productivity than your regular, 'purely human' translation. And this is no small feat for the English-Russian language pair, considering that a) Russian inflects most of its words except for adverbs a... See more I agree with Phil Hand's post 100 per cent. At the same time, I know a couple of translators who have trained their MT engine with highly specialized glossaries to be useful in their secluded niche (examples include Geology and Legal). Obviously, 'useful' here means that MT helps you achieve better productivity than your regular, 'purely human' translation. And this is no small feat for the English-Russian language pair, considering that a) Russian inflects most of its words except for adverbs and prepositions and b) MT is notoriously bad at inflections, usually resulting in lots of time-consuming micro-postediting.
For all other situations, and especially translators relying on MT input to inform or inspire their translations, I would advise choosing a better teacher. I know this, Michelangela, because I'm an autodidact too, with a technical background just like yourself. You don't need a crutch; you need to learn to walk on your own; this will benefit you a lot more in the long run (pun intended). ▲ Collapse
| | | | Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:07
French to English
+ ...
| It's not a crime... you just need to assess if your assumptions are actually true | Jun 17, 2014 |
Michelangela wrote:
Is it a "crime" using MT (machine translations) as part of the translation process?
Professionally, I am a software engineer, and I'm fluent in 4 languages. I love translating.
Because of my background, the most fast and effective process for me is using MT and editing, sometimes completely rewriting the automated translation.
What's wrong with that?
Per se, nothing at all.
In any given translation project, the client requires a translation within a particular timescale and to a particular standard. The use of machine translation may or may not be an appropriate component in achieving that outcome, depending on the project.
However, I think the observation that I and many other translators would make is that at present, MT doesn't currently perform well enough to serve much benefit for the majority of professional translation projects. As a software engineer and translator myself, I have few qualms in principle with the idea that the translator's job will eventually change from simply performing a translation "by hand" to one of correcting and supervising the training of machine translations. But on a practical level, I don't think we're at that point yet.
[N.B. There is a problem with MT in that, because of the way such systems are marketed, the public at large has an inflated perception of how well such systems actually perform and therefore the public at large may underestimate the need for human translators in the process, but I see that as a separate issue to the one of whether, with appropriate knowledge of the limitations, translators should or shouldn't incorporate MT into their workflow.]
| | | | Maksym Petrov
Ukraine
Local time: 00:07
English to Ukrainian
+ ...
I couldn't have put it better myself:
Phil Hand wrote:
So if you're going to rewrite completely, what's the benefit?
My process: 1) Read source 2) Write target
MT process: 1) Read source 2) Read target 3) Realise target is unusable 4) Delete target 5) Rewrite target
One of those processes is obviously more efficient.
So when I hear someone say "I use MT", I'm afraid that I assume they don't do enough editing, and they are satisfied with poor quality texts.
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| To answer (and not answer at the same time) your question | Jun 17, 2014 |
Michelangela wrote:
What's wrong with MT coming up with a good, precise term the first time?
Who are you to judge if it's good and precise? What makes you an authority?
Only of you're a subject matter expert AND an experienced translator do you pass for an authority.
Again, no offense. It's an honest non-personal question. The answer, in your particular case, may well be affirmative.
| | | | Egils Turks
Latvia
Local time: 00:07
English to Latvian
+ ...
| Mikhail's advices | Jun 17, 2014 |
Mikhail Kropotov wrote:
I don't mean offense, but I'm afraid you're just an experienced translator. ...
Case in point, you should also brush up on your English grammar. You just mixed up two subjects by writing "...by beautifying the language too much, the translation ends up with technical inaccuracies"; this wording suggests that the translation beautifies the language.
[Edited at 2014-06-17 03:44 GMT]
In the 1st sentence, did you mean "inexperienced"? "Just" and "experienced" together sound odd.
Even I understood that Michelangela used "language" as a synonym for text/style of document, and it often is used in this meaning, isn't it?
I am impressed that Michaelangela was patient enough not to point to these, maybe well-intended but wrong, corrections herself.
| | | | | Thank you for spotting my mistake | Jun 17, 2014 |
Egils Turks wrote: Mikhail Kropotov wrote:
I don't mean offense, but I'm afraid you're just an experienced translator. ...
Case in point, you should also brush up on your English grammar. You just mixed up two subjects by writing "...by beautifying the language too much, the translation ends up with technical inaccuracies"; this wording suggests that the translation beautifies the language.
[Edited at 2014-06-17 03:44 GMT] In the 1st sentence, did you mean "inexperienced"? "Just" and "experienced" together sound odd. Even I understood that Michelangela used "language" as a synonym for text/style of document, and it often is used in this meaning, isn't it? I am impressed that Michaelangela was patient enough not to point to these, maybe well-intended but wrong, corrections herself.
You're absolutely right, Egils. I have now corrected my misprint. Thanks for spotting it.
As regards your second point concerning grammar, it is invalid.
I'm afraid we're now digressing into "he said, she said" arguments. Please let's focus on the topic.
[Edited at 2014-06-17 06:55 GMT]
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