🐈
» Groups » Writers & Translators » Forum » Machine translation editing
Page options
translits
Community Member

Machine translation editing

I wonder what people think of machine translation editing. Is it not easier just to translate anew? : )

 

I might have missed something and machines became really smart in translating. Things I remember were funny, like "We accept express Americans" and such... 

 

Please share your experience, if you have.

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
versailles
Community Member

MT post editing is something that is requested more and more even by translation agencies. Opinions vary about this trend, some refuse it, others view it as an inevitable shift in the industry.

 

I use a CAT and one of the features of a CAT is machine pre-translation. Of course, the quality the version of Google Translator that you can find on Google is too low to be used in MT post edition, but there are commercial APIs that CAT tools can use, which combined with a translation memory, provide an output that is very usable for post editing.

 

Once you know your CAT tool and once you link it to few MT resources (for a fee), post editing may become a time saver for some kind of documents. This is especially true with technical translations and, I find, with some IT related translations. Probably because this is a field that is well covered by commercial translation memories.

 

For literature, news, and all general language content, MT and translation memories are not very useful. With this kind of material, you often spend the same amount of time post editing the MT than translating from scratch. If not more.

 

I could write for hours about MT and translation in general, for now, however, I will spare you, poor mortals 🙂

-----------
"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless

View solution in original post

19 REPLIES 19
mthornton-cpc
Community Member

Many moons ago I worked in localization. There was a client who insisted we try out some machine translations (in an effort to save on budget), despite our objections. Some of the best examples of how bad it was had to do with feminine/masculine words and the swapping of "s/he" for "it" and vice versa. Things along the lines of: "Install the software on the computer and run him." 

Melissa T

Not so bad. May be I should revise my attitude. What was the machine if I may ask?

Gosh, Svetlana, it was so long ago I don't recall. Must have been 2007 or so. I miss working in localization. Cultural studies were some of my most enjoyable work!

Melissa T

Ah, I know, leaving the most enjoyable behind : )

Anyway, I am glad I started the talk. Now I see I've been holding to the old idea that the MT is funny, and it's time to reconsider.

What do you focus on lately, by the way?

Svetlana, I'm a graphic designer and program manager. I was doing that in the localization field, as well, but I did long jaunts in pharma and advertising since then. 

 

MT can be quite funny, but there have been leaps and bounds made in the tech. I have to give credit where credit is due. 🙂

servicetier
Community Member

Although I favor translating anew because of the awkward sentences generated by machines, look how far AI has come!

 

Bot or not http://botpoet.com/

This website is a Turing test for poetry. You, the judge, have to guess whether the poem you’re reading is written by a human or by a computer.

re: "You, the judge, have to guess whether the poem you’re reading is written by a human or by a computer."

 

I would just assume the poem was written by a computer... Because who writes poetry any more?

@ Preston --

 

Who writes poetry?

 

Moody middle- and high-school girls. Many of them, TOO many of them. Most of them who confuse "free-verse" with "write anything, break the lines at random places, and then it's automatically poetry." Virtually all of the worst of the "poets" who write about tragic love and dark places and broken hearts and being trapped and/or misunderstood. A not-insignificant portion of whom hint at suicide. (As a "mandated reporter," I should, and must, deal with any of these latter, even in the cases where I cynically suspect that the writer is on balance happy and well-adjusted, but is momentarily seeking thrills and attention.)

 

I. Hate. High-School. Poetry.

Why, @Janean L ? : )

I write a verse sometimes. I am not a school girl, I wish I was. And I don't see how it has to be seeking for thrill or attention, if it's just one form of literature. Pretty much same as expressing ideas with a.. blog post. Well, may be not for money.

May be I missinterpret 'poetry' first hand.

But if you think of it, most of the texts ever created ( and I mean text as cultural entity ) are about being trapped and/or misunderstood. Look at Notre-Dame de Paris, King Lear, St. John the Baptist (what a dark place indeed)... Look at any movie worth watching and any art worth seeing.

Even some How to get rich in 12 seconds is about the same. It's just a rule of storytelling, to contempalte on a big problem. What's awful in that?

 

 

Janean L

@ Svetlana --

 

It's not the content to which I object. It's the triteness and the style of the typical high-schooler's navel-gazing, melodramatic, unoriginal palette of hackneyed angst that sets my teeth on edge.

 

Note the qualifiers: (1) "typical" ; (2) "high-schooler's."

 

Perhaps I should clarify that when I referred above to "worst of the 'poets,' " the antecedent of "poets" was, in this case, the moody high-school girls in question (hence the cringing quotation marks) -- not (for example) Shakespeare, author of King Lear, Hamlet, etc. In fact, one of my favorite French authors is the deliciously morose Maurice Sceve. And my all-time favorite French poem is the haunting, melancholy "Sous le Pont Mirabeau." But schoolgirls rarely write with the skill of Sceve or Apollinaire.


@Preston H wrote:

(...) who writes poetry any more?


Vogons do. And it ain't pretty.

 

Then, chances of being exposed to Vogon poetry equals the chances of Earth being destroyed to make place for a galactic highway.

-----------
"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless

Always bring a towel. 

dont_panic_carry_towel1-e1368722242612.jpg

-----------
"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless

Sarfaraz B

Oh yes! I agree. I read the Harry Potter episodes by AI myself : )) It's amazing and I am mezmerized every time seeing that this "fake" mind is not such a fake after all...

 

But again, it (should I say her?) writes from scratch. Do you think it's the same algorithm as our mind follows for finding the best equivalent of a symbol in a different system for a given context? don't forget about cultural discrepancies too )

 

Thank you for the link. I will surely check on the poetry.

versailles
Community Member

MT post editing is something that is requested more and more even by translation agencies. Opinions vary about this trend, some refuse it, others view it as an inevitable shift in the industry.

 

I use a CAT and one of the features of a CAT is machine pre-translation. Of course, the quality the version of Google Translator that you can find on Google is too low to be used in MT post edition, but there are commercial APIs that CAT tools can use, which combined with a translation memory, provide an output that is very usable for post editing.

 

Once you know your CAT tool and once you link it to few MT resources (for a fee), post editing may become a time saver for some kind of documents. This is especially true with technical translations and, I find, with some IT related translations. Probably because this is a field that is well covered by commercial translation memories.

 

For literature, news, and all general language content, MT and translation memories are not very useful. With this kind of material, you often spend the same amount of time post editing the MT than translating from scratch. If not more.

 

I could write for hours about MT and translation in general, for now, however, I will spare you, poor mortals 🙂

-----------
"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless

Does what you said apply to translating into Chinese? The translator must find the right symbol from among thousands. Wouldn't a compiter pre-translation speed things up a lot?

atlinguist
Community Member

Machine translation and CAT tools are only as good as the database they are built on.

 

For those of you who know a little German the following examples by some incorrigible mirth-mongers (How's that for poetic creativity?...Okay, maybe not so good.) might be of interest:

 

"50 Schraube Auge Kautionen"   (Guessed it? -- " 50 Screw bails")

 

"...können Sie für fast nichts ab!" ("...you can pick them up for next to nothing!")

 

When it comes to correct language use, nothing beats my brain! (Self-aggrandizing quote of the day.)

 

 

 

(PS:    Hey, UW! Messages can be edited? Great, thanks! I will no longer fear...)

Does it take less time to start from scratch than to correct the mistakes of a computer translation?


Robert H wrote:

Does it take less time to start from scratch than to correct the mistakes of a computer translation?


It depends highly on the quality of the engine that provides the machine translation. Sometimes it is possible to save time some using MTPE but if the quality is too poor it is easier and faster to just do it from scratch.