Computers - Computer-Aided-Translation: Virtues and Vices
Translation memory (TM) techniques, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the translation and cultural compliance of electronic content (e-content) for local markets. The idea behind TM systems is to store in a computer system the original e-content and the translation that has been produced by human translators; the stored translated version of the source text has been broken down into manageable units, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The priviledges of using TM systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and increase translation quality by proving that terminology and phrases are used consistently within and across translation works. Users in industry and transnational firms report a 25–60% rise in work throughput. Yet, it must be stated that the use of TM systems may also have negative effects on translation quality. One of the major disadvantages of TM systems is that they usually operate at sentence level. Therefore, there is a serious danger that the translator will focus too much on separated sentences, possibly disregarding the contexts in which the sentences are built-in. Moreover, the matching algorithms of TM systems are based on very simple formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. Therefore, the human translator’s notion of the grade of similarity between a segment to be translated and a part retrieved from the storage base may differ considerably from the level of similarity calculated by the TM system. This may follow to situations wherein exact matches yield wrong translations, or one translation of a fuzzy match requires little or no adjustment but another fuzzy match with the same similarity degree is not useful at all (for a discussion on the aspects of evaluating the retrieval mechanisms of memory systems, see Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards (1996), Whyman and Somers (1999), and Reinke (2000a, 2004). Despite the drawbacks, it should be noted that TM systems generally integrate into the translation performance comparatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the real translation work, while relieving them from routine work and maintaining translation as a creative activity whenever the linguistic resourcefulness of a human translator is required. For more remarks, visit us at: HQ-translate company