CAT Tools: Pros and Contras
Translation memory (TM) technologies, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the proofreading and international adaptation 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 document has been broken down into smaller items, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The advantages of using TM systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and enhance translation quality by securing that terms and expressions are used consistently within and across translations. Users in governmental and international agencies convey a 25–60% rise in performance. Yet, it must be stated that the use of TM systems may also have negative effects on translation quality. One of the major minuses of TM systems is that they usually perform at sentence level. Therefore, there is a real danger that the translator will focus too much on standalone sentences, possibly disregarding the contexts in which the sentences are incorporated. Moreover, the matching algorithms of TM systems are based on very plain formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. That’s why, the human translator’s notion of the degree of similarity between a segment to be translated and a piece retrieved from the storage base may differ considerably from the grade of similarity calculated by the CAT system. This may cause situations wherein exact matches result in wrong translations, or one translation of a fuzzy match requires little or no adjustment but another fuzzy match with the same similarity grade is not useful at all (for a discussion on the aspects of evaluating the retrieval mechanisms of TM systems, see Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards (1996), Whyman and Somers (1999), and Reinke (2000a, 2004). Despite the contras, it should be noted that TM systems generally integrate into the translation performance relatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the real translation process, while liberating them from routine work and supporting translation as a creative job whenever the adaptation resourcefulness of a human translator is required. For more info, visit us at: HQ-translate company
Tags: business services, HQ-translate, language service, quality translation, translate agency, translation