Computer-assisted translation or computer-aided translation (CAT) is a form of language translation in which a human translator uses computer hardware to support and facilitate the translation process.
Computer-assisted translation is sometimes called computer-aided, machine-assisted, or machine-aided, translation (not to be confused with machine translation).
Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools may be just what you need to take your translation work to the next level.Here are some of the benefits of using a CAT Tool written by Jonathan T. Hine Jr., PhD CRA Scriptor Services LLC, Charlottesville, Virginia.
Localization requires fast turnaround of high volumes of material, with rigorous consistency of terminology and style. CAT tools, especially major ones like SDL Trados Studio, Memoq, make this kind of performance possible. Translators who can transfer translation memories (TM), update them while they translate, and send them back, are crucial to the process.
Even in traditional environments, a CAT tool can increase your production. With a tool pre-translating from a reasonably-stocked translation memory, you could finish twice as much work in the same time. Warning: this depends on how similar the new material is to what is in the TM. My own work data shows an increase of over 50%.
Even with a miserable pre-translation (e.g. a new unrelated topic), I have found that a CAT tool can make my work more pleasant. With the segments lined up on the screen, I type only what needs typing. The tool propagates my choices as I work, so when the same segments or terms appear later in the document, I do not re-type or cut-and-paste. Of course, I am building the translation memory as I work, so the next document like this one will have a better pre-translation.
Consistent terminology within a document and throughout a project is especially important in technical translation. This is true of legal and financial work as well as scientific and technical documentation. We are working across cultures, where synonyms and “turns of phrase” burden the readers. CAT tools, such as SDL Trados, allow projects to standardize their glossaries and individual translators to use terms consistently with less effort.
The most effective way to review is to use a pair of rulers to compare source and target text on printed paper pages. However, some technical documentation does not print well or is intended to be read on-screen anyway (e.g., web pages). The alignment of segments makes on-screen review easier and more efficient. I still use paper and rulers whenever possible, but I find that translations prepared on the CAT tool have far fewer errors in print, so the final paper check is faster.
Translators need to know how to analyze the work, so they can charge fair prices for the different tasks of new translation, total document revision, glossary and TM updating, etc. The major CAT tools will count words, segments and units, analyze text, compare portions of new and pre-translated material, etc. Sharing a common CAT tool as when using SDL Trados, allows the freelancer and the project manager to agree beforehand on how much of the document is fresh translation, how much needs revision. etc.
About Computer-assisted translation
The automatic machine translation systems available today are not able to produce high-quality translations unaided: their output must be edited by a human to correct errors and improve the quality of translation. Computer-assisted translation (CAT) incorporates that manual editing stage into the software, making translation an interactive process between human and computer.Some advanced computer-assisted translation solutions include controlled machine translation (MT). Higher priced MT modules generally provide a more complex set of tools available to the translator, which may include terminology management features and various other linguistic tools and utilities. Carefully customized user dictionaries based on correct terminology significantly improve the accuracy of MT, and as a result, aim at increasing the efficiency of the entire translation process.
Concepts in Computer-assisted translation
Translation memory software
Translation memory programs store previously translated source texts and their equivalent target texts in a database and retrieve related segments during the translation of new texts.
Such programs split the source text into manageable units known as “segments”. A source-text sentence or sentence-like unit (headings, titles or elements in a list) may be considered a segment. Texts may also be segmented into larger units such as paragraphs or small ones, such as clauses. As the translator works through a document, the software displays each source segment in turn, and provides a previous translation for re-use if it finds a matching source segment in its database. If it does not, the program allows the translator to enter a translation for the new segment. After the translation for a segment is completed, the program stores the new translation and moves on to the next segment. In the dominant paradigm, the translation memory is, in principle, a simple database of fields containing the source language segment, the translation of the segment, and other information such as segment creation date, last access, translator name, and so on. Another translation memory approach does not involve the creation of a database, relying on aligned reference documents instead.
Some translation memory programs function as standalone environments, while others function as an add-on or macro for commercially available word-processing or other business software programs. Add-on programs allow source documents from other formats, such as desktop publishing files, spreadsheets, or HTML code, to be handled using the TM program.
Terminology management software
Terminology management software provides the translator a means of automatically searching a given terminology database for terms appearing in a document, either by automatically displaying terms in the translation memory software interface window or through the use of hot keys to view the entry in the terminology database. Some programs have other hotkey combinations allowing the translator to add new terminology pairs to the terminology database on the fly during translation. Some of the more advanced systems enable translators to check, either interactively or in batch mode, if the correct source/target term combination has been used within and across the translation memory segments in a given project. Independent terminology management systems also exist that can provide workflow functionality, visual taxonomy, work as a type of term checker (similar to spell checker, terms that have not been used correctly are flagged) and can support other types of multilingual term facet classifications such as pictures, videos, or sound.
I am a Freelancer with more than 10-year experience, and I have been providing a Multilingual Desktop Publishing Service for Translation/Localization companies.
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