Transhorsa

Abstract: The present article discusses the definition of Machine Assisted Human Translation by making contrast with the technical terms: Computer- Assisted Translation and Machine-Assisted Translation. It puts forward that MAHT is concerned with computer tools which assist the human translators in the course of a translation process.

Nowadays, globalization has turned the earth into a village; as a result, translation has become a booming industry for frequent and massive information exchanges among the people from different countries. In translation industry, Machine-Assisted Human Translation, MAHT for short, is playing a more and more important role at present.

Before we introduce MAHT, it is needed for us to make clear another two terminologies. Specialists and translation practitioners are interested in mechanical aids for translation or translation automation is most frequently confronted with the somewhat misleading term “Computer Assisted (or Aided) Translation” and sometimes “Machine Assisted (or Aided) Translation”.

Over the years, there has been much confusion concerning the definition of the terms. In view of the scientific and popular interest in Machine Assisted Translation and Computer-Assisted Translation, the latter has become an umbrella term and is therefore no longer synonymous with MAHT. Considering Computer Assisted Translation as a generic term, Machine Translation and MAHT can be divided into two major subgroups. Today, Machine Translation is generally understood to be the process in which a “machine” (specifically a computer program is the pivotal component in the translation process while humans are in charge of developing the software (which includes, for instance, grammatical and lexical rules), updating the programs, pre- and post-editing texts, and sometimes interactively communicating with the machine to solve the translation problems in the text which is being translated. At the other end of the Computer-Assisted Translation spectrum we find MAHT tools, also known as “translation workbenches”, where humans are pivotal to the process. In the latter type, human translators prepare the target-language texts and the “machines”(computer programs) assist translators by offering terminological support(terms are retrieved automatically or semi-automatically from an appropriate database) and by building and employing translation databases (Translation Memories) to suggest identical (100% matches) and similar segments (fuzzy matches, which are less than 100%) that have been used in previous translations and stored in the database.

As hinted, MAHT is a budding discipline which has not been precisely defined. First, MAHT is defined as a discipline that is concerned with computer tools which assist human translators in the course of a translation process. By mentioning translation process, we does not mean mental processes that take place during translation, but surface processes that start when a translation assignment is accepted, which end with the delivery of a finished product. Such translation process has two major constituents parts: one is a creative part requiring human evaluation leading to the production of a translation for which a human translator remains solely responsible; the other is a technical part which includes all such tasks as receiving and sending documents, typing and formatting, scanning documents for identical or similar segments to reduce the number of words and phrases that must be left for translation by human translators, desktop publishing and terminological consistency, and other features which can be handled by mechanical tools. But what we have pay attention to is that it is humans who are responsible for the end product and its quality, whereas the strength of a MAHT system is that it ensures the terminological, phraseological, and segmental consistency which is crucial to e.g. scientific and technical translation.

It is often of great significance that we make clear of the definition of something which we would like to apply to.

Author Information:

Heyi

Project Manager of

Transhorsa Translation Co., LTD., Shanghai

http://www.transhorsa.org

Native translator & Proofreading

Theory Study huge project translation, language translation service, multilingual DTP services

As the deepening of financial crisis, corporations and individuals launch a campaign of “saving money”, which become an unavoidable phenomenon to the translation industry. Under this condition, only providing affordable translation services can attract more customers and gain more profits.. Affordable translation services assist more people and enterprises to know what is happening around the world, enable them to contract with worldwide information, and help them to timely face and tackle the problems.

 My full-time job is a stock market information analyst. It requires me to read a mass of daily news nationally and internationally. In the middle of this year, I forecasted that the financial crisis might happen in the late of this year, and with the deepening of the crisis, it will impact on everyone. As I gain this feeling and realize this gloomy situation faster than others, I start to wonder the importance of the affordable translation services. The result is obvious- the affordable translation services are extremely needed. I should highlight that this translation service must be affordable because this concept has always been deeply-rooted in people’s impression. They need affordable translation service but usually the translation service cost lots of money. If given expensive translation services, people have to hinder many opportunities to connect with the outside world. So, the affordable translation services are needed, which can let more people know the changing of the outside world; can provide more changes for people to communicate. But, the modern translation companies must adopt a strategic policy in providing the affordable translation services.

 Firstly, more people can know what is happening around the world from the affordable translation services. As for a person who is with a very limited outlook and only familiar with his surrounding situations, he will always be in the passive position and controlled by others. And if the one sees news only from a single resource, his perspective may become narrow. Take myself as an example, I like many people never care outside world before I engage in my current work, I only read domestic news but no knowledge of the relationship between the crude oil price and the worldwide economy; neither do I know how important the interest rate is to the other foreign center banks; nor do I know how foreign media appraise China. To the individual level, it plays a negative impact to the choices for our future lives; and from the perspective of the whole country, it is not beneficial to the opening up to the outside. Nowadays, we are living in the 21st century, it is an age that messengers are transferred and exchanged at fast rate, despite that you could not understand it. Affordable translation services make the information become yours, and the value of the information certainly exceeds what you have paid.

 Secondly, affordable translation services could provide more chances for people at different regions to communicate. Human development can not be separated from the exchange. China’s development needs the advanced science and technology from the developed countries, and they also keen on China’s vast territory and abundant resources. Therefore, the translation services play an important role in this field. With the deepening of the globalization, different regions and districts will be bound to connect and combine together by the affordable translation services, additionally, they can remove more barriers for the people speaking different languages, giving them comfort, convenience, and severing as bridge in conducting frequent communicates.

 Finally, affordable translation services are needed and must be adopted by today’s translation services. First of all, more and more people have realized that understanding a foreign language is of great importance, therefore, translation in no longer an unattainable business. Moreover, as the latest financial crisis have deepened into every corner of the world, a majority of enterprises take measures to reduce their production cost. In this condition, providing the affordable translation services is of necessity, which is not only favorable to those enterprises, but also does good to the translation companies in attracting more business.

 A couple of days ago, a girl schoolmate inferior to my grade told me that she also wanted to engage in translation services. She offered her quotation to me but it greatly shocked me because it’s much higher than what I can imagine. So, I cannot help reflecting the conventional concepts about the translation services—high cost. Indeed, translation service is a high-income job, but it must be affordable, especially in recent two years. Affordable translation services must become the trend, which is not only because that the financial crisis has began to impact the real economy, but more importantly, is the trend itself- the translation services are so significant and needed as long as it is being swapped in the world In the coming days, more people will need translation services, but they must be the affordable translation services.

Industry News language translation service, language translation services, Shanghai translation company, Singapore translation company

Chinese Translation Company has a long history which can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty. Thanks to the introduction of and adherence to the Buddhism from India, the translation business at that time was extremely flourish. The mythological novel Journey to the West recounted the amazing adventures of the eminent monk Xuan Zang of the Tang Dynasty, from which we can find out some vestiges of Chinese Translation Company.

The three disciples of monk Xuan Zang converted to the Buddhism when they decided to devote their whole lives to the journey, thus the translation career emerged up. Xuan Zang, a representative of a freelance in translation circle, needed a company taking charge of marketing and logistics guarantee. Under such background, the four Buddhists formed into a company, which was the origin of Chinese Translation Company.

If we take the ancient Chinese Translation Company as a group of intellectuals who possess the same ideal and cherish it with insurgent enthusiasm, the emergence of modern counterparts can be regarded as interest-pursuing groups instead of service agencies because their thoughts mingle with more commercial elements. Chinese Translation Company has more available translation experience in translating the native language into other languages and competitive advantages as compared with the western counterparts. So, there existed a conventional stereotype that the responsibility of Chinese Translation Companies was to promote the Chinese language and its culture abroad. As the government failed to establish a non-profit organization which can give the priority to the translation quality instead of the translation velocity, some commercial organization appeared.

Actually, most companies are greedy for the maximum profits. Therefore, many Chinese Translation Companies fail to bear the responsibility of being a communication envoy between various cultures. Some Chinese Translation Companies have floating population of part-time translators. Besides, they endlessly scout and appoint language talents in China’s large human resource bank as they can pay rewards as low as possible. When they finish the hunt of new talents, they fire the previous ones for saving the cost. Only the full-time pillar translators and proofreaders take charge of the crucial projects to guarantee their company’s reputation and survival.

 Chinese Translation Companies hardly take the non-profit incentive in running translation business, as a result, the competition of the translation industry become fierce which can be demonstrated by all related aspect, and accompanying with the flooding of utilitarianism and that profit margin in domestic translation industry is shrinking. Therefore, Chinese Translation Companies are the best choice to the freelance translators because the translation is not a field for individual heroism but a team work and also is due to the limitation of energy and time of single translator. So many derivatives positions come up in the modern translation companies, such as project management, translator scout, proofreading, quality review, etc. History can provide with eloquent evidence that the division of translation project based on equality and cooperation between translation company and the translators constitutes the most reasonable and practical relationship. For example, they share the same specific glossary in a certain field.

Since the Tang Dynasty, it has passed more than one-thousand years of feudal autocracy. But only the Chinese Translators have been preserving the distinguishable character —- suffering without protest or complaint, which reflects the fact that Chinese people reveres to the dragon. Every full-time translator or interpreter shares a common stiff feature, working for long duration of desk work and field work.

In a word, the emergency of further cooperation, differentiation of translation work, and maintenance of dragon spirit will be accompanied with the Chinese Translation Companies. 

Industry News Chinese translation company, language translation service

       As China deepens its reform and opens wider to the outside world, its foreign trade with different countries has been growing rapidly. As a byproduct, translation involving many fields is inevitable in business transactions, information exchanges, and other areas in need of communication between different languages. However for any single translation company, its translation resources are relatively limited. If they are to provide quality language services in a variety of areas, they need to cooperate with other translation companies so that all of them can benefit from a shared large pool of translation resources.  

       Statistics show that currently 60% information worldwide is written in English while 35% is in German, French, Russian, Japanese and other languages. Obviously translation resources for less popular languages are even more difficult to procure.

       Although most of translation companies claim that they are able to provide multilingual services, actually, majority of their translators use English as their working language and their non-English translators are in desperate shortage. As a consequence, English translations are of better quality than other languages. And more often than not, translation involves many fields, especially some professional ones. But lots of translators are pure language majors without professional knowledge of particular field.

        To overcome those disadvantages, it is important for translation companies to share their translation resources so that they can achieve common development.

         Several measures should be taken into consideration with regard to sharing of translation resources among different translation companies:

       To expand translation resources by cooperation with other companies. Due to the small size of many translation companies, it is difficult for them to handle large project, especially with translation of languages other than English. For them to survive in the market, they need to come into alliance with other translation providers. Strategic partnership will enable them to strike a win-win deal. They can make up for one another’s weaknesses while taking advantage of each other’s strength.

      To share translation resources with higher institutions of learning. Universities and colleges are cradle of knowledge and resources. Translation companies need to be in close contact with them in order to be informed of the latest trends in the development of translation resources. They can make good use of translation resources provided by the universities and colleges and have their staff recharged in specific field.

       To find translation resources on the Internet. Internet has developed into such a vast sea of information that there you can almost find anything you need, particularly with the help of search engines, such as Google. By typing in the right sky words, you can link to the websites which can offer you the information that you are looking for. Also there are many websites that provide free translation resources available to translators. With the help of Internet, non-English translation can also be much easier and more correct.

       To build translation resources database for future sharing. It is a good idea to store the already-done translation into a database, so that you can draw from it in the future in case of the need for the same translation. In this way, it can save translators time and energy meanwhile quality isn’t affected. The application of some softwares in this regard can achieve the same result. 

Industry News language translation service, language translation services, Shanghai translation company, Singapore translation company, translation company, translation resources

    When I was in university, my tutor told me that the highest job of a foreign language major is to go a language translation company. These translators are the most needed talents in nowadays society, they are high-income, freedom and they can arrange their own time. I am not a bookworm and I never count on achieving in academe. However, it was difficult not to be tempted for working in a language translation company. Form then on, I began to focus my learning on translation. After a couple of years study, I realized that working in a translation company needs more than I can imagine. Language translation companies need not only a good language-learner, but more need a cyclopedia. In the way to work in a language translation services, remember one sentence: Purist, although exhausted.

Herein are some plain comprehends during my way of translation. If one wants to work in a language translation company, the following points may help you:

Language is not only the tool of communion, but also the information carrier and transmission media. The language which people usually refers to is not the simple spoken language and written language, it also includes the non-character language which composed by gestures, signs as well as space. This means the mission of language translation is not only translate one language sign into another language sign, but also take over the thinking and information what the language carried. To achieve this, the translation service basically should have following characteristics:

(One) First of all, should have a certain level of foreign language. For the people of foreign language major, there is no special emphasis on this point, but for the people of other majors, must notice this. Maybe, you could say “Dictionary can do”. However, dictionary could only as reference, especially to the professional language translation service, the translation’s quality is as important as quantity.

(Two) Background knowledge. This refers to the specialized knowledge that language translation service involves in. The professional background need ceaselessly improve during translation practice and study. In the process of learning translation, choose one or two specialized fields you interested in are also very important and beneficial. A translator required “know everything of something and something of everything’. Translator should have the broad aspect of knowledge, and has the thorough opinion to own translation domain. In the leisure time to spend certain energy broaden the expertise, to adapt the changing market needs, to meet the challenger of higher.

(Three) Make good use of all available resources. Let’s first talk about the software. For the translator, the most commonly used software is OFFICE and Kingsoft Powerword. The skilled operation of WORD is one of indispensable requirements to a qualified language translation company. For instance, the function of “spelling and grammar” in the WORD could help us to check the translation whether have wrong spelling or grammar phenomenon.  

Second, to achieve better use of network resources. The abundant resources in internet can bring the enormous convenience for our translation. When we meet words which the dictionary software can not answer, we can make use of search engines, for example GOOGLE, there will always be unexpected results. The internet is so vast, the translation result can obtained by search is also a good and evil intermingled, sometime is inaccurate or even wrong. At this time, visits some official websites of bilingual comparison could often obtain the ideal search result.  

Currently, there are numerous English-learners, but only a few could engage in the formal language translation service. Why? I think mainly have two reasons: One is the absence of practice; two is the weak in knowledge foundation. In brief, the translation in not caused by one day, this is the process which accumulates over a long period of time; this process is painful but also combined with the sense of achievement. The way of engaging language translation service is full of estimation, summarization, rejection, abnegation, and progress. In the coming days, let us go-ahead together on the way of translation.

Author Information:

Sana

Translator of Transhorsa Translation Co.,LTD.,Shanghai

http://www.transhorsa.com

Native Translation & Proofreading

Industry News global translation company, language translation service, translation resources

Like many industries, translation industry has its own bio-system, which usually consists of translation service buyers, translation service providers, translation assistance tools, translation trade associations and translation skill-training organizations. Technical translation is becoming an ever-important part of our hi-tech business world, taking up larger share of the translation market and developing at ever-increasing speed. Let us shed some light on the first two components: the translation service buyers and translation service providers:

1. Translation Service Buyers

According to information from LISA Asia Globalization Resources Survey (2002-2003), most companies employ their own technical experts such as engineers with only mid-level target language ability to translate their product documents and also act as their only overseas market liaison communicators. Such companies could be described as technically oriented and production-cost oriented. They impose a higher responsibility on their experts to provide secondary services (language translations and communication channels) at the detriment of their actual technical duties not to mention the increased time demand on them. And only one third of these companies will entrust a third party translation institution with the target language edition and translation. However, if both an affordable quotation and professional, precise & accurate multi-language translation services are available, 50% of the companies are most likely to buy a full packaged translation service.

As to the spending on translations, the majority of companies will allocate from 2 to 5% of their gross income on project/product localization and from this, only 80% of the fund is paid for direct translations and linguistic maintenance with the rest 20% spent on electronic business services, network promotions, etc.

In terms of international languages market segment, English and Chinese are the two topmost target languages with market shares of 53% and 14% respectively, followed by Japanese of 11%, Korean of 7%, German 4% and French 3%.

2. Translation Service Providers

Currently translation language service providers can be classified into three main types: domestic translation companies, international localization institutions along with their affiliates located in the developed regions of the world and freelancers registered in a whole mass of translation platforms. The first conspicuous feature for the domestic translation companies is that a legion, supported by putting some words into the other ones, is being formed. The second feature is that most of their permanent staff although bilingual, are limited in technical knowledge and most will in turn contact and engage freelancers when a service order comes in. Their main customers are native companies who pay a moderately high bill for such hand-over service. Their target language business includes English, Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Korean and Russian and their service catalogue covers the fields of trade, legal, electronic, telecommunications, computers, machinery, the chemical industry, oil, auto industry, medicine, food, textiles and sports. As a result of strong competition and wide industries coverage, such companies are exposed to one another and the quotations they put in have a tendency to outbid one another and the corresponding service levels they provide also drop.

The total number of elite (field specific) experts who are engaged in project/product localization is not more than 1,500 persons and they are usually hired by some of the reputable language service companies such as MLV and RLV. The translators working in these companies must possess strong welding ability from source to the target language and have high level of technical knowledge with preferred career experiences in related fields. Such localization companies also rarely use freelancers. Freelancers enjoy their full scale of freedom from the price they charge to the way they work. Bypassing the language agencies, having no referrals, they are free from paying the commission but they cannot guarantee their work outputs would be professional and accurate. They seem more welcomed by those smaller firms who have limited budget allocation and one of type of work. However, it must be said that the freelancer group is flooding the market overwhelmingly at an incredible speed with little guarantee of quality and timeliness.

Industry News language translation service, multilingual DTP services, multilingual manual translation, multilingual translation, professional translation team, translation outsourcing