Not so long ago the concept of a machine automatically spitting out translations of text it had been fed – sounded like science fiction.
However now most of us will have used a form of machine translation at some stage of our lives. Whether this is using an internet translation tool to find out what that Japanese tattoo really says OR an application downloaded to help you communicate with the waiter on your summer holiday.
Chances are you have already used machine translation.
So what exactly is machine translation? Essentially it is the translation of text by a computer system, completely excluding any human involvement.
A machine translation system can also be ‘trained’ to increase accuracy on a specific subject matter. This is done through the process of creating a ‘machine-translation engine’ which is created for a specific language pair. And then populated with key words related to specific subject matter.
For example – for a financial client requiring a French into English service; we would build an engine and populate it with the financial terminology in the two required languages. The engine would then be trained to translate materials with each completed project’s errors fed back into the engine so it can learn to translate better and better over time.
However this ‘pure form’ of machine translation can have limitations so for the vast majority of clients who want to leverage the benefits of this service – we highly recommend post edited machine translation or PEMT.
This is where your text for translation is processed through a machine translation system and then the translated content is reviewed, checked and amended accordingly where required to ensure the final translation flows correctly.
Our machine translation and PEMT services are generally used for specific types of content. For example using machine translation for a novel would not be ideal however machine translation of a catalogue of products would work very well.
The content that works best with machine translation services include but are not limited to:
- User Manuals
- Technical content
- Manufacturing related materials
- Product catalogues
We are confident that our machine translation and PEMT services can your organisation save time, and reduce costs.
If you are interested to see if machine translation is suitable for your translation projects; please use the form below to contact us directly so we can arrange time to discuss this with you.