Machine Translation

Translation memory systems have been among the standard tools used in translation for years. They increase translators' productivity and thus reduce the cost of translation. The professional use of translation memory systems can therefore be considered the beginnings of the "translation industry," which aims to meet the growing demands of worldwide globalization.

As in all industrial processes, process know-how is indispensable for product-specific processing and post-processing of the source material. This has given rise to the new profession of Language Engineer, among others, whose task is to monitor and constantly optimize translation procedures.

The use of machine translation systems is a logical development towards optimizing translation processes. A prerequisite is the use of professional systems such as SYSTRAN, LOGOS, Prompt, or similar. The advantage of these systems is that proprietary terminology and language rules can be included to improve text processing.

Procedure

To make efficient use of a machine translation system, specialized terminology must first be input if it does not already exist.

Rule-based creation (also known as Controlled Authoring) or specific revision of the source text (also known as Pre-Editing) are helpful in order to avoid complicated, ambiguous passages that are difficult to understand.

After machine translation, the target text is processed further by specialized translators (this process is also known as post-editing). This ensures that:

1. The translation is of the highest quality with regard to both content and style.
2. Any missing terminology is added, and should translation errors occur, these are passed on to the Language Engineer, who can then train the system to avoid identical errors in future

Cost reduction

Reports from companies that use machine translations professionally clearly demonstrate that cost reductions of up to 50 % can be achieved, meaning that depending on the amount of translation required, investments in technology and services can be recouped within only a few months if the procedures used are tailored to the text material in question.

Time to Market

Along with cost reductions, reducing the time required to create translations is also an important factor. There are text types for which translations are urgently needed, which however are not translated on account of the time this would normally take, such as

• Customer support information that is updated daily and should ideally be available at the same time in all required languages. Providing this information in all required languages would reduce call center costs and increase customer satisfaction.
• Research material for creating reports whose contents must be available at short notice. Their timely translation would offer a better basis for decision-making, and costs resulting from lacking information could be avoided.

Consulting and Project Handling

DELTA specializes in optimizing and automating translation processes, and can draw on many years of experience in the use of the appropriate methods and technologies.. We will be pleased to provide our expertise for your projects.