How We Integrate Industry Standard Translation Technology
In addition to our proprietary software, including intelliportal and intellireview, we use industry standard software tools designed to manage workflows, communicate with our translators, eliminate redundant translation, and to speed up the translation processes. The principal tools we use are Translation Memory and Machine Translation. Let’s take a quick look at how these essential tools work.
Translation Memory
Translation memory is the workhorse application of our industry. When we receive your content it is uploaded into the translation memory application (we use Trados Studio). The application breaks down the content into ‘chunks’, usually at the sentence or phrase level and gives us a word count. If we have translated content for you previously in the same target language, it flags similar or identical content so that it does not require a second translation.
The translator also works in the same translation memory application and uses it as they translate the content. Later, as the translation is reviewed and edited, those changes are added to the memory. The principal reason you should care about this process is that it both saves money by eliminating redundant translation, and improves project turnaround time.
Machine Translation
Machine Translation is an artificial intelligence application that translates content automatically, with varying results. The most common tool is Google Translate. During the import into translation memory the content is run through a machine translation to help provide context and flag content where the machine translation is accurate, saving translation time and costs.
Can machine translation replace human translation? At this point, in most cases, the answer is no because it is still not particularly nuanced, nor is it completely accurate. There are some cases where a ‘quick and dirty’ translation for basic meaning may be enough and it can be useful there. The principal benefit for you is time and cost savings.
This software improves on an ongoing basis as it is used more and more. Google Translate is what is known as Neural Machine Translation in that it uses AI to learn as it translates a language over time.
Our use of technology at Language Intelligence is predicated on how it will improve the client experience, while saving you time and money. These solutions, and our in-house software, assure we provide you with the highest possible quality translation experience.