Usage of TM: Virtues and Vices
Translation memory (TM) techniques, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the linguistic transition and cultural accommodation of electronic content (e-content) for local markets. The idea behind TM systems is to store in a computer system the original e-content and the translation that has been produced by human translators; the stored translated version of the source document has been broken down into smaller parts, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The preferences of using TM systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and better translation quality by securing that terminology and phrases are used consistently within and across translations. Users in industry and transnational agencies convey a 25–60% rise in performance. Yet, it must be stated that the use of TM systems may also have negative effects on translation quality. One of the major disadvantages of TM systems is that they usually perform at sentence level. Therefore, there is a real danger that the translator will focus too much on separated sentences, possibly disregarding the contexts in which the sentences are embedded. Moreover, the matching algorithms of TM systems are based on very plain formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. Thus, the human translator’s notion of the level of similarity between a piece to be translated and a part retrieved from the database may differ considerably from the grade of similarity calculated by the TM system. This may follow to situations wherein exact matches result in wrong translations, or one translation of a fuzzy match requires little or no adjustment but another fuzzy match with the same similarity value is not useful at all (for a discussion on the aspects of evaluating the retrieval mechanisms of TM systems, see Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards (1996), Whyman and Somers (1999), and Reinke (2000a, 2004). Despite the vices, it should be noted that TM systems generally build into the translation workflow comparatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the actual translation process, while relieving them from routine work and keeping translation as a creative activity whenever the translation resourcefulness of a human nature is required. For more knowledge, visit us at: HQ-translate company
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