Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto
INFORMÁTICA DE TRADUÇÃO
FALL SEMESTER 2010
Tue. 19:30-21:30 - Wed.17.30-19.30
Room 204
12 October 2010 (Lesson 5)
Teacher:
Elena Zagar Galvão
elenazagar@gmail.com
Webpage: web.letras.up.pt/egalvao
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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Lagoudaki, Elina (2006). Translation Memory
Systems: Enlightening Users’ Perspectives.
London: Imperial College.
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/pls/portallive/doc
s/1/7307707.PDF
Horsefrog – Online Translation School
http://www.horsefrog.com/japanese-translatorpatent/mod/resource/view.php?id=265
García, Ignacio (2006). “Translators on
translation memories: a blessing or a curse?”
in Anthony Pym et al. Translation Technology
and its Teaching, Tarragona: Intercultural
Studies Group, Universitat Rovira i Virgili.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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eCoLoTrain TM Courses
http://ecolotrain.uni-saarland.de/index.php?id=1183&L=1
(available in EN, ES, FR, DE)
Somers, Harold (ed.) (2003). Computers and
Translation. A Translator's Guide.
Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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The first commercial Translation Memory
tools are made available to translation
professionals.
Main objective:
to assist and accelerate the translation
process and related activities, thereby
improving a translator’s working life.
Constant search for “optimal solutions to
match the translation industry’s demands”.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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Question: identify your area of
specialisation and the file formats you
work with.
technical (including medical and
scientific) : 61%
legal content: 9%
marketing material: 8%
financial content: 4%
literature: 3%
other specialisations (e.g., history, social
sciences, business and administration) or
no specialisation at all: 15%
(see Fig. 6 in the Report)
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1. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and rich/plain
text files: 96%
2. PDF files: 43%
“XML and HTML files accounted for 26%,
hardcopy documents for 19%, DTP files
(including FrameMaker, Illustrator, InDesign,
QuarkXPress, PageMaker, etc.) for 12%, and
various other file formats such as Java
properties files, MS Windows resource files,
audiovisual files and TM proprietary file formats
accounted for 7% (see Figure 7 in the report).”
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% of individuals using TM
systems: 82.5%
% who did not use any TM
systems at all: 17.5%
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Company owners are slightly more likely to
use TM systems, followed by company
employees and then freelancers. (cf. 2004
LISA Translation Memory Survey)
Company owners were the first to adopt TM
technology, so they are more open to TM use
than any other group as they know the
advantages of TM systems in terms of being
cost savings and productivity gains.
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TM users (76%):
translators (they were the largest group of
professionals in this survey: 90%)
PMs - project managers (8%),
reviewers (6%),
other translation professionals (5%),
terminologists (4%)
subtitlers (2%)
interpreters (1%).
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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The high TM usage rate (82.5%) in this survey
is due to 2
characteristics of the sample unit.
Firstly, the majority of respondents specialise
in technical texts and there is a strong
correlation between the
particular text type and the use of TM
systems. This is
because technical content normally contains
a great amount of terminology, standard
expressions, simple sentence structure and a
high degree of internal repetition; therefore,
the possibilities for content re-use are many.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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The survey confirmed that those who specialise
in technical texts are more likely to use TM
tools, followed by those who specialise in
financial and marketing content. Those who
reported legal specialisation are also likely to
use TM tools, but less than the previous
groups.
TM usage rate drops for those who translate
general texts (or have no specialisation) and
for those who translate literature.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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Secondly, respondents have a high level of
computer usage competence and this
normally encourages the adoption of
TM technology.
The more skilled the translation
professionals are in the use of
computers, the more likely they
are to use a TM system.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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 There
is a relationship between
high levels of repetition and high
TM use, i.e., TM use rate declines
as the repetition levels decrease.
 No significant evidence of
correlation between age and TM
use.
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TRADOS 76%
Déjà Vu 61%
Wordfast 51%
SDL Trados 2006 49%
SDLX 36%
STAR Transit 25%
MultiTrans 18%
PASSOLO 11%
Omega-T 10%
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71% - out of a personal choice
 20% - because they were imposed by the
company they work for (or
partner with)
9% - because it was their client's request
Company owners decide the use of TM systems
on a voluntary basis, whereas the majority of
company employees are forced to startusing a
TM either by their company or their clients.
For freelancers, on the other hand, the decision
seems to lie more in the assessment of
personal circumstances, rather than in
external requirements (but the two could
coincide/influnce one another)
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hardcopy documents 38%
the file format is not supported 28%
too complicated for short texts 18%
low repetition rate 18%
not suitable for my text types 15%
complex layout 5%
lack of training/inexperience 3%
use of other tools 2%
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Why study about CAT tools?
What is a CAT tool?
What does a CAT tool do?
Advantages
Disadvantages
SDLX
SDL-TRADOS
SDL Analyse
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Because CAT tools can:
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have to be used by necessity due to a
request by a client;
improve translation consistency and
quality.
enable reuse of translations done in the
past.
improve translators’ productivity and
thus increase income.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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CAT stands for "Computer Aided Translation
Tool". The terms "Translation Memory" and
"TM" are sometimes used to refer to the same
type of tool. A CAT tool is a computer program
that helps a translator to work more efficiently,
i.e, work faster, more productively and with a
higher degree of consistency.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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1.
A CAT tool breaks texts into segments
(sentences or sentence fragments) and
presents the segments in a convenient
way, to make translating easier and
faster. In some tools, for example
MetaTexis or Trados Translator’s
Workbench, each segment is presented
in a special box, and the translation can
be entered in another box right below the
source text.
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2.
The translation of each segment is saved
together with the source text. Source text and
translation will always be treated and
presented as translation units (TU). You can
return to a segment at any time to check the
translation. There are special functions which
help to navigate through the text and to find
segments which need to be translated or
revised (quality control).
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3.
A CAT tool saves the translation units in a
database, called translation memory (TM), so
that they can be re-used for any other text, or
even in the same text. Through special "fuzzy
search" features the search functions of CAT
tools can also find segments which do not
match 100%. This saves time and effort and
helps the translator to use consistent
terminology
Besides these main functions many other functions may be
included in CAT tools, to make translating easier and increase
productivity.
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Some translation memory
programs function as stand alone
environments, while others
function as an add-on or macro
to commercially available wordprocessing or other business
software programs. (Wikipedia –
Cat tools entry)
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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Some TM tools work as add-ins (through
macros) to Microsoft Word.
Examples of these are:
Trados, Wordfast, MultiTrans, Logoport,
Metatexis, and Fusion.
(main supported file formats of interest to us:
.doc, .rtf; .txt, .ppt, .html)
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Other TM tools provide their own translation
processing environment, usually in a tabular
way.
Examples of these are:
SDLX
DéjàVu http://www.atril.com/en/home.aspx
MemoQ
http://download.cnet.com/MemoQ/3000-2079_4-10555573.html
STAR Transit
http://www.star-ts.com/downloads-translatortools-transit-nxt.shtml
Heartsome
Across http://www.across.net/en/index.aspx
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http://download.cnet.com/MemoQ/30002079_4-10555573.html
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All your tools in one place - editing, reviewing, terminology and
project management tools all in one clean, tag-free environment
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The choice of one design
over the other is usually a
matter of the user’s
preference . . .
. . . but also of imposition
by clients.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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Most CAT tools also have what is known as a
"concordance” function. This is one of the most useful
functions of a CAT tool. When a segment of text within,
for example, a sentence is selected and the concordance
function run, a list of identical or similar matches will be
displayed to the user if such matches exist in the
translation memory. This is extremely useful in checking
terminology consistency because a large number of
terms can be checked almost instantly using a single
concordance search. This is also useful in checking
consistency of phrasing of particular expressions
throughout a similar document, or in ensuring that two
translations performed separated by a large gap in time
(for example, one or two years) are still translated in a
similar manner.
FLUP - Elena Zagar Galvão
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CAT tools will also usually include
some kind of terminology
management interface for
handling storage, management
and insertion of terminology. This
makes it possible to create
terminology databases associated
with a particular job or jobs.
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 Quality
Assurance
(Consistency, Term
Checking/Management)
 Speed
 Re-use
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the file must be in electronic format.
 mistakes repeated (a ‘bad’
translation memory results in bad
translations; we might not agree with
what is ‘consecrated’ in a client’s
memory)
 tendency to translate in sentences.
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the translation memory may break.
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