CAT Tools: Virtues and Vices
Translation memory (TM) technologies, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the translation and cross-border 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 file has been broken down into smaller parts, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The advantages of using TM systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and raise translation quality by providing that terms and sentences are used consistently within and across translation works. Users in governmental and cross-border firms submit a 25–60% rise in productivity. Yet, it must be stated that the use of TM systems may also have negative effects on translation quality. One of the major contras of TM systems is that they usually work at sentence level. Thus, there is a severe danger that the translator will focus too much on isolated sentences, possibly disregarding the contexts in which the sentences are incorporated. Moreover, the matching algorithms of TM systems are based on very simple formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. That’s why, the human translator’s notion of the degree of similarity between a piece to be translated and a part retrieved from the database may differ considerably from the level of similarity calculated by the TM system. This may lead to situations wherein exact matches imply wrong translations, or one translation of a fuzzy match requires little or no adjustment but another fuzzy match with the same similarity level is not useful at all (for a discussion on the aspects of evaluating the retrieval mechanisms of CAT systems, see Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards (1996), Whyman and Somers (1999), and Reinke (2000a, 2004). Despite the contras, it should be noted that TM systems generally incorporate into the translation run comparatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the actual translation work, while free them from routine work and supporting translation as a creative act whenever the translation resourcefulness of a human being is required. For more information, visit us at: HQ-translate company
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