CAT Tools: To Be or Not to Be
Translation memory (TM) techniques, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the linguistic transition and cross-border compliance 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 short bits, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The pros of using TM systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and increase translation quality by providing that terms and phrases are used consistently within and across translations. Users in industry and transnational 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 discouraging things of TM systems is that they usually perform at sentence level. That’s why, there is a serious 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 easy formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. Therefore, the human translator’s notion of the grade of similarity between a piece to be translated and a part retrieved from the storage base may differ considerably from the degree of similarity calculated by the TM system. This may lead to situations wherein exact matches produce 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 memory 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 incorporate into the translation run relatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the real translation work, while relieving them from routine work and keeping translation as a creative act whenever the adaptation resourcefulness of a human nature is required. For more knowledge, visit us at: HQ-translate company