Translation Memory: Pros and Cons
Translation memory (TM) technologies, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the linguistic transition and international 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 manageable parts, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The priorities of using TM systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and enhance translation quality by providing that terminology and sentences are used consistently within and across translations. Users in industry and international companies submit a 25–60% rise in efficiency. Yet, it must be stated that the use of TM systems may also have negative effects on translation quality. One of the major minuses of TM systems is that they usually operate at sentence level. That’s why, there is a severe 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 segment retrieved from the storage base may differ considerably from the level of similarity calculated by the TM system. This may result in 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 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 negative sides, it should be noted that TM systems generally integrate into the translation performance relatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the actual translation work, while free them from routine work and maintaining translation as a creative activity whenever the linguistic resourcefulness of a human being is required. For more info, visit us at: HQ-translate company
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