Re: translation automation?

[Arafat Medini <lumina at silverpen dot de>]

Am Samstag, den 16.10.2004, 22:59 +0200 schrieb chaddadun at bluewin dot ch:
> Salam,
> 
> Experience proved that "machine translation" is still far from being a perfect
> solution, as texts translated this way require heavy editing and usually
> more time. While we might gain 10%, editing the remaining 90% will take
> more time and effort.
> 

I don't agree really, I installed Kbabel (last week?) and I was blown
away by the improvements done to it's database, the automatic
translation is really VERY good, sure it is far from perfect, and I hope
it will ever stay like that ;) But today editing an automatically
translated file usually does not take more time then beginning from
scratch.
Especially if your prior work has a solid foundation and you're not
building your database from pos that are not well and/or completely
translated.

> Other translation tools exist, however. Translation Memory software, such
> as Trados and Transit (and OmegaT under all platforms including Linux) is
> only the most famous. It is only suitable for highly repetitive text. It
> works more or less like Kbabel.
> 

I use kbabel for auto-translation and then gtranslator for editing as
kbabel is highly instabel on my machine, I am very fine with that
solution, the last file I translated with those two tools (goobox) gave
me a gain of roughly 30% of time maybe even more!

> Another more recent alternative is Corpus-based translation tools, such
> as MultiTrans of MultiCorpora. It is, in my opinion, the best solution available
> for translating documents with relatively less repetitive occurences at
> the sentence level, but more repetitive occurences of more than 2 words,
> such as computer books. A comparision between both systems is available
> here:
> 
> http://www.multicorpora.com/papers/new/White%20Paper%20Multilingual%20Corpus_en.pdf
> 
> Another effort is underway at the United Nations University: the Universal
> Networking Language (UNL). I do not know much about it. Here is the link:
> 
> http://www.undl.org/unlsys/
> 
> While I cannot still give a hand in any effort in this regard because of
> my injury, I would like to say that such software under Linux is becoming
> a real need in many international organizations sufferring from abusive
> practices of some proprietary software owners and wishing to move towards
> open source.
> 
I think at some point in time translation software will be a very
important tool in the hand of the translators, but for now I am very
happy even with kbabel!!! 
I think the tools we have now are enough to do the job, sure better
technology means better and faster work, but for me the situation now,
as an active translator, is VERY good!

> Salam,
> 
Salamat

> Yasser
> 
Arafat
> >-- Message original --
> >Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 23:55:44 -0700 (PDT)
> >From: Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>
> >To: Documentation and Translation <doc at arabeyes dot org>
> >Subject: Re: translation automation?
> >Reply-To: Documentation and Translation <doc at arabeyes dot org>
> >
> >
> >--- Abdulaziz Al-Arfaj <alarfaj0 at yahoo dot com> wrote:
> >> You mean like this?
> >>   http://babelfish.altavista.com/
> >>
> >> I would very much like to see an English->Arabic and then Arabic->English
> >> automated translation, even if it's wrong 90% of the time. If its wrong
> >90%
> >> of the time then its right 10% of the time, so thats 10% less work for
> >us.
> >>
> >> This however is a _huge_ and complex project, and for someone to write
> >> it he needs a very firm grasp of the syntax, semantics and morphology
> of
> >> Arabic, plus programming prowess. It doesnt look like we have someone
> >> like that here... :-(
> >
> >I think we have some of the ingredients to actually give it a go, what
> it
> >does require is someone with the enthusiasm and curiosity to stick with
> it
> >and develop it as much as possible.
> >
> >The following projects could come in handy,
> > + Duali     (http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Duali)
> > + Farahidi  (http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Adawat)
> > + Wordlist  (http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Wordlist)
> >
> >I'm by no means saying we can actually do it and get it right, etc.  But
> >I am inclined to think that we have some tools in-place to start on such
> >an adventure given there is dedication and interest in a long-term project.
> >Universities should also be consulted as this is something that would very
> >much salivate over (or they should).
> >
> >Sounds like something to add to Arabeyes' Global TODO list.
> >
> >Salam.
> >
> > - Nadim
> >
> >
> >
> >
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