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Are my assumptions about MT wrong? And an invitation to share a guess...
Thread poster: Henry Dotterer
Henry Dotterer
Henry Dotterer
Local time: 10:22
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Thank you, everyone Jun 30, 2020

Thanks, everyone. I'll keep watching for additional comments, but I wanted to say thank you for these initial comments, which have been very helpful!

Henry


 
Jeff Whittaker
Jeff Whittaker  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 10:22
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
+ ...
MT Jul 1, 2020

I remember seeing a quote that said
"If you think translating with MT is easier, you're doing it wrong."


Christopher Schröder
Daryo
Edwin den Boer
 
Henry Dotterer
Henry Dotterer
Local time: 10:22
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Interesting! Jul 1, 2020

LegalTranslatr2 wrote:

I remember seeing a quote that said
"If you think translating with MT is easier, you're doing it wrong."

Interesting quote!

Who said that?


 
Philippe Locquet
Philippe Locquet  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 14:22
English to French
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Unpopular but true (A) Jul 3, 2020

To look at this topic from an objective point of view, I guess we’d have to look at what MT is from a user point of view.
Here’s how I look at it, this will help provide some answers to your questions:
MT is a tool just as circular saw, a computer program or dishwasher.
MT serves a purpose much like robots in a car-manufacturing factory.
Hence the use case will depend on a few factors:
_Quality of the MT
_Purpose it’s been built for
_”Ergonomics
... See more
To look at this topic from an objective point of view, I guess we’d have to look at what MT is from a user point of view.
Here’s how I look at it, this will help provide some answers to your questions:
MT is a tool just as circular saw, a computer program or dishwasher.
MT serves a purpose much like robots in a car-manufacturing factory.
Hence the use case will depend on a few factors:
_Quality of the MT
_Purpose it’s been built for
_”Ergonomics”: is it usable easily for translators? How simple is the connector to setup, the contract of use? Etc.
_How does the “craftsmen” (translator) intends to use it? What is the level of craftmanship of the user.
So without considering in-house custom built MTs for large LSPs or specific multinational end customers; without considering the view where a translator is competing with MT for his job, here’s the state of the use for what I know is happening right now:
An MT is as good as it’s amount and quality of training data along with its programming. So, the number one factor is the language pair considered. Some low-resource languages make MT output very weak. This will end-up “polluting” the work of the translator. In this case, to save time the translator will turn it off.
Field: some MTs are known to be very strong in a specific domain (i.e. legal, medical etc.). So, the translator that is aware of this will compare MT outputs and choose the MT that suits better with the source material flowing in.
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Philippe Locquet
Philippe Locquet  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 14:22
English to French
+ ...
Unpopular but true (B) Jul 3, 2020

Then comes the issue of connectors: some LSPs want their translators to use such or such CAT to perform projects. But all CAT tools do not have the same connectors available, hence it creates vast differences in the MT used among translators depending on the daily driver CAT they use.
Common mistakes. MTs have the tendency to make the same mistake over and over again especially in languages where grammar is challenging to the MT (German, Russian etc.). This can be very annoying to the tran
... See more
Then comes the issue of connectors: some LSPs want their translators to use such or such CAT to perform projects. But all CAT tools do not have the same connectors available, hence it creates vast differences in the MT used among translators depending on the daily driver CAT they use.
Common mistakes. MTs have the tendency to make the same mistake over and over again especially in languages where grammar is challenging to the MT (German, Russian etc.). This can be very annoying to the translator that has to focus a lot of efforts in correcting repeatedly the same mistake.
In use case scenarios, I’ve seen translators rely on MT to speed up their translation process for certain documents and then turning it off completely when translating another type of documents.
Nonetheless, we have to admit how well some MT engines perform depending on the use case scenario.
I recently did a comparison test between a few engines using the best possible config for the MT to perform: News story, English to French, well know public persona. Result: one of the MTs tested required no editing on a section of 250 words. This can’t be denied. But doing the same test with the same MTs in German to French in a different field was very bad. If you perform the same kind of test for yourself your findings should be the same as mine. It’s a bit empirical, but it’s the best way to work this out.
So, here’s my guess for numbers. For languages where MT perform very well, translators that have a good volume of work will see MT compensate in the pace their translate at and with fatigue too.
So, for big language pairs; not highly confidential domains; no transcreation: 50% of translators will use MT at a moment or another in their CAT.



[Edited at 2020-07-03 09:01 GMT]
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Are my assumptions about MT wrong? And an invitation to share a guess...







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