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English>Italian
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Maurizio Valente
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Glossary Automatic
Translation (Machine Translation) As Craciunescu, Gerding-Salas, and Stringer-O'Keeffe pointed out in a recent article on the Translation Journal, the term "Machine Translation" is misleading, as MT provides a pre-translation, a sort of raw material that a translator must completely rewrite. I recently happened to accept an English>Italian "proofreading job" that turned out to be an MT product. One of the gems here was the translation of the term Adobe PostScript as "Mattone crudo PostScript". Of course, I renegotiated the fee. Babelfish (www.altavista.com) is an example of a basic MT application. Quite often, the results can be quite amusing. I tried to translate the Italian sentence "In genere si preferisce adoperare un substrato molto spesso" (A very thick substrate is generally preferred) and got "In kind a lot is preferred to often use a substrate". A re-translation into Italian gave "In natura mólto è preferito usare spesso un substrato". However, more sophisticated MT tools are currently being used, and a lot of research is being carried out to make them better and better. Some automotive manufacturers apparently carry the translation of their shop repair manuals using MT. It must be said, however, that these manuals have been originally written using a particular form of English, specially designed to be translated using MT. Ultimately, general MT tools may become more reliable in future, and the translator might risk to become an editor or proofreader, but not for a number of years yet. CAT Tools
What is a CAT-Tool? Automatic Translation (Machine Translation) CAT is an abbreviation for "Computer Aided Translation". A CAT Tool is a computer program which speeds up translation and helps to ensure consistency (as far terminology and style are concerned). Although each CAT Tool works differently, most of them share the following features: Segmentation. The original files are divided into segments according to a set of rules (such as splitting the segment after a a question or exclamation mark, period, or a semicolon, followed by a white space, unless the next character is lowercase). These rules may fail sometimes (for ex.: splitting "Dr. Smith said that …" into "Dr. " and " Smith said that …") . This leads us to another feature, the "Join/Split" function. Join/Split. This function joins two adjacent segments, or splits one segment into 2 segments. Joining and splitting may not always be available. Analysis. This function is used to get information on the degree of repetiveness (D.O.R.) of one or more documents. Propagation. A translated source-target pair (so called translation unit, or TU) is propagated to all identical segments. Translation memory (TM) Terminology database Fuzzy search Apart from these common features, CAT Tools can be classified
into 2 different categories: At least with DéjàVu, this feature offers a tremendous advantage: in the case of multi-file projects, all the files can be imported and the translations propagated to all files in the project at lighting speed (see Propagation). Ideal translation
The rationale behind the ideal translation is that "the translator conveys ideas, not words". This is also called “Dynamic Equivalence”. Rather than "translating literally" or word-by-word, the translator interiorises the concepts in her/his mind and attempts to convey the original message by reformulating the text in the target language. Sometimes, this approach can lead to paraphrasing, which may or may not be appropriate in the specific context. Since the complete meaning of a text is often deeper than the simple apparent textual meaning, this will always be an insuperable obstacle for a Machine Translation software. Localization
It is much more than simple translation into another language. For example, an icon may have a certain meaning in a given country but mean something else, or even be offensive, in another country. In case of a software localization, the target language may be longer in the target language; therefore a margin (30% in case of an En>It translation) must be planned in advance; otherwise the poor translator will get crazy trying to fit it all in. Productivity Tools Beneficial to both translators and their clients. They include: - CAT Tools - Dictation software - Search programs (serial lookup or indexing-based tools)
Transcreating Neologism from "translation" + "creation". Here the added value lies in the creativity of the target text. The clearest examples are in the Fashion and Advertisement field.
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