Translation Services Ohio

What is Machine Translation?

by Ray Michales  of Localization, LLC Translation Services 

Machine translation has been in the works since 1950s. There are two types of machine translations: machine translation and computer assisted translation.

Machine translation is something like Google translate. You put a text in, choose a language and Google gives its version. Anyone who has used Google translate or any other machine translation program knows that it’s far from perfect. We do not recommend using it for something that will be published or seen by other people. One can use it to translate something small and personal like an email or a post card. Most of the time one is using machine translation the results will be quite incomplete and the person will have to do some guessing and to get the whole picture of the translated text.

The second version of machine translation is computer assisted translation tool: CAT Tools. These programs are used by professional translators and agencies. It serves a different purpose that the actual translation. It’s more of the organization and memory tools. Say, you are translating a similar text to the one you just translated a few days ago or maybe even years ago. If you used CAT Tools on the first translation, will be able to assist you with the new translation. It’s like a dictionary, a database of all your past projects. If you client wants a specific translation of certain term, CAT tool will remind you of that so that all of your terms are organized properly and are consistent.

CAT tools are a standard with professional translators and translation agencies so when you ask them whether they use CAT Tools and they say “What’s that?” we say it would be a good idea to keep looking.

Localization LLC Translation Services
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Cleveland, OH 44131
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