Will the “CATs” conquer translation markets within a few years?
This summer I did an internship in a translation
agency in Ukraine. It was quite a valuable
Holy cats! I can simply dump my work on the “Cat” and
observe how it will look for terms, collocations and face other challenges.
What kind breed of a “Cat” am I dealing with?
MateCate is a web-based computer-assisted translation
(CAT) tool. This is an acronym for Machine Translation Enhanced Computer
Assisted Translation. The creation of this software is the result of a collaboration
of the top researchers and engineers from:
- · The international research center FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)
- · The translation company Translated SRL
- · The University of Maine (France)
- · The University of Edinburgh.
What does MateCate offer?
This fully professional CAT tool proposes a
translation work environment with a lot of possibilities and advantages. First,
it provides more matches than other CAT tools do, consequently, your
translation will be faster and more accurate. Second, it supports 71 file
formats and Google Drive files and provides the target text with the same
format and page settings as in the source
text. Third, you have the largest public translation
memory with more than 8 billion contributions at your disposal including
aligning content from the web and also the content voluntarily given by
professional translators from all over the world. You can also add your
personal translation memory and other language resources. Finally, this
software is free and open for everyone and easy to use. After learning all that,
I was looking forward to ‘taming’ such a smart “Cat”.
My dear “Cat”, my dear “Mate”
The next day I had two texts to translate: a court decision
and a medical certificate. The first one was to be translated from Russian to
Ukrainian and the second one - from French to Russian. My boss ordered me to entrust this task to
our friend “Cat” leaving me only with further revision of the “Cat”s’ work. I loved
that idea and called the “Cat”. To ask it for help you only need to type its
name in Google. After that the program offers you to insert a project name, indicate
your language combination, select the subject of your translation (e. g. art, architecture,
fashion and so on) and to upload translation memories or glossaries, if you have any. The last point
is to upload your document.
At the beginning the “Cat” will ask for a fee for its job
but you can just click on “Open job” and it is ready to work for free.
One mouse click, two mouse clicks and it’s in the bag
I haven’t found yet the reason why my dear “Cat” did the first translation almost perfectly but failed with the second one.
Maybe it was not so good in medicine. There could be other “maybes”. Honestly,
it is not what I worry about.
Will the “CATs” conquer translation markets within a few years?
It is common knowledge that there is no such thing as
a free lunch, although we have a program which is free and available for
everyone. So, why is offering products for free beneficial for FBK? If it is available
for everyone clients can translate texts themselves and do proofreading no worse
than real translators. Therefore, will our profession be in demand within a few years? And what if this “Cat” gives birth to several “kittens” that
will be much cleverer than the translators who spent many years studying to obtain their
diplomas, degrees and skills in translation? And finally, is this “Cat” reliable, can we trust it our personal
data that can be confidential?
Pictures from:
https://www.matecat.com/about/
http://kot-rediskin.blogspot.com/2011/04/blog-post_02.html
Anna Yeremenko
Your article was so much fun to read, Anna! I really enjoyed it, especially all those pun and word plays about cats haha.
RépondreSupprimerI've also heard about and worked with this tool before, so I've run into the same issues you did. I think it's always best to make the corrections while you're working on it, because I agree it can be frustrating to let the tool do its thing, only to realize when you download the finished document that it did a really poor job and you have to end up practically doing the whole thing yourself again from scratch, making you waste all that time for nothing.
With this being said, do you think it's still a tool you would use or incorporate often for future projects or do you think you'd rather use another tool (or no tool at all)?
- Pam V.
Thank-you, Pamela, for your feedback. I am really happy that you enjoyed reading my article.
SupprimerHonestly, for now I am not ready to accept the tools that provide automatic translation. There are some reasons: first, I am keen on translation process, on researching terms and its meanings, on improving my linguistic knowledge, so I prefer to translate on my own. Second, I worry a little bit about my professional life, what if ‘Cats’ will make me to look for a new occupation within a few years, that's why I refuse to believe that the quality of the automatic translation might be improved. Third, I agree with a director of the translation agency, where I had my internship, who said that I am not enough opened and flexible to accept innovations.
Today the only tool that I use is Trados.
Anna, thank you for this article! I really love your sense of humour. ;)
RépondreSupprimerIn fact, I never thought about possible risks behind this 'Cat'. Obviously, it is a huge advantage for us that this translation tool is free and accessible for everyone, but I agree that it may also turn out to be a vast database of information uploaded by naïve people charmed by its accessibility. Thank you for your observations, we should think twice before sending our documents to this friendly-looking 'Cat'.
Thank-you a lot, Kristina, for your comment!
SupprimerIt’s true, that technological innovations make our life easier, but you are right to say that we should think twice before giving them a hundred percent of our trust.