Translation Memory: Yes or No
Translation memory (TM) equipment, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the linguistic transition and cultural compliance of electronic content (e-content) for local markets. The idea behind TM systems is to store in a computer system the original e-content and the translation that has been produced by human translators; the stored translated version of the source document has been broken down into short items, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The preferences of using CAT systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and improve translation quality by ensuring that terminology and expressions are used consistently within and across translation works. Users in governmental and cross-border agencies state a 25–60% rise in efficiency. Yet, it must be stated that the use of TM systems may also have negative effects on translation quality. One of the major minuses of TM systems is that they usually operate at sentence level. Therefore, there is a real danger that the translator will focus too much on isolated sentences, possibly disregarding the contexts in which the sentences are incorporated. Moreover, the matching algorithms of TM systems are based on very easy formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. That’s why, the human translator’s notion of the level of similarity between a part to be translated and a piece retrieved from the storage base may differ considerably from the degree of similarity calculated by the CAT system. This may follow to situations wherein exact matches produce wrong translations, or one translation of a fuzzy match requires little or no adjustment but another fuzzy match with the same similarity level is not useful at all (for a discussion on the aspects of evaluating the retrieval mechanisms of CAT systems, see Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards (1996), Whyman and Somers (1999), and Reinke (2000a, 2004). Despite the drawbacks, it should be noted that TM systems generally build into the translation performance relatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the actual translation process, while free them from routine work and supporting translation as a creative act whenever the adaptation resourcefulness of a human nature is required. For more information, visit us at: HQ-translate company
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