Usage of TM: Pros and Cons
Translation memory (TM) technologies, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the proofreading and transnational accommodation 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 text has been broken down into manageable units, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The preferences of using TM systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and better translation quality by securing that terms and phrases are used consistently within and across translation works. Users in business and transnational organizations 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 work at sentence level. Thus, there is a severe danger that the translator will focus too much on standalone sentences, possibly disregarding the contexts in which the sentences are embedded. Moreover, the matching algorithms of TM systems are based on very easy formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. Thus, the human translator’s notion of the degree of similarity between a piece to be translated and a segment retrieved from the storage base may differ considerably from the grade of similarity calculated by the CAT system. This may follow to situations wherein exact matches yield wrong translations, or one translation of a fuzzy match requires little or no adjustment but another fuzzy match with the same similarity grade is not useful at all (for a discussion on the aspects of evaluating the retrieval mechanisms of memory systems, see Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards (1996), Whyman and Somers (1999), and Reinke (2000a, 2004). Despite the vices, it should be noted that TM systems generally build into the translation workflow comparatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the actual translation process, while liberating them from routine work and maintaining translation as a creative job whenever the adaptation resourcefulness of a human translator is required. For more info, visit us at: HQ-translate company
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