Machine translation – Computer Assisted Translation

Some customers of http://www.translogic.no/ ask for software that can translate the text directly on their PC. In case you need to translate a segment of text solely for your own use, machine translation may be of some assistance. It is quick and inexpensive; some services are even free of charge, like http://www.freetranslation.com or http://babelfish.altavista.com These are not suitable for serious translation – the result will make you appear to be inarticulate or just plain stupid. For an amusing trial run, you might try to have your PC translate some text from English into a foreign language, then to a third language, and then back into English. Having seen the result, I can guarantee that you will not want use such text to address your customers. That said, the latest addition, Google translate, is actually quite good for personal use.

Careful editing of a machine translated text by a skilled linguist is an alternative, but it will not save you any expenses overall. Most linguists will tell you that a machine translated text is so bad that it would be quicker and less expensive to do the job over again manually.

Several software companies, of which Trados, Déjà Vu and WordFast, are the best known, have developed software to assist translation agencies and translators in their work. Such software can be valuable time-savers when translating repetitive texts. The greatest advantage though, is that the software makes it easier to ensure consistency throughout the translation, i.e. repeated terms or expressions will be translated the same way in all documents. This is called CAT (Computer Assisted Translation)