Translation's a wonderful profession... IF you can keep it
Joachim Lépine, M. Ed., C. Tr.
Helping translators connect with premium clients | Mane Educator at LION Translation Academy | Certified French-to-English translator
To apply Benjamin Franklin's quote to translation: Do we have a wonderful profession as translators? Yes... if we can keep it.
Lately, some organizations have started touting NMT as providing 50, 60 or even 70% overall productivity gains, before even factoring in fuzzy and perfect matches. In turn, this is leading to a devaluation of translation in every sense of the word. Yet unless we're talking about basic user instructions or other extremely straightforward texts, this is absolutely NOT true—not if you want publication-worthy texts that match professional, human quality. These figures are off by a very long shot.
It is also not true, despite recent claims, that NMT automatically speeds up translation of repetitive texts. Repetition is best handled by a human translator using a TM and propagation tools (and carefully checking each context along the way). It's nothing new, and doesn't change the equation. Many agencies and freelancers are actually wasting valuable time by pretranslating texts with NMT and therefore propagating mistakes in repetitive texts. The only exception is adaptive MT, which as of now is not as fluid/natural as the two leading NMT engines on the market. It also requires at least 5 or 6 similar occurrences of a term before it starts kicking in. It ain't perfect.
Bottom line: Let's be careful before bandying about wild claims that make it sound like human translators are less and less necessary and important. Nothing could be further from the truth.
?Translation needs are exploding, and good human translators are in greater demand than ever!
At best, in the hands of an experienced and qualified translator, NMT is a good servant that helps take care of the easy peasy stuff so we can focus on the challenges that make translation so fascinating and rewarding.
And you can take that to the bank.
Bilingual Communications Consultant
3 年Do you think moving to hourly rates instead of per word could be a good solution to avoid "devaluation"? NMT does help most translators work faster (although 70% is a stretch!) so I see why some agencies think it's fair to adjust their rates, but the problem is that NMT's productivity gains vary widely by project and are difficult to predict ahead of time. An hourly rate would be the fairest and simplest way to account for such variable gains.
Freelance Spanish, French, and Portuguese-to-English Translator | English Editor | Aspiring technical writer and editor | In search for employment opportunities in music or administration/communication
3 年Pardon my ignorance, but what is NMT? I must confess I’ve never seen or heard of this acronym. Then again, I’m not 100% familiar with fuzzy matches and the like.
Translator, Parliamentary Committee Proceedings / Traducteur, Délibérations des comités parlementaires
3 年Right on the money, Joe!!
Language Operations and Tech
3 年Interesting post Joachim Lépine. MT does not CONSISTENTLY provide publishable quality translations. Although sometimes useful for general comprehension of source text, outputs are often inaccurate and may not be relied upon as a basis for decision-making in the normal course of business. This is the guidance my team provides to our internal partners.
Translator, proofreader and writer at BMC
3 年I agree with you. Excellent article!