Usage of TM: Virtues and Vices
Translation memory (TM) techniques, the most widely used toolkits in the localization of digital information at HQ-translate agency, enable the translation and international adaptation 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 file has been broken down into manageable parts, generally one sentence long. Today the most popular CAT tools: TRADOS, Déjà vu, Wordfast. The preferences of using translation memory systems are fairly obvious: they increase the translator’s productivity and raise translation quality by securing that terminology and expressions are used consistently within and across translations. Users in governmental and transnational companies 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 perform at sentence level. Therefore, there is a real danger that the translator will focus too much on standalone sentences, possibly disregarding the contexts in which the sentences are built-in. Moreover, the matching algorithms of TM systems are based on very simple formal criteria, such as the similarity of character strings. Thus, the human translator’s notion of the level of similarity between a part to be translated and a part retrieved from the database may differ considerably from the level of similarity calculated by the TM 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 value 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 negative sides, it should be noted that TM systems generally incorporate into the translation performance comparatively smoothly. These CATs leave human translators in control of the actual translation process, while liberating them from routine work and keeping translation as a creative activity whenever the linguistic resourcefulness of a human nature is required. For more knowledge, visit us at: HQ-translate company