Cloudy or sunny? The future of the translator in the cloud?

F. Steurs KU LeuvenFaculty of ArtsCampus Antwerpen

FIT 2014

• FIT XXth World Congress

• Berlin, August 4 – 6, 2014

• Man vs. Machine ?The Future of Translators,

Interpreters and Terminologists

FIT XX Berlin

postediting

Subtitling and

audiovisual translation

Machine tools standards

terminologyCAT tools

Social media

Working in the cloud

TermNet intensive training

• Legal translation

• Economic aspects of translation

• Medical translation

• Technical documentation

• Terminology management

• Localisation aspects

• Language policies and language planning

European Master in Translation

Competences for master programmes in translation

• TRANSLATION SERVICE PROVISION COMPETENCE

• LANGUAGE COMPETENCE

• INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

• INFORMATION MINING COMPETENCE

• THEMATIC COMPETENCE

• TECHNOLOGICAL COMPETENCE (mastery of tools)

• http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/programmes/emt/key_documents/emt_competences_translators_en.pdf

Impact of multilingualism

• Impact on European Business life

• Belgian Companies part of the European Market (27 countries, 24 languages )

• Multilingual services in order to do business on a Pan-European level

• Digital society and globalisation of the economy o Economic activities have changedo Go global, act localo Multilingualism and multilingual services are not an

asset, they are an absolute necessity

Glocalisation

Localisation

Internationalisation

Globalisation

Translation, intercultural communication, adapting to locales

ELAN

• “Incidences du manque de compétences linguistiques des entreprises sur l’économie européenne”

• Negative consequences due to lack of language knowledge and translation expertise in companies : o Loss of contracts : 11%

• Challenges in the near future:o Exploring new markets: 46%o Need for new languages : 50%o Language strategy : 50%o Multilingualism as added value

Transcert• http://transcert.eu/sites/default/files/transcert_leaflet_final.pdf

• Trans-European Voluntary Certification for Translators

• DGT

• Life Long Learning project

• ECQA training and examination

• Certification

Learning Objectives

• The translator masters the basic functionalities of translation-relevant software

• The translator is able to process files in and convert files to different formats

• The translator is able to use CAT tools

• The translator is aware of machine translation and professional pre- and post-editing

• The translator is able to post-edit machine translated texts

• Operating systemsMicrosoft Windows / Apple OS X / …

• Text processorsMS Office Word / Apache OpenOffice / AppleWorks / …

• Web browsersMS Internet Explorer / Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox / …

• Digital reference worksDictionaries / glossaries / thesauri / …

Relevant Software?

• CAT toolsSDL Trados / OmegaT / memoQ / Wordbee / …

• Alignment toolsSDL Trados WinAlign / AlignAssist / …

• MT toolsSystran / Mozes / …

• Terminology toolsSDL MultiTerm / i-Term / AnyLexic / …

• PM toolsTranslation Office 3000 / LTC Worx / Plunet / …

• …

Relevant Software?

• Translation Editoro Text editor developed for translation

• Translation Memoryo Database of previous translations

• Termbaseo Collection of systematically organized term records

• Additional toolso Term extractorso Machine translation systemso Alignerso …

CAT Technologies http://www.cattools.org/

Advantages

• Clean translation environmento Identical for all file types (.doc, .xml, .html .xliff)

• Increase in consistency (terminology / expressions)

• Increase in productivityo 25 to 60% increase

• Automated QA checkso Spelling checkero Terminology verifierso Other formal errors (e.g. punctuation)

CAT Technologies

Future developments

o Cloud applicationso Promising developments for subsegment matching and

grammatical matcheso Integration between MT and TMo Termextraction : dedicated tools (TermWise,

Sketchengine, …)

CAT Technologies

Machine Translation

• Best known form of translation technology

• Fully automated translation without human intervention

• FAHQT and the Search for the Holy Grail

• Dictionary based, example based, interlingua, transfer based, rule based, statistical, hybrid

Machine Translation

Hybrid systems

• New development :

• Hybrid systems : combination of rule based MT, and customizing through :o translation memorieso terminology databases for dedicated subdomains or

customers

Cloud based translation

• Cloud-computing : new phenomenon in translation serviceo creating new needs and requirements for client-

companies and translation agencies. o Translators : relevant skills to use software that is based

on the cloudo Project managers are gradually requested to centralise

the management process through browsers that support systems whose aim is to provide as many features as possible to facilitate the whole translation process.

Universities

• Have to answer these questions

• Active cooperation with industrieso Training, o Research, o Internschips

Master in translation

• Master in translation

• Master en traduction spécialisée (METS)

• Postgraduate programme in specialised translationo Advanced terminology managemento Advanced translation technologyo Machine translation & workflowmanagemento Software localisationo Website localisationo Audiovisual translation ,o …

Conclusion

• Translator’s tasks are changing

• University programmes need constant interaction with the market

• New competences

• New requirements

• New developments

• Interaction between research, curriculum development and industry.