tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.comments2024-03-06T02:46:19.929+00:00Translation TribulationsKevin Lossnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14727800526216764023noreply@blogger.comBlogger2980125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-47545419754706509952023-11-28T10:07:25.069+00:002023-11-28T10:07:25.069+00:00Thanks a lot Kevin, not only for the book review b...Thanks a lot Kevin, not only for the book review but especially for the comparison and your workflow suggestion. I think the idea of how to think of, create and test routine workflows is something many of us find quite challenging. <br /><br />That's why it's so good to have people like you in the industry!Birgit Hofmannhttps://www.beomed.denoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-16367080048801997322023-10-06T16:07:12.781+01:002023-10-06T16:07:12.781+01:00All the recordings are here (or are linked here) a...All the recordings are here (or are linked here) and available to course enrollees....<br /><br />https://transtrib-tech.teachable.com/courses/memoq-resource-camp/lectures/49538082Kevin Lossnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14727800526216764023noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-18614585715326190242023-10-03T17:42:25.213+01:002023-10-03T17:42:25.213+01:00Love the rock climbing analogy. Love the rock climbing analogy. Lucais Sewellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-28784376759996451292023-10-03T17:21:27.421+01:002023-10-03T17:21:27.421+01:00"crystallize ... to form bolts of emotion tha..."crystallize ... to form bolts of emotion that pierce the veil... " - brilliant phrase Kevin! Lucais Sewellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-77143104301738882982023-09-27T15:56:20.667+01:002023-09-27T15:56:20.667+01:00Hi Kevin,
Can you make the recording of the Auto-t...Hi Kevin,<br />Can you make the recording of the Auto-translation Roundup lecture from 14 September available for download? I can only find the download link for the PPT presentation on the web page, not the actual recording. (I have signed up for the course.)<br />Regards,<br />NiamhAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-57345316556823654262023-09-18T16:22:13.334+01:002023-09-18T16:22:13.334+01:00Oh it has been in a few forms. But you don't &...Oh it has been in a few forms. But you don't "flesh out" shadows, and light case dispels them, or rather they displace.Kevin Lossnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14727800526216764023noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-74718041247364391532023-09-17T11:47:05.929+01:002023-09-17T11:47:05.929+01:00Very poetic indeed :-)Very poetic indeed :-)Wouternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-32428747605697251182023-09-17T07:50:47.114+01:002023-09-17T07:50:47.114+01:00This is tantalising! It hints at so many things an...This is tantalising! It hints at so many things and merits fleshing out.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-18284017923252670642023-09-12T20:20:16.829+01:002023-09-12T20:20:16.829+01:00Garbage, garbage, every where,
And all the text di...Garbage, garbage, every where,<br />And all the text did stink;<br />Garbage, garbage, every where,<br />Nor anyone would think.Kevin Lossnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14727800526216764023noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-79019429644187848272023-09-12T20:15:28.111+01:002023-09-12T20:15:28.111+01:00Allison, aside from the trashlation quality of Dee...Allison, aside from the trashlation quality of DeepL results, it makes an absolute dog's breakfast of information for dates, time and currency, producing more formats for each than I would ever have imagined and requiring quite a few regex-based QA tools to be used to clean up the mess.Kevin Lossnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14727800526216764023noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-15734088978439563652023-09-05T16:33:47.405+01:002023-09-05T16:33:47.405+01:00Sounds like a good suggestion to make on the memoQ...Sounds like a good suggestion to make on the memoQ Ideas Portal!Kevin Lossnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14727800526216764023noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-46220940588285775822023-07-25T09:58:13.158+01:002023-07-25T09:58:13.158+01:00Hi Kevin, sorry for the doublet (the first one was...Hi Kevin, sorry for the doublet (the first one was anonymous)<br />I love your term "trashlation"<br /><br />The problem is that technical writing (and medical writing that impacts on my job) are also both made by poor UK/US writers (likely Chinese etc), and I suspect by chatgpt and other similar trash-tools, so the picture is even worse in my opinion YUK<br /><br />And I noted another issue: (too) many "peers" use since years Internet over dictionaries and other good/official references because they havethe results faster, and they usually consider "more reliable" the more frequent result<br /><br />Well, I am noting that the websites best indexed by Google are rubbish sites, with improbable names like ziopippo.com, that are likely made by robots looking at the copy-pasted rubbish inside, so just picture what can jump out from those "pro-level searches" Claudio Porcellanahttps://www.medical-translation-services.biz/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-67343994395251393232023-07-25T09:54:19.920+01:002023-07-25T09:54:19.920+01:00Hi Kevin, I love this term "trashlation"...Hi Kevin, I love this term "trashlation"<br />The problem is that technical writing (and medical writing that impacts on my job) are also both made by poor UK/US writers (likely Chinese etc), and by chatgpt and other similar trash-tools, so the picture is even worse in my opinion YUK<br /><br />BTW, I noted another issue: (too) many "peers" use Internet over dictionaries and other good references because they have results faster, and they usually consider "more reliable" the more frequent result<br />Well, I am noting that the 1st and more common website indexed by Google are rubbish sites, with improbable names like ziopippo.com, that are likely made with a robot looking at the copy-pasted rubbish inside, so just picture what can jump out from those "professional searches" Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-18589759278987122872023-06-29T23:30:56.072+01:002023-06-29T23:30:56.072+01:00Sorry for the late response; I haven't been mo...Sorry for the late response; I haven't been monitoring comments well since my e-mail addresses are so spammed as to be practically unusable. The first lecture in the series is public on YouTube. The other five are there as well, but they are unlisted. As time permits I'll be distilling it all into an e-learning course.Kevin Lossnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14727800526216764023noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-82428618785920136962023-06-15T21:11:04.848+01:002023-06-15T21:11:04.848+01:00Young Billy, who munched the table, is now an elde...Young Billy, who munched the table, is now an elderly gentleman of eleven and half years who listens to the name of Luuki. We are blessed to have him around since he arrived in Germany. (Back then, we had to cancel a trip to NYC, where we had planned to attend an Arctic Monkeys concert in Madison Square Garden, a decision we never regretted)<br />Although he had to battle cancer two years ago, which cost him his spleen and part of his rod, he’s still the most charming boy. Also two years ago, a young lady (Bruno Jura Hound mix) from Cyprus joined our little family. She helped him with the only thing this clever little pup never did learn: being alone for more than five minutes without panicking. The two of them are just completely gorgeous.<br />So, yeah, even if it’s a bit late: thank you for bringing little Billy/Luuki into our lives!Karstenhttps://about.me/karstentaeubernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-24745440624292077002023-05-21T19:17:40.159+01:002023-05-21T19:17:40.159+01:00Dear Kevin,
I recently discovered Translation Tri...Dear Kevin,<br /><br />I recently discovered Translation Tribulations and am delighted to see there are other translators who share the frustrations I have been experiencing daily throughout my career. Despite formal education as a translator, I did not realize what makes a good translation until I started working for my current employer. Unfortunately, I had to achieve this epiphany on my own. Sadly, it is one that most of my coworkers have not been blessed with. Simple techniques like turning German passive voice into English active voice elude them like a jackalope. Nevertheless, most of our clients have for years been satisfied with translations that could more accurately be called “oversettings”, probably because they don’t know any better.<br /><br />At the start of this year, the founder of the company I work for—obviously fed up with the clients constantly pushing our prices down—decided to sell his 30-year-old business to a company that is much younger but making waves in the industry with its novel AI-based approach. This is, of course, going to make translation faster and more cost-effective (read “cheaper”) for customers.<br /><br />Our new parent company gave us a chance to test their system. Without human intervention in the process, the translation I got back would not have been usable. However, their full service with preprocessing, quality assessment, and post-editing was much more up to snuff. Nevertheless, that still makes the human element potentially the weakest link in the chain. Ultimately, the quality of a translation is closely tied to the quality of the translator training. Many translation techniques and translations themselves—plenty of them highly debatable—at our company come straight from the former big cheese himself and have been passed down from one translation memory to the next.<br /><br />In all honesty, translation quality comes down to the quality of the source text and the deadline it is translated under. When a client sends a 30,000-word document they spent months creating and expects the translation back within a week, we should not be surprised to see a target text resembling a product of Google Translate ca. 2007. That is especially true when the source text is so incoherent and full of redundancies that it is itself akin to rotting meat. <br /><br />Two of our long-term clients recently resorted to using MT and AI systems of their own. The first, a major Swiss bank, now pretranslates its texts for us with an MT algorithm and then complains when the quality of the final text they get back does not meet their standards. The other client, a German state-level bank, has withdrawn most of its weekly investing newsletter, reportedly to be translated using an AI tool. Oddly, enough it still sends us the one section of that product that an AI system ought to be able to handle because of the repetitive structure of the content. The parts that always vary from week to week and frequently represent the author’s attempt at creative writing with newly invented metaphors and sentences of 30 words or more are what the client expects AI to handle. How do they come up with those decisions?<br /><br />Eventually, what the translation industry is going to wind up with is source texts written with the aid of an AI tool because the corporate clients most translation agencies serve will want those materials produced faster. Then the translators, especially ones at big agencies, are going to be translating with the aid of an AI tool because the deadlines and prices force them to resort to more advanced CAT tools. What is that old acronym in computerese: GIGO = garbage in, garbage out?<br /><br />John Ralstonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13118388041819102143noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-50759198845759114002023-05-20T21:15:22.408+01:002023-05-20T21:15:22.408+01:00Recent metrics on a 2,000 word text I translated s...Recent metrics on a 2,000 word text I translated show that DeepL text (if you count an insertion and a deletion as one change) requires one change every 6.9 words. In this particular case, DeepL was right about 14.49% of the time. Not very impressive. What DeepL got wrong, it got hopelessly wrong. This result is in line with many similar experiments I have done.Allison Wrighthttps://wrightonthebutton.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-36154899779153788462023-04-13T18:00:27.329+01:002023-04-13T18:00:27.329+01:00Hi! Is it possible to have access to a recorded ve...Hi! Is it possible to have access to a recorded version of the workshop? (it is exists...)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-41805411041982304702023-01-24T12:02:57.592+00:002023-01-24T12:02:57.592+00:00Hi Kevin, could you share your list at the next pr...Hi Kevin, could you share your list at the next presentation this Thursday? Many thanks!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-54897700616364434882023-01-17T14:34:19.096+00:002023-01-17T14:34:19.096+00:00Hi Kevin!
Do you plan on recording these workshops...Hi Kevin!<br />Do you plan on recording these workshops? It would be great to have the possibility to watch them afterwards, to settle the knowledge, and a great option for those who cannot attend them at that time.Cristinanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-89386519669349465062022-12-09T19:33:08.756+00:002022-12-09T19:33:08.756+00:00Welcome to Club,
I was banned for a name of one of...Welcome to Club,<br />I was banned for a name of one of the most popular dishes here in Slovakia - "cigánska pečienka" (+/- gypsy roast)...Štefan Pecennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-17816174751659805362022-12-02T20:05:17.188+00:002022-12-02T20:05:17.188+00:00thank you so much. that message was always on and ...thank you so much. that message was always on and ALWAYS covered my typing even though I have a good headset/mic. much appreciated!!!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-52058588039496334522022-10-15T10:52:36.465+01:002022-10-15T10:52:36.465+01:00As a translator - and an agency - I ask our team o...As a translator - and an agency - I ask our team of linguists for fuzzies discounts> But wait! We only ask for small s discounts on 101% to 85% matches. <br />Rationale is, our TM is well curated, we only use a small team of linguists who are happy to work from the same TM (one TM per client/tam of linguists).<br /> <br />We pay the full rate for anything under 84% as, as you quite rightly point out, these matches are often useless rubish.<br /><br />And we pay up to 90% of the full rate for high matches -and we check that TM fuzzies put forward by the SaaS are on tagrget and reusable. <br /><br />The only reason we do ask for some discounts is that client can easilly identify 100 or 101% "in context" matches from previous jobs, and we have to incentivise them by offering at least some level of discount for what they see as obvious repeats. <br /> <br />What we have a really tough time with is MTPE. Most of the time, the productivity boost is very small, a fact clients do not seem to understand. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-32860723745361999642022-08-29T14:15:02.171+01:002022-08-29T14:15:02.171+01:00Eerie coming across.this after half a century'...Eerie coming across.this after half a century'. I had sat on the same desk with Richard in first class high school at Norwood high. We were 12 Yr old i think , and I remember him saying ou zo. Yes I replied, a Greek drink. But he was speaking in ancient Greek, Ou zo meaning I don't live...<br /><br />Βόρειος Άνεμοςhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03046283625727389925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20155610.post-63844241600150814672022-06-25T19:40:44.508+01:002022-06-25T19:40:44.508+01:00Very true! Not to mention saving the sanity of the...Very true! Not to mention saving the sanity of the poor sod who has to unravel the machine's malapropisms for the sake of a bit of penny-pinching. 🙃Fipshttps://www.amindatplay.eunoreply@blogger.com