The Invisible Hand of Social Media

 

We've probably all been there by now. The evolution of social media platforms has seen the "rise of the machines", with artificial (non-)intelligence programmed by unintelligent humans monitoring and managing our actions, sometimes with little or no possibilities of pushback on our part or processes that waste inordinate amounts of time to obtain correction. We see this on Facebook, LinkedIn and other media which are too often also a major venue for business communication and technical support for professional tools we use. In the case involved with the screenshots above, my "wicked" comment was made with regard to an economic theory promulgated by the long-dead white Englishman, Adam Smith, and I was given the opportunity to protest to an external board after the fourth-world budget help confirmed that I was indeed a bad person promoting terrorism. I wrote:

There was a discussion about the abuses of capitalism and the flawed thinking of Adam Smith's "invisible hand", which he thought guided markets to do the right thing without control. As we all know, it is necessary for societies to exercise some control to protect health and safety, the environment etc. Blind belief in the invisible hand too often leads to tragedy -- in a sense, this invisible hand concept points the middle finger at us humans too often. So I suggested a metaphorical amputation of a metaphorical middle finger on a metaphorical invisible hand, meaning that we need legislation, etc. to protect against abuses in an unrestricted market. No real violence against any living beings whatsoever was suggested. The AI used by Facebook is functionally idiotic.

Consider also that if the hand is invisible the metaphorical blood must be too, so amputation should shock nobody, as any gore will also be invisible ;-)

Now all that is just a bit of amusement over coffee in the morning. But other cases are more serious, like the automated banning of a Ukrainian software developer for two months on LinkedIn because Putinist trolls objected to him trying to describe the reality of serving his customers while coffee breaks are accompanied by missile strikes and business-as-usual genocide. It seems that a certain volume of complaints can trigger a ban even when no specific violation can be identified. Artificial intelligence indeed.

Entirely too much trust is granted to automation, almost a reflex, even when it obviously contradicts logic and common sense. In the translation sector, I encounter time and again the idea that language services work should be cheaper if it involves text pre-proccessed by machine translation such as DeepL, even when it can be demonstrated that achieving the desired level of quality takes longer than if the text were translated by human effort only. So time isn't money for these people, I guess. The real issue is slavelancing.

Some postulate that most people need to believe in a Higher Power of some sort and take from it the direction and meaning of their lives. I used to dispute that, but seeing now how so many educated people in the business world have replaced Nin-girsu, Shiva, Allah, Nossa Senhora da Fatima and Mighty Cthulu with the new God of MTness, I suspect I may have been wrong.

As with most religions, it's our people and their welfare who are the true victims of this automation religion, while the priests argue that the real problem is that we haven't sacrificed enough to that invisible middle finger the technologists wave in our faces.

But I ask, what's the harm of paying a few more cents if you must if it leads at last to a lot more sense and better understanding for us all?

A memoQ must-have: the definitive guide to MT use!

People who know me and my work know that I have a very low opinion of machine translation use in most language service situations. Even in the best scenarios, it offers no value to me in my routine work as a translator of scientific and intellectual property texts (patent filings and litigation mostly). So why am I totally excited about the new e-book by my friend and colleague Marek Pawelec? For several reasons.

• MT discussions bore the crap out of me. But when Marek asked me to review a pre-release copy, I was actually entertained by his clear, concise writing and the superb way he explained basic concepts of resource management in general that most memoQ users still don't master. I was shocked at how much fun I had reading about a subject I hate!
• He talks about more than just how to configure memoQ to use DeepL, Gargle Trashlate or some other MT engine. He details strategies and best practices for effective use that many people might not be aware of. He talks about how to circumvent prohibitions on MT use and how to catch people who do that. And more. I didn't learn something on every page, but it's probably not an exaggeration to say I did on every other one.
• Pseudo-translation using a special plug-in for the Pre-translation step is covered in wonderful detail. This technique has been very important to my work for nearly 20 years now. I use it to identify hard-coded interface strings in software I translate and to check and quote large documents that might have paragraphs or whole pages scanned and inserted as graphics that look like editable text - or charts whose text can be selected in the document but never show up on the memoQ working grid after import. Marek also discusses other uses of pseudo-translation I never thought of (layout checks, for example) which could have saved me a lot of grief over the years.

The only complaint I have about this book is that it's too cheap. The author teaches me more in its 36 pages than most can in 200 pages, and the learning is worth a Hell of a lot more to my business than fifty cents per page. Anyone else would probably have written much more and communicated far less of value, but that's a special gift that Marek has. Long ago, his talk at a memoQ Fest was the first time that regular expressions (regex) made any sense to me (as a casual programmer for about 40 years at the time I had approached the topic many times and mostly just found confusion). There aren't many people in this world who can take complex topics and make them seem simple and interesting to nearly anyone. Marek can. Richard Feynman could. I can't name many more on that list.

So... all I can really add is to tell you to go spend €18 here: https://payhip.com/b/tF62

The value you'll receive as a memoQ user at any level, even if you never use machine translation, is a large multiple of that price.

~

Update 2021-03-22
The Polish version of the book is now available at: https://payhip.com/b/RWcC

Update 2022-05-05

There are now editions available in Dutch and French:

Dutch: https://payhip.com/b/XaZSU

French: https://payhip.com/b/ltMwQ

Virtual symposium on AI, MpT and language processing March 26-29, 2018

The worlds of artificial intelligence and machine pseudo-translation are largely ones of delusion, wishful thinking, deceit and professional manipulation, but once in a while one encounters a few people in these fields who are worth the time to listen and discuss. Dion "Donny the Wig" Wiggins of Omniscien, formerly Asia Online, is one of these: a researcher at heart, it seems to me, and someone with a good appreciation of processes, even those having little to do with the technology he represents in his day job. Although an established godfather of the MT Mafia, his approaches to application have a large dose of common sense largely absent from the ignorant masses who place their faith in technologies they do not actually understand in detail. More than once he has shared workflow "revelations" that back up old research and testing of mine, but with more and better data to show how great productivity gains can be achieved by simple reorganization of common tasks. So when he told me about his company's upcoming symposium, I knew that it probably wouldn't be the usual bullshit-tinted fluff drifting through the professional atmosphere of translation these days.

Click the graphic above to see the symposium program - attendance is free. You'll see some familiar names and perhaps conclude that there might in fact be a bit of BS in the air, but there is likely to be a good bit of substance to consider and to apply even in areas not covered by the program.

One of the biggest problems I have with machine pseudo-translation technologies is the utter ignorance and dishonesty of many of its promoters and the massive social engineering which takes place to persuade and intimidate people to become its willing victims in areas where it offers little or no real value. The continued disregard for documented occupational health issues and language skills distortion in post-editing processes, and the vile corruption of academic programs to produce a new generation of linguistic dullards who cannot distinguish algorithmic spew from real human language are all matters of significant concern. But if we are to engage the Forces of Evil and know our Enemies and keep them within their wholly legitimate domain, this event might be a place to start :-) See you there.

IAPTI 2nd International Conference in Athens!

Photo by Aaron Logan (LIGHTmatter Photography) used under the Creative Commons License

Registration is now open for the second international conference of the International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI) to be held on September 20 and 21 this year in Athens, Greece at the beautiful Electra Palace Hotel Athens (Plaka) under the lights of the Acropolis. Further details on the schedule and speakers will be published soon, but places in the event hotel are already growing scarce, so you might want to register soon at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/2nd-iapti-international-conference-tickets-8549360367.

I will be speaking at the event in a talk titled "Confessions of an American MpT User" in which, among other things, I come clean about how Google Translate has improved my life.

The carnival is over. The MpT emperor still has no clothes.

The late Miguel Llorens once commented about David Grunwald, machine pseudo-translation (MpT) developer and advocate and owner of GTS Global Translations:

"... I disagree with Mr. Grunwald about most things. His ideas about translation as a commodity are depressing and I wouldn’t work for him unless something with a bit more dignity—such as “circus freak”—weren’t a viable career option (for whatever reason)."

However, Miguel also respected the man's efforts to expose the sleazy scam of a Canadian translation technology company called Ortsbo a few years ago. I also find many of Mr. Grunwald's views troubling, particularly statements that "one translator is easily replaceable with another" based upon a long string of unsupportable suppositions. His company's blog often contains interesting and useful insights into events, actors and issues of interest to translators but his obsession with machine pseudo-translation (MpT) and fanatical devotion to the ideology of commoditization over the years wore me out, and I prefer not to spend my energies contemplating the campaigns of one who seems to be on a personal mission as a mental battering ram directed against individuals who are professional language service providers.

So I was surprised when I found his recent guest post on the TAUS blog, which is too often a semi-coherent organ for the hucksters in the MpT carnival. It's more or less what I've expected to hear for a while and many of his points can be clearly picked out of arguments that Kirti Vashee and others make (and which are often overlooked or contradicted by their sources on other occasions). But Mr. Grunwald's piece strikes me as the clearest, most comprehensive and honest statement of current art that I've heard from the MpT camp so far.

I'm not quite the enemy of automation and machine pseudo-translation that some take me for. I am simply against lies, liars and (un)professional abuse in forms such as the human-assisted machine pseudo-translation (HAMPsTr) processes that so many piratical organizations and their enablers push. There are clear cases where automated translation processes offer value, but damned few of these have anything to do with my fields and level of work, and the attempts of SDL and other organizations to pretend otherwise are dishonest and/or deluded at best.

Read the TAUS post and think about it. You might wonder why an MpT advocate would make such unambiguous admissions. Well, unlike some in that camp, Mr. Grunwald never struck me as dishonest, merely as one who inhabited a stratum of the barrel where translators are perhaps indeed interchangeable. He clearly has a good mind, a sense of ethics which seems sound enough in most respects and perhaps a little taste for shaking things up. But as he points out, the money has gone elsewhere now.

"The VCs have rendered their decision: MT is out, human translation is in. In the last 2-3 year a number of venture capital companies have poured millions into companies that develop human translation automation platforms."

And

"Post-edited MT is not as good as from-scratch. Everyone has heard the ‘you get 2 out of 3’ saying. When you deliver post-edited translations, it will be cheap and fast, but will not be (as) good."

The whole MT carnival for years has reminded me of The Great Y2K Scam aka The Last Hurrah of Cobol Programmers. Grab the cash as fast as you can as long as the suckers leave it on the table. Things did not change much a few years ago in a technical sense when MpT became all the rage in the bottom tiers. What did change was the perception that there was money to be made, a fix of VC heroin to dream of language automation at least, and those in the pay of special interests began to brand skeptics like Mr. Llorens as "haters and naysayers" and worse.

Now the money has gone away; it's time to wake up and face reality - or the latest deceptions.

In HAMPsTr We Trust?

So many times when I hear the bright and happy predictions of commercial interests spouting nonsense about "translation as a utility" and hoping to feast on the roadkill of communication, who claim the highest of motives and show the basest motivations in their real acts, I hear a saxophone in my mind and a strained voice declaring that some day "they may understand our rage".

Machine pseudo-translation (MpT) and human-assisted machine pseudo-translation (HAMPsTr) are big business for the profiteers offering pseudo-solutions which typically start in the low six figures of investment. "Get on the MT boat or drown!" declared one such profiteer, Asia Online CEO Dion Wiggins at his unfortunate keynote presentation at memoQfest 2012 in Budapest.

It seems that each week a new story line to justify the linguistic lemmings' rush over the cliff appears. Recently I heard for the first time how translators suffer from the "blank page syndrome" (note: as of 25 December 2013 the entire blog with that "blank page" link has disappeared) and need machine generated babble for inspiration. I thought perhaps I was just an odd one, usually struggling with many ways to render a text from German into my native language and trying to choose the best, but experienced colleagues I asked about their fear of blank pages all asked me if I was joking.

This morning another colleague sent me a real screamer:

"Smaller language service providers (LSPs) process fewer words than larger ones... [this] puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to leveraging linguistic assets due to the smaller size of their terminology databases and translation memories (TMs). These less comprehensive language resources limit reuse on subsequent projects or for training statistical machine translation (SMT) software."

The author of that particular bucket of bilge is Don DePalma, head of the Common (Non)sense Advisory, an organization rightly seen as incompetent to interpret even third-grade level mathematics in their discredited report of dramatic rate decreases for translations, which turned out to be an artifact of calculations involving mismatched survey populations. In any case, the idea that small translation agencies or individual translators, who are generally more aware of and concerned with their clients' business are at any disadvantage by not being buried under mountains of monkeyfied mumbo-jumbo from bulk trashlation nearly ruined my keyboard as I spit my coffee laughing. Don deserves an extra Christmas bonus for that transcreation of the truth.

But the best was yet to come:

This inspiring graphic accompanied an article on how to motivate those involved in post-editing MpT in the HAMPsTr process promoted by Asia Online and others. There has been some vigorous and interesting speculation on where that arrow is pointing :-)  The colleague who sent the link to me commented:

An interesting read from a humanitarian perspective. If they need to go to these lengths to "motivate" people, even those who are otherwise happy to swim in the muddy, toxic pond that these LSPs (your definition of the term) have created, one would have thought that they will understand that there is something wrong with their concept and goals. But why let the facts get in the way, I guess.

Indeed, those swimming in the pond do seem to have some real issues, even in cases frequently quoted as a HAMPsTr success. I long ago lost count of how many MpT advocates have told me of the wonderful words at Microsoft and Symantec, nicely extruded from controlled language sources and lovingly shaped into their final sausage form by happy hamsters. But this TAUS presentation by a Symantec insider tells another story:


And further indications that we are all getting mooned by the MpT Emperor can be heard in the excerpts of this recent GALA presentation in Berlin:


Unlike some of my colleagues, I have no fear of being replaced by Mr. Gurgle or any of his online Asian cousins however well-trained. What provokes some rage in me and more than a little concern is the callous dishonesty of the MpT profiteers and their transparent contempt for truth, the true interests of modern business and the health of those involved in language processes.

I have no little sympathy for the many businesses and individuals struggling to cope with the challenging changes in international business communication in the past 20 years. Nor do I feel that MpT has no role to play in communication processes; colleagues such as Steve Vitek have presented clear cases of value for screening of bulk information in legal discovery to identify documents which may need timely human translation and other applications. Kirti Vashee of Asia Online has commented honestly on numerous occasions on his blog and elsewhere about the functional train wreck of most "automated translation" processes one encounters, but still cannot take proper distance from the distortion and scaremongering practiced by the head of his team and others.

I am particularly concerned by the continued avoidance of the very real psychological dangers of post-editing MpT, which were discussed by Bevan and others in the decades before the lust for quick profits silenced discussions and research into appropriate occupational health measures. If Asia Online and others are truly concerned with developing sustainable HAMPsTr processes, then let them fund graduate research in psychology to understand how to protect the language skills and mental function of those routinely exposed to toxic machine language.

All this disregard for true value and truth reminds me so much of my days as an insider in the Y2K programmers' profit orgy: we all knew it was bullshit, but all the old COBOL programmers wanted to take their last chance to score big before they were swept into the dustbin of history. Some 60 years or so after it began, is machine translation ready to assume its place in that bin? The True Believers and profiteers will loudly say no, but at some point the dust will settle, the damage will be assessed, and we will find that the place of MpT is not at all what many imagine it to be today.

The Miracle of Late Language Translation and Modern Quality

This morning a colleague was kind enough to share a link to a thoughtful essay by Italian to English translator Wendell Ricketts, whom I have long considered to be one of the professionals among us with the clearest insight into some of the practical and philosophical problems of current translation practice. In his article Please mind the gap: defending English against 'passive' translation, Wendell describes the train wreck of unprofessional translation into one's later acquired languages quite well.

I particularly like how he distinguishes the cases of limited distribution languages and French, Italian, German and Spanish (FIGS, but be careful before you eat them... dogs have urinated on the low-hanging fruit). There are also some interesting statistics shared, such as

"An average of 59% of ProZ translators into English from Spanish, German, or French are not native-English speakers."

There's an old saying in German about how even with a golden ring an ape remains an ugly creature, and those translating into a language acquired in school or in bed who assume that revisions by a "native speaker" will make the result "all better" would do well to remember that. I've seen what they consider to be acceptable results often enough, and I often see no ugly ape there but at best a gut pile from one which has been too long in the sun :-)

Of course, in an age when charlatans work the conference routes selling snake oil and machine translation "miracles" and conjure quality in a bottle with metrics received on faith from technocrats with little understanding of real language, and presumed reputable purveyors of translation assistance technologies sprinkle themselves liberally with these elixirs and exude their perfume, Wendell's commentary is most likely to be dismissed with a knowing smirk and a learnèd discourse on fit-for-purpose quality and customer satisfaction.

I smile with some pleasure when I hear such Wise Words as low-grade linguistic sausage purveyors and their suppliers would have us believe. There is a certain economic dynamic in the circles of fantasy fandom which may lead them to conclude that they are on the right path, as an individual lemming might think with the comfort of the crowd around him.

Until there comes the cliff on which the skeptical competition will stand and look down on the remains of those who trusted in Common Sense Advice and translators without native language mastery of their target language for critical communication with customers and prospects.

Merchants of the Machine: A Parable of an MT Vision

And so it was that a group of merchants, many of them powerful men made wealthy by the work of wordsmiths, did conceive a scheme to replace workers with a translation machine, that they might increase their power and influence and add to their already swollen coffers.

As their servants toiled night and day on its creation, the merchants did send soothsayers out into the world to proclaim the coming of the machine. So ruthlessly did their acolytes preach the MT gospel, glorifying its spew with much trumpeting in many a marketplace, that other merchants did allow their own greed to triumph and they too became devotees of the machine. Rejoicing in their boastings, they held out the promise of riches without labour to any who would follow them and purchase their wares.
But it came to pass that these disciples learned that the machine could perform only the lowliest of the humblest translator’s tasks, for it had no mind and many tongues remained foreign to it; lo, as the machine devoured more its confusion increased! Though this discovery caused consternation amongst them and they were quietly afeared lest they lose face, vanity had made the merchants so presumptuous that they did not cease their evangelising but continued to hide behind a veil of half-truths, dissembling and exaggerating with such cunning that still many in the marketplace were duped.

Yea though the tumult of the charlatans’ voices sounded forth so loud as to deafen thought, skilled workers who were long practised in the art of translation would not be fooled by them. The translators’ ancient art was publicly scorned and mockery poured upon them; the merchants were desirous of concealing the true worth of translators and casting them into the wilderness, for they could dispel the myth of the machine as no other. And though they were mercilessly derided as haters and naysayers, these stewards of language courageously took a stand against the Goliath, exhorting others to beware and saying unto them,”Let not these purveyors of false doctrines exploit you.”
Fellow translators who had become despondent and were distressed lest their wisdom perish and their intelligence vanish if the will of the merchants did prevail were emboldened by this strength and support. At first there were only murmurings amongst them, for some feared incurring the wrath of the powerful money-worshippers. But slowly there arose a wave of dissension as cracks appeared in the ground beneath the philistines who would have the world believe that their machine was mightier than languages that had evolved over hundreds of years.

The translators eschewed confrontation with the merchants: not because they feared the machine, for they knew full well of its weaknesses, but because they understood the lengths to which such opponents were prepared to go to protect their power. In the knowledge that they must not join in battle on a battlefield created by the merchants they saw that they must deal with them wisely and rely on their own skill and sagacity to protect their profession.

Some of them did congregate in a meeting place which they named Stridonium, after the birthplace of their patron saint. There they set out a course, that they might deliver a different message. With renewed strength born of unity they conceived of the simplest of plans to quell the voices of false prophets and create a new gateway to their own honest marketplace. Theirs shall be customers of wisdom and understanding: they shall not translate for the machine, for that would be like unto casting pearls before swine. They shall not hide their light under a bushel for this they must use to illuminate their path and enlighten unknowing procurers of language.

And henceforth they and their fellow translators shall diligently apply themselves to refuting false doctrine and shall not be daunted by their task. They shall reveal the failings of the machine and shall rekindle understanding of translation in the marketplace; they shall prevent extortion of the misguided until their message spreads far and wide.

And they shall not allow their profession to be sacrificed on the altar of Commerce.

*****

About the author of this guest post...

Chartered Linguist Christina Guy is a Dutch to English legal translator and interpreter based in The Netherlands with whom I collaborate for international English copywriting. As a native of the UK with long experience in providing language services in the legal, commercial and diplomatic sectors, she is a passionate and articulate advocate of efficient quality. Several years ago, she and other committed language specialists established the translators' forum Stridonium to facilitate professional exchange in a private atmosphere of competence and mutual support. Christina's previous contribution to Translation Tribulations, A sermon from Ede, was inspired by her first exposure to the mad machinations of the MT muftis of TAUS and their allies.

Survey on terminology in TM & MT systems

Until January 15th, Peter Reynolds is conducting a short survey to be discussed in the Terminology Cookbook, which will be edited by Drs. Frieda Steurs and Hendrik Kockaert. He is seeking information specific to how terminology is used in processes for machine translation or where translation memory technology is used and what functionality there is there to support quality assurance and using the right terminology.

The URL for the survey is:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/termilogy

(Yes I know there is a typo in the URL, but the URL is correct.) 

Are we aMused by memoQ 6.2?

I'm not in the habit of reposting messages off online discussion lists, but this contribution on the Yahoogroups memoQ forum was just too tempting. It was the Muse that got me. I hate predictive typing, but I love the laugh I got out of considering the possibilities of that feature.

One question in inquiring minds right now should be what the heck freelance translators can expect for improvements in terminology handling and when.Two of the three points mentioned for qTerm are things I have been pushing for ages, and I often got the impression that Kilgray is afraid to give freelance translators what they need because of some daft notion that might hurt qTerm sales. Really, guys... that last feature is basically what I have been doing with Trados MultiTerm since the year 2000. I know that MultiTerm sucks boulders in the eyes of even most Trados users, but it excels in its flexible options for formatting output, and for many years I have exported data from memoQ to format nicely in SDL Trados MultiTerm and share with clients and colleagues. In fact I did a big dictionary for an industrial customer this morning - a beautiful two-column format with my own custom touches and marketing cover. It was only when friends using memoQ wanted to make good looking extras like that for their clients that I started messing with XSL transforms again after a ten year break and dragging others into the game. So please, play with us Gábor!

Ah yes, that repost.. good stuff....

memoQ 6.2.1 [beta] released

Thu Nov 15, 2012 6:56 am (PST) . Posted by:

""Gábor L. Ugray"" gabor.ugray

Hi All,

For the kamikaze and the Zen lovers: I am happy to announce that
6.2's first beta build is now ready for download at the following
link:

http://kilgray.com/memoq/62/memoQSetup.6.2.1.exe

Some technical information.
-- The 6.2 client installs "next to" previous versions, i.e.,
you'll get a new desktop icon and you can continue using 5.0 or
6.0.
-- The beta version accepts 6.0 licenses; no upgrade license
needed yet. This will change when the beta flag is stripped and
it becomes a normal release.
-- The Help, localized UI, and graphic elements are not final
yet.
-- LiveDocs corpora need to be migrated again. You can also do
this one by one, so unmigrated corpora remain available in 6.0.
-- If you're running a server or memoQWeb, mail us at support for
instructions about getting a beta for the server-side components.

The Zen. This is what I consider to be the most important
innovation in the client, a feature that I expect will no less
than revolutionize computer-aided translation.

A concise list of the functionality this release adds in the
client.
-- The Muse. Wouldn't it be nice if memoQ automatically, er,
suggested expressions extracted from TMs as you type your
translation? Now it does. Create a Muse and train it from your
existing TMs or LiveDocs corpora, and memoQ's predictive typing
will get inspired.
-- How about importing SDL Studio packages directly - including
the TMs? Also, SDLXLIFF is now a filter in its own right, not
part of the generic XLIFF filter.
-- 101% matches from LiveDocs. Cross-links are also
retrieved as matches now! (Works only with fresh content
in your corpus. You can export to XLIFF and reimport to
get this working with existing content.)
-- Numbers, tags, terms, upper-case words? Take them over from
the source with a single shortcut. A really, really short
cut. Just press "Ctrl". This is AutoPick.
-- Get results from multiple MT plugins.
-- Open translated documents automatically after export.
-- "Reject" changes, or revert to an earlier version of the
entire document.
-- Filter for X-translated rows; rows with tracked changes; rows
modified by a user, or after a given date; sort by segment
status.
-- Prefix matching in term recognition for Hebrew.
-- A new QA check for tag order changes, and other neat QA
tweaks. Missing term? The warning's text now contains the
possible target terms.
-- A simpler X-translate for mid-project updates. It also takes
over previous comments; retains the previous match rate recorded
in the document; and retains ignored warnings.

In the server and memoQWeb.
-- Document history recorded for actions related to 6.0's new
workflows: FirstAccept, GroupSourcing, slicing, and subvendor
groups.
-- Option to disable MT and terminology plugins in specific
online projects, for confidentiality.
-- Statistics and pre-translation for all target languages at
once.
-- Attaching analysis to e-mails sent out for FirstAccept.
-- FirstAccept and sliced documents available in webTrans.
-- qTerm: MultiTerm XML import
-- qTerm: CSV import, including updating existing TBs
-- qTerm: CSV export; fully formatted "dictionary-like" lookup
result and export; glossary PDF export.

Download and enjoy! BR,

Gábor

--
Gábor L. Ugray
Head of Development

Kilgray Translation Technologies
1255 Budapest, P.O. Box 7., Hungary
5700 Gyula, Béke sugárút 72. II/8., Hungary

All the myriad MT in memoQ 6.2

A few days ago, Kilgray CEO István Lengyel announced details of the version 6.2 release of memoQ expected at the end of this month and followed up with more details of the technodelights of that particular banquet. One morsel, I'm afraid, might not be so good for our health.

Multiple MT engines used at the same time. In older versions of memoQ you have to choose one single machine translation engine to be used during translation. With the new framework you can get matches from all of them at the same time, so if one is bad, you still can pick the good one.

This was done, of course, in response to popular demand, and in this age of crowded schedules and crowdsourcing, the wise wannawanks know that crowds rule, especially in the Cloud, which in the Once and Future Middle Kingdom and nearby islands of past glory is usually known as the Crowd.

It's not enough to have one lump of crap generated by a computer algorithm as a restful alternative to the strain of thinking of a reasonable linguistic solution to the challenge of translation by an untrained mind. Because leading lingolemmings and their suppliers at SDL and other members in the localization cartels are fond of piling their MT higher and deeper, marketing logic at Kilgray dictated once again that mo be betta. But is it?

There's a little tactic I learned about many years ago in sales training. I try not to use it, because I consider it to be unethical in ordinary daily life. But car salesmen and some of the carnies I've seen operate in translation technology sales apply it quite effectively.

After you choose your new car, you are ushered into the sales office to discuss the details of the contract. What color do you want? Green, I'm a hunter. The 2.4 liter engine, right? No, 2.0 liters is plenty of power for me. Would you like that with a roof rack? No. What about a towing hitch? Well.... Here we have 20 models of car stereo to choose from, take your pick! Oh yes, and what kind of underbody anti-weathering treatment would you like? We have three options to choose from. What rim style would you like for the wheels? Would you like the three year extended warranty or the ten-year option with the alien abduction protection plan?

Question after question. Decision after decision. Decision fatigue.

At the end of a long day of applying his wisdom to the ordering of his kingdom, Solomon might have had some difficulties. Today's courtroom judges certainly do. Over the past year I've read interesting studies of how workload and diet affect the quality of sentencing decisions in the course of a day. I used to avoid 7 am classes in college, but if I ever go on trial for murder, I want to be the first case heard that day.

What's that got to do with memoQ and multiple MT suggestions displayed, or for that matter SDL and all the others who offer this particular path over the translation quality decision cliff?

If you're the guy who got that cool technical marketing job translating the newsletter for my favorite equipment manufacturer, I'll tell you what it means: mo be betta. Praise the Lord for this feature, which will help you do the job I deserve! If you further enhance your skills by adding a big portion of MT post-editing to your plate, reading and believing the content generated by TAUS, the Common (Non)sense Advisory and other advocates of the 7-Up Concept of Quality (extra points to the first one who groks that), then all will be well in my world of translation.

I had a problem with rats stealing my chicken food a few weeks ago. Finally, I made a reluctant visit to the local feed store and bought a box of tasty blue pellets, which were eagerly carried to the nest and consumed. For a whole week. I had to get an extra box, but just before it was finished, things went quiet. As the Germans say, gut Ding braucht Weil.

Thank you, Kilgray, for adding a feature in memoQ 6.2 which will make good translators stand out even more.

I dream of human-assisted machine translation

Reading in bed has a number of hazards, particularly for those who require some assistance to maintain their oxygen supply during sleeping hours and are prone to nodding off, book in hand. And woe to those whose choice of reading may cause uneasy stirrings of the mind, leading it down paths best untraveled. Since purchasing a Kindle just over a year ago I have had many unrestful nights as I read classics neglected in my youth, Dracula and Frankenstein being two of the happier examples. But little did I expect that reading a retrospective review of Paul Verhoeven's 1987 film Robocop would prove my final undoing....

They say that only two things are inevitable: death and taxes. They are wrong.

In the wake of the euro's collapse following the final meltdown of the Greek economy and its last government, German banks were faced with the problem of recouping their losses from people able to offer little more than a moderate supply of transplant organs for the ravenous Chinese market, and concerns among tour operators at the sudden increase of menus offering "long pig" indicated that international medical markets were in a state of oversupply and savory alternatives were too often the order of the day - and occasionally served as unasked-for appetizers.

Clearly, more sustainable engines of value were needed to drive the economy and extract returns from those who benefit from the strength and protection of the state. Fortunately, the persons closest to our enlightened, modern governments are ever active in the pursuit of advances in efficiency to enhance the return on the great investments made in the citizenry.

My life, or more precisely my economic utility after life, was saved by the wondrous results of a joint research project of governments, university medical centers and TAUS members determined to eliminate the exorbitant and unnecessary expense of human translation and post-editing. Although enormous progress had been made in convincing people of the progress of machine translation in its 70 year history, throughout that time the actual perfection of the results remained a maddening five years distant, the gap never quite closing as the faithful knew it should.

Some apostates among MT believers claimed that the technology could never achieve its full potential without the collaboration of qualified linguists, but these specialists remained stubborn for the most part in their resistance to using their brains for linguistic garbage recycling. Resistant, that is, until their brains became part of the recycling effort, offering value-added new "life" for the benefit of bottom lines.

A little-noticed provision of the 2014 tax reforms introduced by the Merkel government in the Germany and emulated by its subjects and acolytes around the world was conditional relief based on the reversion to the state of corporeal assets after the cessation of autorespiratory processes. And those who noticed... well, the comforting comparison with reverse mortgages and the lesser associated asset risk usually put their minds at ease.

The first indication I had that something was different was when I reached for my Kindle and found that it was no longer beside me, that in fact I could discern no "side". After a few moments' confusion, my vision cleared, and I was presented with a screen of text:

Crucial for the occurrence of a merger is the cross section, the measure of the probability that the colliding nuclei react. Sufficiently large, the cross section is usually only when the two cores with high energy collide. Which is necessary to overcome the Coulomb barrier, the electrical repulsion between the positively charged nuclei. However, the cross section is also less impact energy due to the tunneling effect is not zero. Reach the nuclei at a distance of only about 10-15 m from each other, they bind together the strong interaction, the nuclei have merged.

WTF? A timer appeared above the text, accompanied by a message to begin postediting. Huh? I stared at the jumble of words with no little confusion, wondering what their purpose could be. Colliding nuclei? Merger? Something to do with nuclear fusion perhaps, but hard to tell from this gurgled mess. I continued to stare at the text as the timer counted down. The message to begin began to flash, slowly at first, then more intensely. The countdown reached zero, and the message changed: target not achieved.

As I felt the electric surge convulse my body, I realized that I had no mouth with which to scream. But every part of my not-present body screamed for me as nerve centers received their reinforcing, teaching stimulus.

TRY AGAIN

flashed briefly before my eyes, and the text reappeared.

My unseen fingers moved across an unfelt keyboard. The cross section is critical for determining the probability that colliding nuclei will react and fusion occur....

Do proZtitutes make translation easier than ever?

It's surprising how some are surprised when certain online language service auction portalZ hit new lowZ all the time. The latest controversy arose when a German colleague clicked an advertising link (ka-ching for the King, more ad revenue) which displayed something like the following:

This took him to the site of a service provider in India offering to convert and machine translate a variety of file types, creating formatted output, and doing OCR conversion for what some might assume were "reasonable" prices. To convert and machine translate about three scanned pages of double-spaced, typed text (about 1000 words) costs a mere USD 7. Ramalamadingdong, what a deal. Let's forget for a moment that OCR is often a no-brainer job with professional or even second-tier OCR software, and Google Translate and other garbage engines are free or nearly so, and let's not even think about potential issues of confidentiality that too many forget to consider. And then, of course, one can ignore the fact that it sometimes helps to understand the language of the text you are converting if there are decisions to be made about blocks and sequences or corrections to deal with.

The German colleague, who runs a small agency, commented that at the rates quoted, he would have done nicely with the 1.2 million words he converted last night. But he was more worried about other things:

I'm not sure I understand the concern with Ze Zite's reputation; in many eyes it has been disreputable for some time now. That ProZ is now advertising services for low-end garbage services like this is hardly much of an insult on top of the record of its past injuries. This is also entirely consistent with phoax at the commercial portal "certifying" bottomscraper agencies and other amusing stunts.

I don't think he has to worry much about Ze Zite trashing his reputation by association. I'm sure, like any good businessperson, he has developed a number of better channels for acquisition and collaboration and prefers to work with professionals.

Some time ago, I wrote about discussions of a "translator's dream site". I had intended to follow this up with a review of various alternatives I have seen develop in recent years. I don't believe that there is one ideal "site" for all needs. Where you troll for quickie assignments might not be where you feel like a serious technical discussion about your CAT tools, and I hope it's not where you would discuss truly sensitive business matters.

Abandoning the illusion that a for-profit portal with a history of exploitation and pandering to interests at odds with those of freelance translators and other small service providers is a good first step.

After that I would look for the right mix of public and private platforms, both virtual and in the real world: local or national translators associations, Yahoogroups and other online list servers, local business associations or organizations associated with your major areas of interest, regular conferences and trade fairs, private online forums - whatever works best for you as you like to work and interact with clients and peers. I won't presume to say how to go about this, as we each have our own unique strengths, and my way might not work well for you. Some days it doesn't even work for me ;-)

I've found that my personal mix of networking at professional conferences and trade fairs of interest to me, Twitter, Facebook groups like Networking Translators (where a lot of German peers seem to congregate in a chaotic cluster), the forum for BDÜ members and the private forum Stridonium give me a richer, more diverse professional experience than one typically enjoys with PrAdZ.

If you want to support a Zite willing to proZtitute itself with any and all promiscuous promoters of Gargled Translation (however well formatted), be my guest. You are free to choose your market segment within the limits of your abilities. But should you opt for the compelling deal from "Imaginary Solutions" to machine translate your texts, I'm sure your competitors will have kind words for you.