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This presentation has been rescheduled due to unanticipated conflicts. On March 4th at 4:00 pm Central European Time (10 am Eastern Standard Time), I'll be presenting an overview of some popular and/or possible platforms for generating text from spoken words for professional work and language learning. As those who have followed this blog for years know, I have written quite a bit about this in the past and done a number of videos for demonstration and instruction using various platforms, but this is a field subject to frequent change and many new developments, so it is difficult sometimes to understand the value of one tool versus another for different applications.
The webinar is available free to anyone interested, and there will be time for questions afterward. We will compare and contrast Dragon NaturallySpeaking, iOS-based applications (including Hey memoQ), Google Chrome and Windows 10 for speech recognition work in translation and transcription, discussing some of the advantages and trade-offs with each platform working in translation environments and text-editing software, and the range of languages covered by each. Join us, and see if there are good fits for your speech recognition needs!
A few years ago while on "holiday", I returned from dinner to find that my laptop had bluescreened. Panic time! It was Saturday night, and I still had quite a lot of text to translate and deliver on Monday morning. And up on the highest mountain in Portugal, I wasn't sure where I could find a replacement to finish the project, which was, at least, not utterly lost, because I had put it on a memoQ Cloud server for testing. The next day I got lucky: about 50 km away there was a Worten, where I picked up a gamer laptop with lots of RAM and an SSD. Well, not so lucky, as it was a Hewlett Packard Omen, with a fan prone to failure, but that's another story....
This new laptop was my first encounter with Windows 10. I had heard that this operating system offered improved speech recognition capabilities, and since I prefer to dictate my translations and downloading the 3 GB installation file for Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) from my server at the office was going to take forever, I thought I would give Windows 10 speech recognition a try. I hadn't installed my CAT tool of choice yet, so I fired up Microsoft Word and began dictating. "Not bad," I thought. Then I tried it in my translation environment, and the results were a complete disaster. So I put that mess out of my mind.
Since then there have been some notable advances in speech-to-text capabilities on a number of platforms. But the best solution for my languages (German and English) with DNS became increasingly cranky thanks to neglect of the product by Nuance. Every week I read new reports of trouble with DNS in a variety of environments in which it used to perform very well. Apple's iOS 13 was a great leap forward of sorts for speech recognition and voice-controlled editing, but the new features are only available in English, and having Voice Control activated totally screws up my otherwise rather good dictation in German and Portuguese (or any other language). And don't get me started on the crappy vocabulary addition feature, which uses text entry alone with no link to actual pronunciation. Good luck with that garbage. It's not a bad solution in Hey memoQ with the additional command features added, but iOS dictation is not completely up to reasonable professional standards yet.
I probably would have given no further thought to Windows 10's speech-to-text features if it weren't for Anthony Rudd. We've corresponded a bit since I bought his excellent book on regular expressions for translators (and there's another practical guide for us coming soon from him!), and in a recent discussion he alluded to the use of Unicode with regex as a simple way of dealing with some things another colleague was struggling with. I was intrigued by this, and so for about half a day, I ran down a rabbit hole, testing Unicode subscripts and superscripts for a variety of purposes like fixing bad OCR of footnote markers and empirical formulae, autocorrecting common expressions for subscripted variables and chemical terms, including subscripts and superscripts in term bases and much more. Fascinating and useful stuff on the whole, even if some fonts don't support it well.
And of course I looked at using these special Unicode characters in speech-to-text applications. DNS had some funky quirks (not allowing numbers in the "spoken" version of terms, for example), but it worked rather well, so I can now say "calcium nitrate formula" and get Ca(NO₃)₂ without much ado. And for some reason it occurred to me to give Windows 10 speech recognition a try, just because I was curious whether vocabulary could in fact be trained. Indeed it can, and that feature is better than iOS 13 or DNS by far.
But first I had to remember how to activate speech recognition for Windows on my laptop again. When in doubt, type what you're looking for in the search box....
Notice I've pinned Windows Speech Recognition to my taskbar on the right, which is good for quick tasks.
Gesucht, gefunden. Unlike other speech recognition solutions, the one in Windows 10 works only for the language set for the operating system. And options there are limited to English (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Australia), French, German, Japanese, Mandarin (Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional) and Spanish.
I put on my trusty Plantronics earset (the best microphone I've used for dictation tasks or audio in my occasional webinars in the past year) and began to dictate, first in Microsoft Word, which had shown acceptable results in my tests long ago. I found that adding vocabulary in the Speech Dictionary (accessed via the context menu in the dictation control element shown as a graphic at the top of this post) was dead simple.
The option to record pronunciation enabled me to record non-English names and words in several languages. And sure enough, the Unicode subscripts and superscripts worked, so I can now say CO₂ (I just dictated that) to my heart's content.
I was expecting a mess when I tried to use Windows 10 speech-to-text in a CAT tool, but it was not to be. It was brilliant, actually. I tried it in my copy of SDL Trados Studio, and with the scratchpad disabled so I could dictate directly into the target it worked well. No voice-controlled editing like I'm used to with DNS in memoQ, but that DNS feature does not work in SDL Trados Studio anyway, so this is no worse. But with the scratchpad box enabled (see the screenshot below), I could use voice commands to select and correct text or perform other operations. Brilliant!
After clicking or speaking "Insert", the text will be written to the target field with the proper formatting
So users of SDL Trados Studio who translate to a target language supported by Windows 10 speech recognition are probably better off not giving their money to Nuance, which I'm told can't even be bothered to make a 64-bit version of DNS now (which probably accounts for a lot of the trouble people have with that program.
I tested Wordfast Pro 5, which seems to confuse the speech recognition tool horribly, with source text displayed in the floating bar for some odd reason. But my earlier tests of Wordfast with DNS were equally unhappy, so somehow I'm not surprised. And I didn't test the Memsource desktop editor, which took the price a few years ago for the worst-ever DNS dictation results with a CAT tool. I'll leave that to someone with a much wider masochistic streak.
But what about memoQ, my personal environment of choice for most translation work? Equally brilliant, works just the same as SDL Trados Studio. No voice control for editing without the dictation scratchpad enabled (there, DNS has an advantage in memoQ), but with the scratchpad you can use the voice commands to edit before inserting in the target text field.
Wanna see this in action? Have a look at this short demo video:
I hope that the future will bring us more language support for Windows 10 dictation (Portuguese, Russian and Arabic, please!) and that other providers (like Google, if you're listening, and Apple, which never listens to anyone anymore except to spy on them with Siri) will expand the speech-to-text features offered, particularly to include sound-linked vocabulary training and better adaptation to individual users' speech. Five years ago when I began to investigate alternatives for non-DNS languages, I expected we would have more by now, and we do, but professional needs require all providers to raise their game.
Addendum: Someone asked me if Windows Speech Recognition is a cloud resource or a locally installed one which will work without an Internet connection. It's definitely the latter. So if you have lousy bandwidth or find yourself disconnected from the Internet, you can still use speech-to-text features.
And more: I use a lot of spoken commands for keyboard shortcuts when I work, so I did a little research and testing. It seems that Windows 10 speech recognition gives full access to an application's keyboard shortcuts via voice. So in memoQ, for example, I can dictate the insertion of tags, items from the Translation Results pane and a lot more. Watch out, Nuance. Windows 10 is going to kick your Dragon's scaly butt!
Given the deteriorating political situation of many countries in the world today, the title of this post may seem ominous to some; however, the actual situation for those who use Apple's iOS operating system seems to call for some optimism in the months ahead. Among all the myriad feature changes in the upcoming Apple iOS 13 (now in the Public Beta 2 phase), there are a few which may be of particular value to writers and translators who dictate using their iOS devices.
Attention Awareness
This is 2019, and not only is Big Brother watching you, but your iPhone will as well. The rear-facing camera on some models will detect when you look away from the phone – perhaps to tell your dog to get off the couch – and switch off voice control. The scope of application for this feature isn't clear yet, and I have my doubts whether this would be relevant to more ergonomic ways of working with applications like Hey memoQ (which involve Bluetooth headsets or earsets to avoid directionality problems as the head may turn to examine references, etc.), but for some modes of text dictation work, this could prove useful. I have lost track of how often I've been interrupted by people and found my responses transcribed in one way or another, often as an amusing salad of errors when I switch languages.
Automatic language selection in Dictation
The iOS 13 features preview from Apple states, "Dictation automatically detects which language a user is speaking. The language will be chosen from the keyboard languages enabled on the device, up to a maximum of four." Well, well. I wonder how it will handle isolated sentences or paragraphs quoted in another language – or individual foreign words. I'm betting probably not. But I'll have great fun pushing this feature around with three or four spoken languages to find its limits.
Add custom words
This is what I have wanted for years. Custom audio recognition vocabulary– words and phrases – to ensure that unusual or specialist terms are recognized and transcribed correctly. BINGO!
On-device processing
All audio processing will be handled locally (on your iPhone or iPad), ensuring privacy if you believe the NSA and/or the Russians or other parties aren't tapped into your equipment.
Enhancements to voice editing and voice-driven app control
There are a lot of these. Read about them in the Accessibility section of the features description from Apple. My first impression of these possibilities is that editing and correcting text may become much easier on iOS devices, and the attractiveness of the three-stage dictation/alignment/pretranslation workflow may increase for some translators. (An old example of this is in an old YouTube video I prepared years ago for a remote conference presentation, but the procedure works with any speech-to-text options and has the advantage of at least two revision steps.)
It's even more interesting to consider how some of these new features might be harnessed by apps designed to work with translation assistance environments. And if Google responds - as I believe the company is likely to do - with new features for Chrome speech recognition and voice control features in Android and desktop computers, then there could be some very, very interesting things ahead for wordworkers in the next year or two. Vamos ver!
Ergonomics are often a challenge with the microphones used for dictated translation work. I've used quite a few over the years, usually with USB connections to my computer, though I've also had a few Logitech wireless headphones with integrated mikes that performed well. However, all of them have had some disadvantages.
The country where I live (Portugal) has a rather warm climate for more than a few months of the year. Wearing headphones can get rather uncomfortable on a hot day, and even on a cold one, the pressure on my ears starts to drive me nuts after an hour or so.
Desktop microphones seem like a good solution, and I get good results with my Blue Yeti. But sometimes, when I turn my head to look at something, the pickup is not so good, and my dictation is transcribed incorrectly.
The Hey memoQapp released by memoQ Translation Technologies Ltd. underscored the ergonomic challenges of dictation for me; the app uses iOS devices to access their speech recognition features, and positioning a phone well in such a way that one can still make use of a keyboard is not easy. And trying to connect a microphone or headset by cable to the dodgy Lightning port on my iPhone 7 is usually not a good experience.
So I was intrigued by a recommendation of Plantronics headsets from Dragos Ciobanu of Leeds University (also the author of the E-learning Bakery blog). A specific model mentioned by someone who had attended a dictation workshop with him recently was the Plantronics Voyager Legend, though when I asked Dragos about his experience, he spoke mostly about the Plantronics Voyager 5200, which is a little more expensive. I decided to go "cheap" for my first experience with this sort of equipment and ordered the Voyager Legend from Amazon in Spain. I did so with some trepidation, because the reviews I read were not entirely positive.
The product arrived in simple packaging which led me to think that the Amazon review which suggested the "new" products sold might in fact be refurbished. But in the EU, all electronic gear comes with a two-year warranty, so I don't worry too much about that.
Complaints I read in the reviews about a short charger cable seem ridiculous; the cable I received was over half a meter long, and like anyone who has computers these days, I have more USB extension cords than I know what to do with should I require a longer cable for charging. The magnetic coupler for charging has a female mini-USB port, so it can be attached to another cable as well. Power connections include the most common EU two-pronged charger, the 3-pole UK charger and one for a car's cigarette lighter.
The package also included extra earpieces and covers of different sizes to customize the fit on one's ear.
I tested the microphone first with my laptop; the device was recognized easily, and the results with Dragon NaturallySpeaking were excellent. Getting the connection to my iPhone 7 proved more difficult, however. I read the Getting Started instructions carefully, tried updating the firmware (not necessary - everything was current) and tried various switching and reboot tricks, all to no avail.
Finally, I called the technical support line in the US in total frustration. I didn't expect an answer since it was still the wee hours of the morning in the US, but someone at a support call center did answer the phone. He instructed me to press and hold the "call" button on the device until its LED begins to flash blue and red.
I did that, and when the LED began flashing, "PLT_Legend" appeared in the list of available devices on my iPhone. Then I was ready to test the Voyager Legend for dictated translation with Hey memoQ.
Because I work with German and English, I rely on Dragon NaturallySpeaking for my dictation, and the iOS-based dictation of Hey memoQ will never compete with that. But I am very interested in testing and demonstrating the integrated memoQ app, because many other languages, such as Portuguese, are not available for speech recognition in Dragon NaturallySpeaking or any other readily accessible speech recognition solution of its class.
As I suspected, my dictation in Hey memoQ (and other iOS applications) was easier with the Voyager Legend. This is the first hardware configuration I have tested that really seems like it would offer acceptable ergonomics for Hey memoQ with my phone. And I can use it for Skype calls, listening to my audio books and other things, so I consider the Plantronics Voyager Legend to be money well spent. Now I'll see how it holds up for long sessions of dictated legal translation. The product literature and a little voice in my ear both claim that the device can operate for seven hours of speaking time on a battery charge, and the 90 minutes required for a full recharge will work well enough with the breaks I take in that time anyway.
Of course there are many Bluetooth microphone devices which can be used with speech recognition applications, but what distinguishes this one is its great comfort of wear and the secure fit on my ear. I look forward to a closer acquaintance.
Microphone quality makes a great difference in the quality of speech recognition results. And although the microphones integrated in iOS devices are generally good and give decent results, positioning the device in a way that is ergonomically viable for efficient dictated translation - and concurrent keyboard use - is not always so easy. This is a potential barrier to the effective use of Hey memoQ speech recognition.
So a good external microphone may be needed. But with recent iPhone models lacking a separate microphone jack and using the lightning port for both charging and microphone input, connecting that external microphone might not be as simple as one assumes. Especially not someone like me, who is rather ignorant of the different kinds of 3.5 mm audio connections. I have had a few failures so far trying to link my good headset to the iPhone 7.
Colleague Jim Wardell is not only the most experienced speech recognition expert for translation whom I am privileged to know; he is also a musician with extensive experience in microphones of all kinds and their connections. And recently he was kind enough to share the video below with me to clear up some misunderstandings about how to connect some good analog equipment to use with Hey memoQ on an iPhone 7 or later:
Mit der memoQ Version 8.7 hat memoQ Translation Technologies Ltd. (ehemals „Kilgray“ – „mQtech“ unten) eine kostenlose, integrierte Spracherkennung eingeführt, die für die Arbeit in vielen Sprachen eine wesentliche Effizienzsteigerung verspricht. Für die Arbeit in deutscher Sprache soll es von vornherein klar gestellt werden: Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) ist und bleibt für die vorhersehbare Zeit die bessere Wahl. Das gleiche gilt für alle Sprachen, die von DNS (in der aktuellen Version 15) unterstützt sind: Deutsch, Englisch, Spanisch, Französisch, Italienisch und Niederländisch.
Aber für die slawischen Sprachen, nordischen Sprachen, sonstigen romanischen Sprachen, Arabisch u.v.m. sind andere Lösungen gefragt, wenn man mit Spracherkennung arbeiten will. Vor etwa 4 Jahren, als ich angefangen habe, solche Lösungen zu erforschen, waren diese für „exotische“ Sprachen wie Russisch oder europäisches Portugiesisch als Teil der Übersetzungsarbeiten kaum gedacht; heute gibt es vielfältige halbgute Möglichkeiten, zu denen jetzt auch „Hey memoQ“ gehört. Noch warten wir auf Lösungen auf der Ebene von DNS für die sonstigen Sprachen und noch lange werden wir sicher warten, bis gute Erkennungsqualität mit einfach erweiterbarem Wortschatz und flexiblen, konfigurierbaren Kommandos für die Systemsteuerung für Sprachen wie Dänisch oder Hindi allgemein verfügbar sind. Zur Zeit sind wir nicht mal so weit mit Englisch, wenn man z.B. die Diktierfunktion auf Handys betrachtet. Spracherkennung ohne eigenständig erweiterbarem Wortschatz ist und bleibt eine Technologie auf Krücken.
Aber die Krücken bei Hey memoQ sind erstmal nicht schlecht für eine aufkommende Technologie. Die mit der 8.7er Version von memoQ freigegebene App ist m.E. noch „Beta“ – was kann man sonst sagen, wenn nur für Englisch die Steuerungskommandos standardmäßig konfiguriert sind? – aber für den Stand der derzeit zahlbaren Technologie ist die von mQtech eingeführte Lösung die beste in der Klasse, sogar mit einem tauglichen Umgehungslösung für das Problem des nichterweiterbaren Wortschatzes, nämlich die Möglichkeit, sprachgesteuert die ersten neuen Treffer aus der Ergebnisliste der Terminologie, Korporasuche, Nontranslatables usw. in den Zieltext einzufügen. Wenn man sowieso vernünftige Terminologiearbeit leistet und ein memoQ-Glossar mit den nötigen Sonderbegriffen ausstattet, kann man schon ziemlich gut arbeiten. (Und wer eventuell eine Einweisung in die statistisch basierte Erfassung der häufigen Begriffe aus einem Dokument bzw. einer Dokumentensammlung benötigt, kann sich hier informieren.)
Hey memoQ hat auch andere Alleinstellungsmerkmale, u.a. einen Wechsel der Erkennungssprache, wenn man den Cursor im Textfeld für die andere Arbeitssprache setzt. Also wenn ich z.B. Englisch als Zieltext diktiere, will aber einen Tippfehler im deutschen Ausgangstext korrigieren oder vielleicht den gesamten Text nach einem bestimmten Wort im Ausgangstext filtrieren, wechselt die von Hey memoQ verstandene Sprache von Englisch auf Deutsch, wenn ich bloß auf Zieltextseite klicke. So geht das auch bei jedem unterstützten Sprachpaar. Nicht schlecht.
Wer bereits meckert, dass diese derzeit auf Apple iOS basierende Lösung nicht für die beliebten Android-Handys verfügbar ist, begreift die Realität der Softwareentwicklung bzw. Produktentwicklung einfach nicht. Schon vor mQtech mit der Entwicklung dieser Lösung begonnen hat, habe ich selber aus persönlichem Anlass die möglichen Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) untersucht, und bei den meisten war die Kommandosteuerung, wie sie bei Hey memoQ zu finden ist, nicht verfügbar. In den meisten Fällen nur die Übertragung eines gesprochenen und transkribierten Textes. Aber das hat wir bereits. Bei myEchozum Beispiel. Oder auch die Lösung für Chrome-Spracherkennung in jedem Windows- oder Linux-Programm. Was wir dringend brauchen ist nicht das Bier von gestern. Wir brauchen zukunftsweisende Prototypen, die die Entwicklung der branchenüblichen Technologien wie memoQ, SDL Trados Studio, WordFast und andere in eine bessere Richtung treiben, und das macht schon Hey memoQ. Also ein dickes Lob an das memoQ-Team und seinen deutschen Entwicklungschef :-)
Aber auch mit einem deutschen Entwicklungschef, ist der Zeitdruck manchmal so, dass man vorläufig keine konfigurierten Steuerungskommandos mit der ersten Release-Version freigibt, wahrscheinlich weil das eigentlich aufwändiger ist, als die meisten Leute sich glauben würden. In jeder Sprache. Wer zum Beispiel Polnisch diktieren will und nicht nur die gesprochenen Phrasen ins Textfeld transkribiert haben will, sondern auch sprachgesteuert den Text editieren oder Filterkommandos oder Konkordanzsuche ausführen will, muss erstmal polnische Kommandos im Programm einrichten. Und da stoßt man oft unerwartet an die Grenzen und Merkwürdigkeiten der individuellen Erkennungstechnologie. Eine gewählte Phrase kann, zum Beispiel, einer sehr häufigen Phrase ähneln, so dass oft diesen anderen Text geschrieben wird, wenn man eigentlich ein Kommando ausführen lassen wollte. Also sind ungewöhnliche aber erkennbare Texte oft die beste Wahl für Kommandotexte. Meine erprobten Kommandotexte für Deutsch sind unten als Screenshot angegeben. Wie man gleich merkt, ist das zu konfiguriende Dialog noch nicht für die deutsche Benutzeroberfläche lokalisiert. In kommenden Versionen wird das natürlich der Fall sein. Aber ob irgendwann aus Ungarn die Bearbeitungskommandos für Griechisch vorkonfiguriert kommen werden, kann ich nicht raten. Selber konfigurieren kann man sie aber heute schon, wenn man Geduld hat.
Noch zu bemerken: die iOS-Spracherkennung benötigt gute Internet-Bandbreite, da der Erkennungsserver im Cloud liegt. Datenschutz, Datenschutz, ja, ja. Sparen Sie mir den Vortrag bitte und lassen sie diese Technologie sich erstmal weiter entwickeln. Die Fragen zum Datenschutz waren schon vor einigen Jahren ausreichend von deutschen Vertretern der Firma Nuance beantwortet, und sogar die verrückten US-Behörden haben den Einsatz solcher Technologie intern freigegeben. Aber in Deutschland dreht sich die Welt anders, und gut so :-) Übrigens erlebe ich mehr Erfolg, wenn ich in kurzen, sogar dramatischen Phrasen spreche, und nicht in langen, wortreichen Sätzen. Eine ganz andere notwendige Vorgehensweise als mit DNS, zum Beispiel. Wer zu schnell spricht, merkt auch schnell, dass Wörter ausgelassen werden. Nichts mit Hey memoQ zu tun, sondern Bestandteil des Standes der Technik bei iOS-Spracherkennung sowie bei manchen anderen Technologien dieser Gattung.
Und jetzt die Ansicht meiner selbstkonfigurierten Hey memoQ Steuerungskommandos für Deutsch. Wem sich meine Wortwahl nicht gefällt, kann sich was Besseres aussuchen und hoffentlich testen und danach in den Kommentaren unten allen deutschsprachigen Kollegen mitteilen.
Die iOS-Kommandos für Interpunktion u.v.m. habe ich auf Basis der von Apple publizierten MacOS-Kommandos erforscht; es gibt in einzelnen Fällen leichte Unterschiede (d.h. man muss ein wenig experimentieren, bis man auf das richtige Kommando stoßt - falls es tatsächlich existiert), aber hiermit hat man einen guten Anfang für Sonderzeichen usw. wie ich neulich in einem englischen Blogbeitrag erklärt habe. Für fehlende Informationen kann man mQtech keine Schuld zuweisen, wenn nicht mal der iOS-Hersteller Apple die vollständige und richtige Liste mitteilt. Aber mit viel Zeit wird der Kuchen sicher gut gebacken!
There are quite a number of issues facing memoQ users who wish to make use of the new speech recognition feature – Hey memoQ – released recently with memoQ version 8.7. Some of these are of a temporary nature (workarounds and efforts to deal with bugs or shortcomings in the current release which can reasonably be expected to change soon), others – like basic information on commands for iOS dictation and what options have been implemented for your language – might not be so easy to work out. My own research in this area for English, German and Portuguese has revealed a lot of errors in some of the information sources, so often I have to take what I find and try it out in chat dictation, e-mail messages or the Notes app (my favorite record-keeping tool for such things) on the iOS device. This is the "baseline" for evaluating how Hey memoQ should transcribe text in a given language.
But where do you find this information? One of the best way might be a Google Advanced Search on Apple's support site. Like this one, for example:
The same search (or another) can be made by adding the site specification after your search terms in an ordinary Google search:
The results lists from these searches reveal quite a number of relevant articles about iOS dictation in English. And by hacking the URLs on certain pages and substituting the language code desired, one can get to the information page on commands available for that language. Examples include:
The Mac OS information pages are also a source of information on possible iOS commands that one might not find so easily otherwise. An English page with a lot of information on punctaution and symbols is here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202584
The same information (if available) for other languages is found just by tweaking the URL:
Thai (th-th, see also this commentary on another site)
and so on. Some guidance on Apple's choice of codes for language variants is here, but I often end up getting to where I want to go by guesswork. The Microsoft Azure page for speech API support might be more helpful to figure out how to tweak the Apple Support URLs.
When you edit the commands list, you should be aware of a few things to avoid errors.
The current command lists in the first release may contain errors, such as mistakenly typing "phrase" in angular brackets as shown in the first example above; on editing, the commands that are followed by a phrase do not show the placeholder for that phrase, as you see in the example marked "2".
Commands must be entered without quotation marks! Compare the marked examples 1 and 2 above. If quotes are typed when editing a command, this will not be revealed by the appearance of the command; it will look OK but won't work at all until the quote marks are removed by editing.
Command creation is an iterative process that may entail a lot of frustrating failures. When I created my German command set, I started by copying some commands used for editing by Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but often the results were better if I chose other words. Sometimes iOS stubbornly insists on transcribing some other common expression, sometimes it just insists on interpreting your command as a word to transcribe. Just be patient and try something else.
The difficulties involved in command development at this stage are surely why only one finished command set (for the English variants) for memoQ-specific commands was released at first. But that makes it all the more important to make command sets "light resources" in memoQ, which can be easily exported and exchanged with others.
At the present stage, I see the need for developing and/or fixing the Hey memoQ app in the following ways:
Fix obvious bugs, which include:
The apparently non-functional concordance insertions. In general, more voice control would be helpful in the memoQ Concordance.
Capitalization errors which may affect a variety of commands, like Roman numerals, ALL CAPS, title capitalization (if the first word of the title is not at the start of the segment), etc.
Dodgy responses to the commands to insert spaces, where it is often necessary to say the command twice and get stuck with two spaces, because a single command never responds properly by inserting a space. Why is that needed? Well, otherwise you have to type a space on the keyboard if you are going to use a Translation Results insertion command to insert specialized terminology, auto-translation rule results, etc. into your text.
Address some potentially complicated issues, like considering what to do about source language text handling if there is no iOS support for the source language or the translator cannot dictate commands effectively in that language. I can manage in German or Portuguese, but I would be really screwed these days if I had to give commands in Russian or Japanese.
Expand dictation functionality in environments like the QA resolution lists, term entry dialog, alignment editor and other editors.
Look for simple ideas that could maximize returns for programming effort invested, like the "Press" command in Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which enables me to insert tags, for example, by saying "Press F9". This would eliminate the need for some commands (like confirmation and all the Translation Results insertion commands) and open up a host of possibilities by making keyboard shortcuts in any context controllable by voice. I've been thinking a lot about that since talking to a colleague with some pretty tough physical disabilities recently.
Overall, I think that Hey memoQ represents a great start in making speech recognition available in a useful way in a desktop translation environment tool and making the case for more extensive investments in speech recognition technology to improve accessibility and ergonomics for working translators.
Of course, speech recognition brings with it a number of different challenges for reviewing work: mistakes (or "dictos" as they are sometimes called, a riff on keyboard "typos") are often harder to catch, especially if one is reviewing directly after translating and the memory of intended text is perhaps fresh enough to override in perception what the eye actually sees. So maybe before long we'll see an integrated read-back feature in memoQ, which could also benefit people who don't work with speech recognition.
Since I began using speech recognition a lot for my work (to cope with occasionally unbearable pain from gout), I have had to adopt the habit of reading everything out loud after I translate, because I have found this to be the best way to catch my errors or to recognize where the text could use a rhetorical makeover. (The read-back function of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in English is a nightmare, randomly confusing definite and indefinite articles, but other tools might be usable now for external review and should probably be applied to target columns in an exported RTF bilingual file to facilitate re-import of corrections to the memoQ environment, though the monolingual review feature for importing edited target text files and keeping project resources up-to-date is also a good option.)
As I have worked with the first release of Hey memoQ, I have noticed quite a few little details where small refinements or extensions to the app could help my workflow. And the same will be true, I am sure, with most others who use this tool. It is particularly important at this stage that those of us who are using and/or testing this early version communicate with the development team (in the form of e-mail to memoQ Support - support@memoq.com - with suggestions or observations). This will be the fastest way to see improvements I think.
In the future, I would be surprised if applications like this did not develop to cover other input methods (besides an iOS device like an iPhone or iPad). But I think it's important to focus on taking this initial platform as far as it can go so that we can all see the working functionality that is missing, so that as the APIs for relevant operating systems develop further to support speech recognition (especially the Holy Grail for many of us, trainable vocabulary like we have in Dragon NaturallySpeaking and a very few other applications). Some of what we are looking for may be in the Nuance software development kits (SDKs) for speech recognition, which I suggested using some years ago because they offer customizable vocabularies at higher levels of licensing, but this would represent a much greater and more speculative investment in an area of technology that is still subject to a lot of misunderstanding and misrepresentation.
In my last post on the release of memoQ 8.7 with its new, integrated speech recognition feature I included a link to a long, boring video record of my first tests of the speech recognition facility, most of which consisted of testing various spoken iOS commands to generate text symbols, change capitalization, etc. I tested some of the integrated commands that are specific to memoQ, but not in an organized way really.
In a new testing video, I attempt to show all the memoQ-specific spoken command types and how the commands are affected by the environment (in this case I mean whether the cursor is on the target text side or the source text side or in some other place in the concordance, for example).
Most of the spoken commands work rather well, except for insertion from the concordance, which I could not get to work at all. When the cursor is in a source text cell, commands have to be given in the source text language currently, which is sure to prove interesting for people who don't speak their source language with a clean accent. Right now it's even more interesting, because English is the only language with a ready-made command list; other languages have to "roll their own" for now, which is a bit of a trial-and-error thing. I don't even want to think how this is going to work if the source language isn't supported at all; I think some thought had to be given to how to use commands with source text. I assume if it's copied to the target side it will be difficult to select unless, with butchered pronunciation, the text also happens to make sense in the target language.
It's best to watch this video on YouTube (start it, then click "YouTube" at the bottom of the running video). There you'll find a time code index in the description (after you click SEE MORE) which will enable you to navigate to specific commands or other things shown in the test video.
My ongoing work with Hey memoQ make it clear that what I call "mixed mode" (dictation with concurrent use of the keyboard) is the best and (actually) necessary way to use this feature. The style for successful dictation is also quite different than the style I need to use with Dragon NaturallySpeaking for best results. I have to discipline myself to speak more in short phrases, less in longer ones, much less in long sentences, which may cause some text to be dropped.
There is also an issue with Translation Results insertions and the lack of spaces before them; the command to insert a space ("spacebar" in English) is dodgy, so I usually have to speak it twice and end up with a superfluous space. The video shows my workaround for this in one part: I speak a filler word (in one case I tried "dummy" which was rendered as "dumb he") and then select it later and insert an entry from the Translation Results pane over the selected text. This is in fact how we can deal with specialist terminology not recognized by the current speech dictionary until it becomes possible to train new words some day.
The sound in the video (spoken commands) is also of variable quality; with some commands I had to turn my head toward the iPhone on its little tripod next to my laptop, which caused the pickup of that speech to be bad on the built-in microphone on the laptop's screen. So this isn't a Hollywood-class recording; it's simply a slightly edited record of some of my tests to give other memoQ users some idea of what they can expect from the feature right now.
Those who will be dictating in supported languages other than English need some patience right now. It's not always easy coming up with commands that will be recognized easily but which are unlikely to occur as words to be transcribed in typical dictation work. During the beta test of Hey memoQ I used some bizarre and unusual German words which just happened to be recognized. I'm developing a set of more normal-sounding commands right now, but it's a work in progress.
The difficulties I am encountering making up new command phrases (or changing the English ones in some cases) simply reinforce my belief that these command lists should be made into portable light resources as soon as possible.
I am organizing summary tables of the memoQ-specific commands and useful iOS commands for symbols, capitals, spacing, etc. comparing their performance in other iOS apps with what we see right now in Hey memoQ.
Update: the summary file for English is available here. I will post links here for any other languages I can prepare later.
Today, memoQ Translation Technologies (the artists formerly known as "Kilgray") officially released their iOS dictation app along with memoQ version 8.7, making that popular translation environment tool the first on the desktop to offer free integrated speech recognition and control.
My initial tests of the release version are encouraging. Some bugs with capitalization which I identified with the beta test haven't been fixed yet, and some special characters which work fine in the iOS Notes app don't work at all, but on the whole it's a rather good start. The control commands implemented for memoQ work far better than I expected at this stage. I've got a very boring, clumsy (and unlisted) video of my initial function tests here if anyone cares to look.
Before long, I'll release a few command cheat sheets I've compiled for English (update: it's HERE), German and Portuguese, which show which iOS dictation functions are implemented so far in Hey memoQ and which don't perform as expected. There are no comprehensive lists of these commands, and even the ones that claim to cover everything have gaps and errors, which one can only sort out by trial and error. This isn't an issue with the memoQ development team for the most part, but rather of Apple's chaotic documentation.
The initial release only has a full set of commands implemented in English. Those who want to use control commands for navigating, selecting, inserting, etc. will have to enter there own localized commands for now, and this too involves some trial and error to come up with a good working set. And I hope that before long the development team will implement the language-specific command sets as a shareable light resources. That will make it much easier to get all the available languages sorted out properly for productive work.
I am very happy with what I see at the start. Here are a few highlights of the current state of Hey memoQ dictation:
Bilingual dictation, with source language dictation active when the cursor is on the source side and target language dictation active when the cursor is on the target side. Switching languages in my usual dictation tool - Dragon NaturallySpeaking - is a total pain in the butt.
No trainable vocabulary at present (an iOS API limitation), but this is balanced in a useful way by commands like "insert first" through "insert ninth", which enable direct insertion of the first nine items in the Translation Results pane. Thus is you maintain good termbases, the "no train" pain is minimized. And you can always work in "mixed mode" as I usually do, typing what is not convenient to speak and using keyboard shortcuts for commands not yet supported by voice control, like tag insertion.
Microphones connected (physically or via Bluetooth) with the iPhone or iPad work well if you don't want to use the integrated microphone in the iOS device. My Apple earphones worked great in a brief test.
Some users are a bit miffed that they can't work directly with microphones connected to the computer or with Android devices, but at the present time, the iOS dictation API is the best option for the development team to explore integrated speech functions which include program control. That won't work with Chrome speech recognition, for example. As other APIs improve, we can probably expect some new options for memoQ dictation.
Moreover, with the release of iOS 12, I think many older devices (which are cheap on eBay or probably free from friends who don't use them) are now viable tools for Hey memoQ dictation. Update: I found a list of iPhone and iPad devices compatible with iOS 12here.)
Just for fun, I tested whether Hey memoQ and Dragon NaturallySpeaking interfere with one another. They don't it seems. I switched back and forth from one to the other with no trouble. During the app's beta phase, I did not expect that I would take Hey memoQ as a serious alternative to DNS for English dictation, but with the current set of commands implemented, I can already work with greater comfort than expected, and I may in fact use this free tool quite a bit. And I think my friends working into Portuguese, Russian and other languages not supported by DNS will find Hey memoQ a better option than other dictation solutions I've seen so far.
This is just the beginning. But it's a damned good start really, and I expect very good things ahead from memoQ's development team. And I'm sure that, once again, SDL and others will follow the leader :-)
And last, but not least, here's an update to show how to connect the Hey memoQ app on your iOS device to memoQ 8.7+ on your computer to get started with dictation in translation:
In a recent social media discussion, a Slovenian colleague was asking me about the upcoming hey memoQ feature that I've been testing, and I found that iOS apparently doesn't support that language (nor does MacOS for that matter). But then she commented
I use Chrome's voice notebook plugin with memoQ. It works somehow for a while, then it gets laggy and I have to refresh Chrome or restart it. I miss the consistency and learning ability of DNS. But yes, the paid version allows you to use it with any app, including memoQ. The free version does not have this functionality. I love translating with dictation, I am not a fast typist and I rather hate typing...
I had no idea what she was talking about, but a few more questions and a little investigation cleared up my confusion. Some years ago when Chrome's speech recognition feature was introduced, it seemed to me that it should be possible to adapt it for use in other (non-browser) applications, and I think this was even stated as a possibility. But at the time I could not find any application to do this, and I'm too out of practice these days to program my own.
Well, it seems that someone has addressed this deficiency.
The voice to text notebook extension of Chrome has additional tools available on the creator's website which enable the speech recognition functions to be used in any other application. This additional functionality is a service with fees, but at USD 2.50 per month or USD 16.00 per year (via PayPal), it's unlikely to break the bank. And a free trial of two days can be activated once you have registered. I'm testing it now, and it's rather interesting. Not perfect (as noted by the colleague who made me aware of this tool), but it may be an option for those wanting to use speech recognition in languages not currently supported by other applications.
The website with the survey and short explainer video is http://www.sightcat.net The idea is to build a human transcription service. We just need a few translators per language that want to work with a transcriptionist due to RSI, productivity etc. and we can use that data to build an ASR system for that language. There is also a good chance the ASR system will be accurate for domain-specific terminology and accents as it will be adaptive and use source language context.
Click on the graphic to go to the survey
memoQ Fest 2018 was, among other things, a good opportunity as always to spend time discussing things with some of the best and most interesting consultants, teachers, creative developers and brainstormers I know in the translation profession. One of these was my friend and colleague, John Moran, whose work on iOmegaT introduced me to the idea that properly designed, translator-controlled (voluntary) data logging could be a great boon to feature research and software development investment decisions. Sort of like SpyGate in translation, except that it isn't.
John and I have been talking, brainstorming and arguing about many aspects of translation technology for years now, dictation (voice recognition, ASR, whatever you want to call it) foremost among the topics. So I was very pleased to see him at the conference in Budapest last week, where he spoke about logging as a research tool in the program and a lot about speech recognition before and after in the breaks, bars, coffee houses and social event venues.
I think that one of the most memorable things about memoQ Fest 2018 was the introduction of the dictation tool currently called hey memoQ, which covers a lot of what John and I have discussed until the wee hours over the past four years or so and which also makes what I believe will be the first commercial use of source text guidance for target text dictation (not to mention switching to source text dictation when editing source texts!). John introduced that to me years ago based on some research that he follows. Fascinating stuff.
One of the things he has been interested in for a while for commercial, academic and ergonomic reasons is support for minor languages. Understandable for a guy who speaks Gaelic (I think) and has quite a lot of Gaelic resources which might contribute to a dictation solution some day. So while I'm excited about the coming memoQ release which will facilitate dictation in a CAT tool in 40 languages (more or less, probably a lot more in the future), John is thinking about smaller, underserved or unserved languages and those who rely on them in their working lives.
That's what his survey is about, and I hope you'll take the time to give him a piece of your mind... uh, share your thoughts I mean :-)
As usual each year, the summer school at Universidade Nova de Lisboa is offering quite a variety of inexpensive, excellent intensive courses, including some for the practice of translation. This year includes a reprise of last year's Best Practices in Translation Technology from July 16th to 21st, with some different topics and approaches.
Using machine translation in a humane, intelligent way.
Using checklists to improve communication in translation.
Using glossaries, bilingual texts and other references in multiplatform environments.
Good practices for using terminology and reference texts in the target language.
Planning and creating lists for auto-translation rules and the basics of regular expressions for filters.
Some knowledge of the memoQ translation environment and translation experience are required.
The course is offered in the evening from 6 pm to 10 pm Monday (July 16th) through Friday (July 20th), with a Saturday (July 21st) session for review and exams from 9 am to 2 pm. This allows free days to explore Lisbon and the surrounding region and get to know Portugal and its culture.
Tuition costs for the general public are €130 for the 25 hours of instruction. The university certainly can't be accused of price-gouging :-) Summer course registration instructions are here(currently available only in Portuguese; I'm not sure if/when an English version will be available, but the instructors can be contacted for assistance if necessary).
Two other courses offered this summer at Uni Nova with similar schedules and cost are: Introduction to memoQ (taught by David and Marco – a good place to get a solid grounding in memoQ prior to the Best Practices course) from July 9–14, 2018 and Translation Project Management Tools from September 3–8, 2018.
All courses are taught in English and Portuguese in a mix suitable for the participants in the individual courses.
I hear that Germany is suffering from a shortage of Porsches. Odd, given that the cars are made there and should be readily available, but it's true, because my friend who lives there told me. He owns a large, successful LSP (Linguistic Sausage Production) company, and to celebrate its rise in revenues, he decided to get everyone on the sales staff a new Porsche as a company car. The problem is that he can't find any for €5000 euros.
So he was left with no choice but to cut overhead using the latest technologies. Microsoft to the rescue! With Microsoft Dictate, his crew of intern sausage technologists now speak customer texts into high-quality microphones attached to their Windows 10 service stations, and these are translated instantly into sixty target languages. As part of the company's ISO 9001-certified process, the translated texts are then sent for review to experts who actually speak and perhaps even read the respective languages before the final, perfected result is returned to the customer. This Linguistic Inspection and Accurate Revision process is what distinguishes the value delivered by Globelinguatrans GmbHaha from the TEPid offerings of freelance "translators" who won't get with the program.
But his true process engineering genius is revealed in Stage Two: the Final Acquisition and Revision Technology Solution. There the fallible human element has been eliminated for tighter quality control: texts are extracted automatically from the attached documents in client e-mails or transferred by wireless network from the Automated Scanning Service department, where they are then read aloud by the latest text-to-speech solutions, captured by microphone and then rendered in the desired target language. Where customers require multiple languages, a circle of microphones is placed around the speaker, with each microphone attached to an independent, dedicated processing computer for the target language. Eliminating the error-prone human speakers prevents contamination of the text by ums, ahs and unedited interruptions by mobile phone calls from friends and lovers, so the downstream review processes are no longer needed and the text can be transferred electronically to the payment portal, with customer notification ensuing automatically via data extracted from the original e-mail.
Major buyers at leading corporations have expressed excitement over this innovative, 24/7 solution for globalized business and its potential for cost savings and quality improvements, and there are predictions that further applications of the Goldberg Principle will continue to disrupt and advance critical communications processes worldwide.
Articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and other media extolling the potential and benefits of the LIAR process and FARTS. And the best part? With all that free publicity, my friend no longer needs his sales staff, so they are being laid off and he has upgraded his purchase plans to a Maserati.
Last April I was a guest at the Buenos Aires University Facultad de Derecho, where I had an opportunity to meet students and staff from the law school's integrated degree program for certified public translators and to speak about my use of various technologies to assist my work in legal translation. This post is based loosely on that presentation and a subsequent workshop at the Universidade de Évora.
Useful ideas seldom develop in isolation, and to the extent that I can claim good practice in the use of assistive technologies for my translation work in legal and other domains it is largely the product of my interactions with many colleagues over the past seventeen years of commercial translation activity. These fine people have served as mentors, giving me my first exposure to the concepts of platform interoperability for translation tools, and as inspirations by sharing the many challenges they face in their work and clearly articulating the desired outcomes they hoped to achieve as professionals. They have also generously and frequently shared with me the solutions that they have found and have often unselfishly shared their ideas on how and why we should do better in our daily practice. And I am grateful that I can continue to learn with them, work better, and help others to do so as well.
A variety of tools for information management and transformation can benefit the work of a legal translator in areas which include but are not limited to:
corpus utilization,
text conversion,
terminology management,
diverse information retrieval,
assisted drafting,
dictated speech to text,
quality assurance,
version control and comparison, and
source and target text review.
Though not exhaustive, the list above can provide a fairly comprehensive basis for education of future colleagues and continued professional development for those already active as legal translators. But with any of the technologies discussed below, it is important to remember that the driving force is not the hardware and software we use in technical devices but rather the human mind and its understanding of subject matter and the needs of the particular task or work process in the legal domain. No matter how great our experience, there is always something more and useful to be learned, and often the best way to do this is to discuss the challenges of technology and workflow with others and keep an open mind for new approaches with promise.
Reference texts of many kinds are important in legal translation work (and in other types of translation too, of course). These may be monolingual or multilingual texts, and they provide a wealth of information on subject matter, terminology and typical usage in particular contexts. These collections of text – or corpora – are most useful when the information found in them can be read in context rather than isolation. Translation memories – used by many in our work – are also corpora of a kind, but they are seriously flawed in their usual implementations, because only short segments of text are displayed in a bilingual format, and the meaning and context of these retrieved snippets are too often obscure.
An excerpt from a parallel corpus showing a treaty text in English, Portuguese and Spanish
The best corpus tools for translation work allow concordance searches in multiple selected corpora and provide access to the full context of the information found. Currently, the best example of integrated document context with information searches in a translation environment tool is found in the LiveDocs module of Kilgray's memoQ.
A memoQ concordance search with a link to an "aligned" translation
A past translation and its preview stored in a memoQ LiveDocs corpus, accessed via concordance search
A memoQ LiveDocs corpus has all the advantages of the familiar "translation memory" but can include other information, such as previews of the translated work as well. It is always clear in which document the information "hit" was found, and corpora can also include any number of monolingual documents in source and target languages, something which is not possible with a traditional translation memory.
In many cases, however, much context can be restored to a traditional translation memory by transforming it into a "document" in a LiveDocs corpus. This is because in most cases, substantial portions of the translation memory will have its individual segment records stored in document order; if the content is exported as a TMX file or tab-delimited text file and then imported as a bilingual document in a LiveDocs corpus, the result will be almost as if the original translations had been aligned and saved, and from a concordance hit one can open the bilingual content directly and read the parts before and after the text found in the concordance search.
Legal translation can involve text conversion in a broad sense in many ways. Legal translators must often deal with hardcopy or faxed material or scanned files created from these. Often documents to translate and reference documents are provided in portable document format (PDF), in which finding and editing information can be difficult. Using special software, these texts can be converted into documents which can be edited, and portions can be copied, pasted and overwritten easily, or they can be imported in translation assistance platforms such as SDL Trados Studio, Wordfast or memoQ. (Some of these environments include integrated facilities for converting PDF texts, but the results are seldom as suitable for work as PDF or scanned files converted with optical character recognition software such as ABBYY FineReader or OmniPage.)
Software tools like ABBYY FineReader can also convert "dead" scanned text images into searchable documents. This will even work with bad contrast or color images in the background, making it easier, for example, to look for information in mountains of scanned documents used in legal discovery. Text-on-image files like the example shown above completely preserve the layout and image context of the text to be read in the best way. I first discovered and used this option while writing a report for a client in which I had to reference sections of a very long, scanned policy document from the European Parliament. It was driving me crazy to page through the scanned document to find information I wanted to cite but where I had failed to make notes during my first reading. Converting that scanned policy to a searchable PDF made it easy to find what I needed in seconds and accurately cite its page number, etc. Where there is text on pictures, difficult contrast and other features this is often far better for reference purposes than converting to an MS Word document, for example, where the layouts are likely to become garbled.
Software tools for translation can also make text in many other original formats accessible to translators in an ergonomically simpler form, also ensuring, where necessary, that no text is overlooked because of a complicated layout or because it is in an easily overlooked footnote or margin note. Text import filters in translation environments make it easy to read and translate the words in a uniform working environment, with many reference tools and other help available, and then render the translated text back into its original format or some more useful bilingual format.
An excerpt of translated patent claims exported as a bilingual table for review
Technology also offers many possibilities for identifying, recording and controlling relevant terminology in legal translation work.
Large quantities of text can be analyzed quickly to find the most frequent special vocabulary likely to be relevant to the translation work and save these in project glossaries, often enabling that work to be organized better with much of the clarification of terms taking place prior to translation. This is particularly valuable in large projects where it may be advisable to ensure that a team of translators all use the same terms in the target language to avoid possible confusion and misunderstanding.
Glossaries created in translation assistance tools can provide terminology hints during work and even save keystrokes when linked to predictive, "intelligent" writing features.
Integrated quality checking features in translation environments enable possible deviations of terminology or other issues to be identified and corrected quickly.
Technical features in working software for translation allow not only desirable terms to be identified and elaborated; they also enable undesired terms to be recorded and avoided. Barred terms can be marked as such while translating or automatically identified in a quality check.
A patent glossary exported from memoQ and then made into a PDF dictionary via SDL Trados MultiTerm
Technical tools enable terminology to be shared in many different ways. Glossaries in appropriate formats can be moved easily between different environments to share them with others on a team which uses diverse technologies; they can also be output as spreadsheets, web pages or even formatted dictionaries (as shown in the example above). This can help to ensure consistency over time in the terms used by translators and attorneys involved in a particular case.
There are also many different ways that terminology can be shared dynamically in a team. Various terminology servers available usually suffer from being restricted to particular platforms, but freely available tools like Google Sheets coupled with web look-up interfaces and linked spreadsheets customized for importing into particular environments can be set up quickly and easily, with access restricted to a selected team.
The links in the screenshot above show a simple example using some data from SAP. There is a master spreadsheet where the data is maintained and several "slavesheets" designed for simple importing into particular translation environment tools. Forms can also be used for simplified data entry and maintenance.
If Google Sheets do not meet the confidentiality requirements of a particular situation, similar solutions can be designed using intranets, extranets, VPNs, etc.
Technical tools for translators can help to locate information in a great variety of environments and media in ways that usually integrate smoothly with their workflow. Some available tools enable glossaries and bilingual corpora to be accessed in any application, including word processors, presentation software and web pages.
Corpus information in translation memories, memoQ LiveDocs or external sources can be looked up automatically or in concordance searches based on whole or partial content matches or specified search terms, and then useful parts can be inserted into the target text to assist translation. In some cases, differences between a current source text and archived information is highlighted to assist in identifying and incorporating changes.
Structured information such as dates, currency expressions, legal citations and bibliographical references can also be prepared for simple keystroke insertion in the translated text or automated quality checking. This can save many frustrating hours of typing and copy revision. In this regard, memoQ currently offers the best options for translation with its "auto-translation" rulesets, but many tools offer rules-based QA facilities for checking structured information.
Voice recognition technologies offer ergonomically superior options for transcription in many languages and can often enable heavy translation workloads with short deadlines to be handled with greater ease, maintaining or even improving text quality. Experienced translators with good subject matter knowledge and voice recognition software skills can typically produce more finished text in a day than the best post-editing operations for machine pseudo-translation, with the exception that the text produced by human voice transcription is actually usable in most situations, while the "gloss" added to machine "translations" is at best lipstick on a pig.
Reviewing a text for errors is hard work, and a pressing deadline to file a brief doesn't make the job easier. Technical tools for translation enable tens of thousands of words of text to be scanned for particular errors in seconds or minutes, ensuring that dates and references are correct and consistent, that correct terminology has been used, et cetera.
The best tools even offer sophisticated tools for tracking changes, differences in source and target text versions, even historical revisions to a translation at the sentence level. And tools like SDL Trados Studio or memoQ enable a translation and its reference corpora to be updated quickly and easily by importing a modified (monolingual) target text.
When time is short and new versions of a source text may follow in quick succession, technology offers possibilities to identify differences quickly, automatically process the parts which remain unchanged and keep everything on track and on schedule.
For all its myriad features, good translation technology cannot replace human knowledge of language and subject matter. Those claiming the contrary are either ignorant or often have a Trumpian disregard for the truth and common sense and are all too eager to relieve their victims of the burdens of excess cash without giving the expected value in exchange.
Technologies which do not assist translation experts to work more efficiently
or with less stress in the wide range of challenges found in legal translation work are
largely useless. This really does include machine pseudo-translation (MpT). The best
“parts” of that swindle are essentially the corpus matching for translation memory archives
and corpora found in CAT tools like memoQ or SDL Trados Studio, and what is added
is often incorrect and dangerously liable to lead to errors and misinterpretations. There are also documented, damaging effects on one’s use of language when
exposed to machine pseudo-translation for extended periods.
Legal translation professionals today can benefit in many ways from technology to work better and
faster, but the basis for this remains what it was ten, twenty, forty or a hundred years
ago: language skill and an understanding of the law and legal procedure. And a good,
sound, well-rested mind.
