Myths of Machine Translation

Machine translation has many limitations and I am not a big proponent of complete machine translation but as these systems become more sophisticated, I believe that they do have a place in the translation process.  I read a great article in tcworld on dispelling the myths and bad rap for machine translation. 

Ultimately, most of us have used the free services out there on the net and that is not a true representation of many of the machine translation tools available today.

The free services do not allow users to select a subject field or provide user terminology, they can’t set stylistic preferences or translation parameters other than the specification of desired language pair and the drop in of source text.  Not much to go by.  No wonder there are such problems. Often times what is produced is a word-for-word translation.

The proprietary commercialized machine translation services are usually only utilized in larger organizations.  These systems have cost millions of dollars in research and development. 

Recent facts that dispel some of these myths:

• Machine translation can improve the productivity ands consistency of human translators
• Machine translation enables more translation of materials that would ordinarily not have been translated due to lowered costs and turn around time
• There are many machine translation programs/technologies that are capable of producing translation results in the right environments like rules based machine translation, statistical machine translation and direct machine translation. 
• There are many affordable and user-friendly machine translation packages available for even the smallest of businesses and freelancers.

Machine translation is still a very controversial issue and as a translation agency we will need to utilize and work with this new technology to provide the best value to our customers.  I think there will always be a role for the those with linguistic backgrounds as these systems are meant to be used with human translators.  However, I think in the near future there may be a higher adoption rate of machine translation as more and more technology and sophistication  and solutions are provided to increase efficiency.

3 Tips for Writing Technical Documentation for Translation

If a consumer can’t understand how to use or service your product than what is the point of creating documentation?  Additionally, mistakes here can cause unforeseen liability claims.  By authoring, designing and translating your technical documentation with usability in mind you will have far more success globally.

Issues to consider:

1.  Design: 

• Book form, fan-fold or an innovative sheet fold form. 
• Use of photography and line art instead of text – usually takes up less space and is much more appealing
• Logical and structured format of ideas
• Avoid jargon and overly technical language

2.  Safety aspects and compliance with overseas directives:

• Requirements around the world vary greatly, be sure that your product/documentation is in compliance
• Standards – complies with all laws and safety regulations
• Documentation should be available during the entire life-cycle of the product
• Hazard Analysis – using a hazard and risk analysis to ensure the product does not provide danger to the user
• Target Market Conformity – many countries including the EU require declarations on the technical documentation

3.  Localization:

• Simply translating the documentation is not sufficient as the same words in the same language in different countries can have different meanings
• Source language should be perfect with no errors or mis-spelling
• Use professional translators with technical translation experience and are subject matter expertise
• Use short words/sentences with easy words and expressions, no idiomatic phrases or puns
• Utilize photos with text to help provide context
• Test the documentation with a sample in market audience before full distribution

Last but not least, be sure to utilize consumer feedback on all your documentation.  Even a team of seven reviewers can catch up to 90% misunderstandings in text, process or steps. 

The work you do before you distribute can help prevent miscommunication, liability issues and a bad impression when taking your products global. 

The Basics of DITA

DITA – Darwin Information Typing Architecture is the buzz word in technical documentation and translation these days. 

What exactly is DITA?

An information model/content management system that is used for content-rich and multi-channel environments.  According to Wikipedia, DITA is an XML based architecture introduced by IBM in 2001, to automate creation, authoring, producing and delivering technical information. This DTD system divides content into small, self contained topics that can be re-used in different deliverables and reduces information redundancy.

Three Basic Topic Types:

1.  Task – works for procedures and lists of steps to accomplish a task or outcome. 

2.  Concept – contains definitions, rules and guidelines

3.  Reference – describes command syntax, programming instructions, and other reference material.

Features:

• Modular content vs. long book oriented files
• Topics can be reused in various deliverables
• Allows for conditional text, index markers and topic to topic links based on audience, platform, model, and product
• Structure is similar to HTML which can be used directly in DITA Topics
• Topics are easier to find using an extensive metadata
• End to end architecture using specifications of elements, attributes and rules.

DITA can be used in Windows, Linux/UNIX and Mac OS operating systems. 

Output formats:

1. PDF
2. XHTML
3. HTML Help
4. Eclipse help
5. Java
6. Rich Text Format

The DITA Open Toolkit is an active open-source free DTD that has been contributed to from several companies. 

Translation and localization companies like Iterotext Translation Services can use your DTD files and your XML files to provide multi-lingual documentation.

If you are looking for more information please visit the Toolkit User Guide or the DITA Blog.

Website Translation Tip

A global audience will make purchasing decisions based largely on the quality of your website’s design and content. 

Be sure that your site includes content in the local language.  This will ensure that your site receives preference from Yahoo and Google’s search engines.

In addition, by translating your website you are making a good impression and the common courtesy of your target market and potential customer. 

Often times, sales are lost only by an inch…be sure that this isn’t the reason you are not getting business globally. 

Translation tips for desktop publishing translated documents

Often times when our customers look to translate their documents, they do not think how they are going to get the translated text into their English layout.  An English layout can look fabulous on paper but when desktop publishing of the translation happens it can cause many issues.

IteroText has lots of experience placing translated text into the original source layout, however, there are many things to think about.

1.  Foreign language translations expand when coming from English – typically 20% or more.  This means the English text fit perfectly, but now how do you fit 20% more text in that same layout?  Often times we can reset the document entirely or shrink the point size and the leading.  However, by shrinking translated text, the finished product looks crammed and your message may get lost in the crowd.

2.  Leave plenty of white space when you know your documents will be translated.  This way there will be room for the expanded translated text.  Narrow columns may not work with languages such as German as their words are much longer and hyphenation could be in appropriate.  How we hyphenate in English can be very different in other languages, as the rules vary.

By thinking ahead you can save yourself the pain of an awkward layout and crammed text.