Guest blog by Yves Savourel, Vice President of R&D at Argos Multilingual
Machine translation (MT) has become a very important topic in the world of languages and translations. More and more companies have begun to apply MT as it can benefit their translation projects. But what exactly is machine translation and which different types exist? These are the points I’m going to look at more closely in the following post.
Cette version française de mon article de blog The Latest Trend in the Translation Industry: PEMT a été traduite par Clovis Cerri dans le cadre de sa formation de Master TSM (Traduction Spécialisée Multilingue) à l’université de Lille. Cette traduction était publiée à l’origine sur le blog MasterTSM@Lille.
Avez-vous entendu parler de la dernière tendance sur le marché de la traduction ? Il s’agit de la PEMT*, acronyme anglophone signifiant post-editing machine translation. En clair, les clients font appel à un programme pour traduire leur texte, lequel est ensuite envoyé à un traducteur chargé d’y apporter la touche finale. Certains d’entre eux utilisent des services de traduction automatique plus poussés que ceux disponibles en ligne. Néanmoins, l’expérience me prouve que Google Traduction est l’outil le plus populaire, et c’est donc celui auquel les clients ont le plus souvent recours pour obtenir leur traduction au coût d’une révision, soit environ 50 % du prix.
Cette version française de mon article de blog Warning about Google Translate a été traduite par Emma Le Barazer dans le cadre de sa formation de Master TSM (Traduction Spécialisée Multilingue) à l’université de Lille. Cette traduction était publiée à l’origine sur le blog MasterTSM@Lille.
Je me retrouve souvent à réviser des textes rédigés en anglais par des locuteurs non natifs (le plus souvent par des Espagnols, car j’arrive à déchiffrer ce qu’ils essayaient de dire). La plupart du temps, j’apprécie cette activité car les sujets sont intéressants, la qualité de la langue n’est en général pas trop mauvaise, et cette tâche ne m’oblige pas trop à taper au clavier (et mes bras se reposent un peu, alors que je souffre depuis peu de troubles musculosquelettiques).
I first published this post on Pulse, LinkedIn’s content creation and sharing platform, on 16 November this year.
You’ve probably never heard of As Pontes, a small town in the province of Galicia in north-western Spain. And you might have remained blissfully unaware of its existence if its council hadn’t made a serious error of judgement, a mistake that has put the municipality on the world map of translation gaffes.
Back in 1981 the town came up with the idea of a festival to celebrate traditional agriculture and attract visitors. That’s how the Feira do Grelo was born. Held in February during carnival time every year, it includes a competition to find the best grelo. What’s that you ask? Good question.
May 2021 update: The purchase order has been updated. Please see this post for 4 new versions of it (for translation, revision, editing and localisation), which you can also download here.
For a while now I’ve been working on the type of purchase order I’d like to give to both my agency and direct clients (especially new ones) so that we all know where we stand and are clear about the price and what it does and does not include. Today I’ve been inspired by reading Two to Tango: Tips for Project Managers from a Freelance Translator (parts 1 and 2) by Igor Vesler on Lingua Greca’s blog to finally finish my first draft. I’m posting it here so I can get your feedback and comments, because I’m a little concerned that it might be overly long and put some clients off.
¿Han escuchado hablar sobre la última tendencia en la industria de la traducción? Se la conoce como PEMT, significa traducción automática con revisión posterior (post-editing machine translation, PEMT*). Hace referencia a cuando los clientes usan un programa para traducir un texto antes de enviárselo a un traductor para que este haga la revisión final. Algunos clientes usan herramientas de traducción automática (TA) más sofisticadas que las que se ofrecen en línea. Sin embargo, según mi experiencia, el Traductor de Google es la herramienta de traducción más popular y, por ese motivo, la que los clientes usan con más frecuencia para obtener una traducción por el precio de una revisión, en general, alrededor de un 50 % menos del costo.
Have you heard of the latest trend in the translation industry? It’s called PEMT* and it stands for post-editing machine translation. This is when clients use a program to translate their text before sending it to a translator for the final edit. Some clients use more sophisticated MT (machine translation) than online offerings, but in my experience Google Translate is the most popular translation tool, and, therefore, the one clients use more often than not to get a translation for the price of a revision, usually around 50% of the cost.
Parece una nueva moda. Si fuera una situación que sucede únicamente en España, diría que se trata de casos de “picaresca española”. Cada vez que un cliente me “cuela” un texto para revisar que ha sido traducido por Google Translate (u otro traductor automático) me imagino su cara de satisfacción pensando que me ha metido un gol y que se ha ahorrado un 50% de la tarifa con un simple click del ratón.
Se ha hablado mucho últimamente del mercado de las traducciones premium y al por mayor, y también de si despotricar o quejarse de las malas condiciones que se encuentran en este último alguna vez servirá de algo cuando en realidad lo que todo el mundo debería hacer es seguir el ejemplo de los gurús, salir ahí afuera y hacerse con los mejores trabajos, cobrar una fortuna, ganar un salario de seis cifras, volar en primera. Porque entonces no habría nada de lo que quejarse, ¿no?
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the bulk and premium market and whether ranting or complaining about the poor conditions found in the former will ever do any good, especially as what everyone should actually be doing is following the lead of the gurus, getting out there and grabbing the best jobs, charging a fortune, earning a six-figure salary and flying first class. Because then there wouldn’t be anything for them to complain about, now would there?
If only this were so easy or possible. The translation sector encompasses as many markets as there are language combinations and specialisms. How you fare or how much you might earn probably depends more on the market you operate in than where you live. It also depends on the subjects you have studied and your specialist knowledge, how good you are at translating and your personality; whether you have the drive, get-up-and-go and belief in yourself that will enable you to land direct clients and charge decent rates rather than relying on an agency to do that for you. So many factors are involved that it’s almost impossible to generalise. And it’s also impossible for anyone to know what it might be like for a colleague in a totally different situation to their own.
Tranix Translation & Editing Services 