[atlarge-discuss] My FINAL reply to JW on Translation in Outreach Re:[atlarge-discuss] Translation issues

[espresso@e-scape.net]

At 02:11 -0700 2002/08/20, Jeff Williams wrote:
>> [me] TM software can work extremely well in any organization 
>>where there are teams of highly-skilled terminologists and 
>>translators who prepare the databases and edit the results in 
>>parallel with the originals.
>
>  Not actually true.  The UN and about 68 of the consulates that we have
>had the privilege and pleasant experience to have delt with using the
>same or compatible Software Translation facilities that the UN uses
>for contractual and common communications have no such "Teams"
>of terminologists.  Most have only two or three on staff and only
>the larger consulates have a significant number as these Translation
>facilities have themselves facilitated a reduction for such "Teams"
>that only a few states, including the US, had needed in the
>past (Quite some time ago now) for such translations of various
>documents and the spoken word...

A "team" is two or more persons. Terminologists are needed to create adequate terminology databases for CAT, and sometimes to assist human translators and editors dealing with the results, not to run the CAT programs themselves.

>>{me]  The problem is that, while the UN and similar organizations understand translation issues well and make sure the process is handled so as to produce accurate, well-written results, most of the organizations using TMs don't.
>
>  This may be true, but it is not necessary to be so as the UN does offer
>aid in this area for every member countries private sector orgs that wish
>to accretion such information/assistance, even and especially for the less
>financially progressive nations...

Unfortunately, like most people including translators and clients, I had never heard that the UN offered free assistence of this kind to the private sector, or even consultancy for a fee.

>> Every now and then, some English-speaking Albertan working for the Canadian government causes a major uproar in the Quebec media by putting one of those "translations" up on a government Web site.
>
>  I have seen very few instances of this occurring.  None in the past two years.
>Do you have some URL references of such?  My guess is that you don't
>or don't have any of any real significance as it relates to Internet >policy...

I don't much like being called a liar, Jeff. I can't give you URLs of the incidents I know about because those pages were removed or replaced ASAP once the problem was known. If you read French, you may find confirmation from newspaper articles in Le Devoir and La Presse by doing a search on "Environnement Canada" and "traduction" and "inacceptable" or "épouvantable".

>  Annoyance is a state of mind.  Such annoyances do not effectively or
>significantly go to the understanding of the translation. Hence I don't see
>this argument as particularly impacting on ICANNATLARGE.COM
>or it's members now or in the future...

I would disagree. Confusing, upsetting and antagonizing people is no way to start building an international organization with any credibility.

>> [me] I'm by no means averse to computer-assisted translation: I just don't do that much work involving formulaic expressions and repetitive vocabulary myself: I find little help in having the software translate every instance of "the" into "le" so that I can go back over the results and change the right occurrences to "les", "la" or "l'" as the grammatical context requires, to take a very simple example.
>
>  This depends in some languages like French and spanish as to the >masculine or the feminine.  Most GOOD Translation systems or facilities 
>can check for that by looking at the context and the tense of the sentence >or paragraph in which such terms are used and than make that correction >immediately. Babelfish is NOT one of those BTW.

Many languages are inflected. Context-matching ability varies with the program used and the care taken in preparing one's databases. If you know of a software that can reliably get gender, tense, case and mood right, **please** tell me which one it is: there are thousands of people who would buy it tomorrow.

>>[me] I was thrilled when they invented machines that would let yopu paste in boilerplate text with a couple of keystrokes or knock out a form-letter to dozens of people. But I do care about language -- clarity, accuracy and good usage as well as appropriateness for the destined readership -- and we humans can't say everything we need to communicate using only boilerplate sentences.
>
>  I don't believe that I have suggested any use of "Boilerplate" usage 
>thus far, and fail to see where that is particularly relevant to the 
>use of Translation software facilities of various types for >ICANNATLARGE.COM...

"Boilerplate" means a piece of text (phrase, sentence or paragraph) which occurs often enough that it's worth keeping in a database for automatic insertion when needed. Preparing a database for a CAT program isn't all that different: it's hardly worth adding an item that will occur only once; it's useful to have the computer substitute target language for source language automatically if it occurs over and over again.

Example: presumably once we have a name and a mission statement, those items will recur in our documentation in exactly the same form. It would make sense to let the CAT program store the standard translations and do the substitutions. It might not make sense to do it for our e-mail correspondonce about CATs...

>  Agreed that there is no Translation facility that will do 100% of any document
>or written word accurately.  We already went over that in two previous
>exchanges in this thread.  However that is really not the point as 80% is
>done and is good enough for a first pass and than followed up by proofreading
>to address the remaining 20% and at the same time cut cost to our
>organization significantly..
>
>> [me] How do you decide whether a particular sentence calls for "say", "says", "said", "was saying"...? It's a very complex intellectual process, even though we do it without conscious thought most of the time, it's not easily reduced to yes/no decisions a computer can handle.
>
>  Modern "Good"  database based Translation facilities don't just do yes/no
>decisions on a computer.  This is I think were you may be confused or
>misinformed.

I suspect the confusion lies elsewhere. ALL processing of information by computers is inherently dependent on yes/no choices: the options are essentially On/off, True/false. My point (not made clearly enough) is that making the decision between various forms of a word is complex although unconscious in the human who speaks the language as a native. 

Programming a computer for that kind of decision-making involves complex algorithms made up of dozens or hundreds of yes/no choices. A CAT program compares a word or expression in one language with numerous items in a database, rejecting those that don't apply (because the computer can't intuit which one does!). Where there are several possible matches, or where nothing matches precisely but some things partly match, a good TM program prompts the human using it to make the choice. 

The alternative path, taken by things like Babelfish, is simply to leave some items untranslated. (Of course, it also does a very poor job of deciding amongst possible meanings of a given word or adjusting the choice for the context.)

>> [me] I confess I am not entirely sure why "reducing the human impact of translation" would be a desirable outcome. Cost and time are what most people try to save using these things. But the purpose of translation is to convey the meaning of what is said by a human in one language to another human speaking a different one.
>
>  Indeed your point here is well taken by me anyway.  However cost >effectiveness for this organization is necessary as we are not that well >funded and yet have as a body express a need for such translations to >various languages to be very important.  Hence tools such as Software 
>based translation facilities are a huge aid and seemingly needed for >achieving better outreach and active participation by new members that 
>may not speak or read the English language...

This is a voluntary organization of Internet users. Nobody is offering to pay anyone anything at this point so cost control seems to me to be less important than making sure that what speakers of other languages get from us are good, professional-calibre, well-written and well-translated documents. Personally, I'd leave the choice of translation methods and tools to the people doing the work, especially if we're neither paying them nor supplying their equipment and software.

>> [me] Computer-assisted translation programs don't understand either human language.
>
>  This as you state it here is patently untrue. And stating such is of a >misleading or lack of understanding nature.  I am not sure which in your >case, but I suspect it is the lack of understanding...

Not at this end! With the *possible* exception of a few Artificial Intelligence programs, neither computers nor computer programs "understand" anything -- they just process data, which is fed in by humans at one end of the process and interpreted by humans at the other.

>> [me] They deal the statistical probability that a word or expression in the source is translatable into a given word or expression in another, with or without other possible translations which are somewhat less probable.
>
>  In some instances or with a few less capable Translator software systems
>you are right, but with more verbose or intrigate translator software >systems you are incorrect, and the UN amongst a large and increasing number >of NGO's have shown that your statement here is a bit less that accurate.

I stand by my statement. Even the best of computer programs has no idea what you are trying to say, to whom, or why. That's no matter how many expressions are stored in its database or how powerful its processing algorithm may be. It doesn't mean I think CAT systems are not useful -- they often are -- but that I know the people at the UN who deal with translations professionally or are at least polyglot enough to read more than one language can tell the difference between a systematic mechanical substitution of words and expressions and a piece of good written communication.

>> [me] The Météo program is a perfect example: temperature, windspeed, etc. are expressed in a fixed vocabulary all meteorologists understand in precise terms in each language and use consistently for all weather at all times. Human intervention isn't needed once the terminology banks and substitution algorithms are set up.
>
>  Yes but Météo is specifically designed for meteorological type >translations. As such is a bad example for general translations...

You are merely confirming what I've said: that an excellent, powerful and very expensive CAT system works flawlessly with a very specific subset of the human languages involved but it is simply not feasible to use it for translating material which is not purely technical and constrained to a limited number of grammatical forms.

>> When it comes to something like a legal document or set of bylaws, you simply can't do that so easily.
>
>  You CAN and is it regularly done with around 80% accuracy by GOOD
>translation software systems.  I have done it on at least 400 occasions
>myself.
>
>> The precise legal meaning of a word as simple as "sale" or "contract" varies by jurisdiction, and it may be further nuanced by the context in which it occurs, sometimes to the point where one needs to footnote a clause with an official translation of the law in jurisdiction A and an explanation of how it differs from jurisdiction B.
>
>  Yes terms as simple as "Sale" or "Contract" also very in a context sense
>as to their meaning as well.  So?  A number of the GOOD Translator
>facilities handle this very well and for various context's as well as
>"jurisdictions".

I won't argue the legal points with you since I'm not a lawyer. I'll just say I've thrown a softball at least 400 times and it doesn't mean I can pitch worth a damn.

I'm not sure what you mean by "GOOD Translator facilities" but in my world, that would probably be "translation agencies" (i.e., those who hire freelancers by the project) and "translation firms" (i.e., companies with permanent translation staff). No reputable company in either category relies on a TM or CAT program and a quick proofread to produce good documents. No reputable company in either category has its legal translations done or edited by general translators, either: you need a legal background to understand properly what the source text means in its legal interpretion (which can differ quite a bit from what the normal reader would think it means) and interpret it correctly in the target language.

>> The words "administrateur" and "directeur" occur often in French bylaws but what is meant by them does not necessarily correspond at all to "administrator" and "director"; in fact, they may well mean "director" and "administrator" instead.
>
>  True enough as far as the context in which they are used.  However such
>distinctions are easily handled by a number of the GOOD Translators,
>and it is done every day 100's if not 1000's of times every day...

Given that the normal output of a translator ranges from 1000-5000 words in a normal workday (depending on the nature of the material and the tools used), I'd be surprised if anyone would be making such distinctions in such numbers. 

I'm not a legal translator, though I've done quite a lot of corporate and NGO material like bylaws over a career that spans more than 30 years. I'm fairly specialized in technical material but I do know legal specialists...  and I also know a lot of general translators who are good at what they know but are not always wise enough to recognize when they're out of their depth or are broke enough to take a job and hope the client doesn't notice problems with quality.


>> Which means you need to know the cultural context in which the source text was written AND the cultural context in which the translation  will be read.
>
>  Well of course you do.  And again as I have said and is well and broadly
>known the GOOD Translators handle these context's as well as cultural
>nuances pretty well in most instances.

Again, you merely make my point for me. CAT programs can't do this. Good human translators do all the time. This organization needs good translators
for its documents.

>> > [JW} I agree as close to 100% as is possible is what should be the goal
>> >and at least a 95% accuracy would be minimal...  Hence using a
>> >translation tool to do most of that work getting at least 80% without
>> >human intervention, is a huge aid or assistance.
>>
>> [me] More power to you if you find it so, and presumably one task less on my already-crowded plate.
>
>  [JW} Well not to me, but to our members and the ICANNATLARE.COM's
>future.

I'm confused. It appeared you were rejecting my offer to help by doing the French translations (with the proviso that a native speaker of French revise and polish the results) because your preferred CAT tool would do 80% of the work flawlessly and you had "GOOD translators" (i.e., unlike me) who could bring them up to 95% accuracy (which should be good enough) more efficiently, and moreover could do this for a number of other languages, too.

>  True that International organizations are in the minority.  But I may >have not been clear enough for your seemingly specific need to very >intrigate detail, as is shown in your writing style IMHO thus far.  So I >will add that most of my 23 years of experiences have been with >international organizations, or international corporations...  How's that?

As an editor and translator by profession, with a particular interest and background in international development issues, I naturally try to be precise in my use of language and as accurate as possible in statements of fact. The habit has been reinforced by experience: one has many fewer misunderstandings if one says exactly what one means.

Obviously, I don't know much about you or your background, and I'm sorry you don't like my style but am unlikely to change it for you. 

As for the quality of translations you've dealt with over those 23 years, I can't possibly know but I have drawn a few conclusions about the general quality of translations posted by international corporations on their Web sites or published in their product documentation and come to some opinions about the translators responsible.

>> Also, bylaws almost invariably begin with a "definitions" section which spells our precisely how particular words are to be interpreted -- good idea if you want to avoid endless debates on semantics from the more troublesome members. And members of an organization who bother to read their bylaws closely (most don't) always have the possibility of asking the secretariat for an official clarification if they need one.
>
>  Yes and your point here is as to Translation systems??

Merely that in bylaws, as in laws, one starts by defining one's terms so there can be no misunderstandings. Having such definitions in our bylaws would ensure that whoever (or whatever?) performs our translations understood exactly what was meant and could therefore translate them well.

>  There are nine major dialects of Chinese.  We would need all nine I >think..
>The differences are significant enough as to do so IMHO...

I'm no Sinologist myself but most organizations and companies find it sufficient to provide Standard (Mandarin) and Simplified Chinese for written materials. It is my understanding that all dialects are written with the same characters although the spoken dialects are not mutually intelligible.
Still, if we get volunteers from Szechuan and Canton, I'm sure we'd be happy  to post their versions, too.

>> Apples and oranges, Jeff. We were talking about documents that represent an international organization, not quick e-mail messages and forum postings by individuals.
>
>  No not apple's and oranges at all.  Rather an expression of am example
>to you previous point as it relates to people in the real world and what is
>feasible and comparable to what is practical...

It is both feasible and practical to hold to best practices rather than assume "good enough" in the commercial sense will do. Especially if we hope to involve people from other language groups in a collective effort.

>> [me] Whether a translation was produced by a human, a program or a combination of the two, the time to proofread it is roughly the same.
>
>  I don't see how you could say that.  I have done it many many times myself.
>And it has been my experience that the use of a good translator save me
>at least 60% of the time a purely human translation would when proofreading
>them.
>
>> [me again] Proofreading is the final stage of the process, where the text is checked letter-by-letter and any last-minute formatting errors are caught before the material is published.

Please re-read what I said. Letter-by-letter checking and verifying font changes and heading levels takes precisely the same time for a given length of text ... unless it is riddled with careless mistakes that should have been caught by the translator or editor. If that's what your "GOOD Translation facilties" have been giving you, I think you're sorely mistaken about how good they are. Which brings me to...

>  Proofreading is an adjunct to, not a substitute for, editing which is scrutinizing meaning and style as well as form, and which in the case of translation usually involves careful checking of the translated text against the original version.
>
>  That's right.  Your point is here as related to Translators???

Obviously, that any professional translator should be turning in near-perfect copy --at least 98-99% correct. If it will be edited by others, they will be judging the translator by the quality of what he or she hands in so one tries to meet the same standard anyway in the text and doesn't worry about proofing the font changes and heading styles since the editor should catch them. 

>> But "JUST intelligible" isn't good enough for an international association that hopes to be taken seriously, and it's certainly grossly inadequate for am organization which hopes to form a credible international democratic institution with input into policy decisions.
>
>  Well here we in part disagree.  What is the MOST important is that we
>reach the ability and capability quickly that we can even perform >"intelligible" translations in as many languages with a few >"Regionalism's".  Our longer term goal can, and I think should be as you >suggest, to be more than "just intelligible" in our translations of our >documents.  But first we must crawl before we can walk in this area, as in >many others...

Some of us would emphatically disagree that we should be producing speedy translations and postponing the good ones to some future time. Nor do I think our organization is obliged to start with inadequate translations because we're new to the business -- we can as easily make sure the translations are done by people who already have experience in this field.

It's as well to remember that at least at first, our future members and the existing organizations with which we'd like to establish relationships will be "meeting" us by means of those written materials -- we'll have no big advertising campaign, no sales force to call on them in person or by telephone, few opporttunities to participate in exhibitions, etc. Our primary tool for reaching Internet users is over the Internet, which means making the right first impression *in writing* if we want them to read on and become involved.

>  Just doing an adequate job in most countries except France and French
>Canada, is normally and in my 23 years of experience more then good enough.
>I remember in 1962 when Than President Kennedy went to Germany, and
>in Berlin said in German "I am a Berliner"...  The German people and many
>german based international companies loved him for it, and near to this
>day have many in germany forgotten him and what he was trying to convey
>by speaking in their language...

I guess you didn't see the field-day the political cartoonists had with this event. Poor Kennedy was trying to say "In my heart, I'm a citizen of Berlin, too" but what most of his German-speaking audience actually *heard* was the President of the United States proclaiming proudly that he was a doughnut!

>> >  Yes such minor mistakes in the use of language can cause such problems.  >But those instances are rare...
>>
>> I only wish they were ... and so do the many people whose marketing campaigns failed.
>
>  Well they are rare, very rare as compared to those marketing campaign's that
>most of the Advertising agencies I have worked with have conveyed to me,
>have expressed when I query them on this subject area.

The really ridiculous ones like that are rare -- fortunately for politicians as well as ad agency staff, and unfortunately for those of us who would rather laugh than cry over intercultural screwups. 

In my wicked youth, I spent about five years in the ad biz myself so the obvious question that springs to mind is "Why would you expect advertising people -- who lie for a living and have all the job-security of a snowball in H**l if a client doesn't get the right results from a campaign -- to admit how often a product vanishes from a foreign market because people would rather mock it than buy it?"

Of course, there are some good advertising agencies, too, and they proceed with caution. They don't hand their translations off to the lowest bidder or assume "good enough" is really good enough. They survey, test-market, run focus groups, etc. to make sure they've got all the nuances right first, THEN they run the ads.

The advertising materials I've worked on have been mostly for use within Canada -- often for American companies which realized that the ads had to be adjusted for the Canadian and Quebec markets. Food products often do a special run with extra sugar for the Quebec market. For some products, we shoot substantially the same TV commercial in English and French; for others, it's necessary to do completely different ads to get the same idea across in both languages, Part of translation is knowing how to say what you want to say, but the other part is understanding how the recipient of the message will interpret it and feel about it.

Politics (of any kind) aren't that different. They're about communicating exactly the right message. The United States is just beginning to understand the sad fact that they should not have laid off all those Farsi and Pashto translators to save money since "they're all Arabs anyway" simply isn't true. It still doesn't always understand "think first, THEN act" -- for example, that airdropping Pop-Tarts and Peanut-butter Snak-Paks in waterproof yellow wrappers on people who have undergone aerial bombardment and don't recognize that the stuff is meant to be edible rather than explosive betrays a certain lack of cultural sensitivity.

We may not like it much but what this organization will be doing is mostly politics. We're in the business of formulating messages designed to persuade others to agree with us and join our efforts. They won't if we're too technical or too vague, or too strident or too boring, or... so we have to be careful about what we communicate how and to whom. Many of this group have said repeatedly that our message is substantially "we want open, transparent, democratic governance for the Internet" and I can assure you it will take quite a bit of doing to explain exactly what that means in the languages of countries where nepotism, secrecy and oppressive dictatorship are just "the way things are". For those languages, we don't just need good translators -- we'll need absolutely brilliant ones.

>> [me] I'm not saying it will never happen, or that I wish people would stop trying -- just that even the very best efforts in that direction by the people who devote their lives to the subject (which I don't, obviously) have not yet created a single program which genuinely understands the whole of even one language, let alone two in parallel. If you believe otherwise, so be it.
>
>  Oh yes I do believe otherwise!  And thankfully so I might add!  In fact I >know otherwise.

Well, Jeff, I'll ask once again: would you **please** tell us about this miraculous program and what system it runs on. None of the many translation discussion lists or Web sites I've seen knows about it and even Google failed me (first time ever!) when I tried to locate something about it. 

If they've really got a program that *comprehends* what it translates, requires minimal pre-processing, and can come up to 80% accuracy in translation between the language pairs we need (e.g., both to and from English for each language, since we'll need to understand what people say to us, too), I would suggest 
a) that Item 1 on our very first budget should be this program and the equipment needed to run it, and
b) our first step after incorporating should be investigating what grants are available for translations of this kind so as to cover those costs.

Regards,

Judyth

... and yes, folks, this really is my last word on the subject unless somebody else has a question or comment. Here's a newsflash about Trados, one of the Translation Memory programs Jeff claims are useless:

TRADOS Partners With Top Defense Firm 

TRADOS Corporation today announced that it has committed to leveraging 
the TRADOS language platform for defense and national security purposes. 

TRADOS is teaming with the noted firm of Technology Strategies & 
Alliances (TSA), headed by Admiral David Jeremiah, former Vice Chairman 
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to provide software products and related 
services to the Federal Government. 

The company believes that its innovative technology and depth of 
knowledge for efficiently and quickly translating foreign language 
materials will enhance and accelerate the ability of US intelligence and 
military services to understand and analyze information essential to 
national defense. 

Peter Erfurt
Moderator
The TransPayment list

... while this "pearl of translation" may interest those of you who know French, since it comes from a real product from a real American company which evidently believes in "good enough":

Nasoya

Soy-based Sandwich Spread
Soya ý Tartiner

A Cholesterol-Free Food
Une Nourriture sans Cholesterol

MANUFACTURED AND DISTRIBUTED BY
CONSTRUIT ET DISTRIBUŠ PAR

VITASOY USA
S. SAN FRANCISCO
CA 94080
USA / Š.-U.
www.vitasoy-usa.com


##########################################################
Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
##########################################################
My apologies if you are receiving this late - I've been
exceptionally busy this week and fell behind with e-mail.
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