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More than AI, terminology can tell you how something should be translated in the future

Neural machine translation systems offer an opportunity for real progress in the quality of translations produced by machines. However, machine translation still produces unacceptably poor quality content, especially for established brands that (rightly) set a very high bar for their content and brand tone of voice (that can only be set by a good terminology work). 

Given the huge effort underway to vastly improve machine translation, it’ll likely redefine the role of humans in the translation process.
Shouldn't we be looking into ways of making termbases work together with machine translation engines and all the other available CAT-environment tools to contribute quality content? Terminologists need to rise to the challenge of integration with other CAT-environment tools, so that their assets can find their way into the general workflow. This can be achieved only through close cooperation with the developers of technical solutions and by understanding the specific needs of all categories of end user.

Translation memory is already able to facilitate faster human translation, providing translators with words and phrases that have already been translated, but only terminology can tell you how something should be translated in the future. 


Post popolari in questo blog

Differenza tra football e soccer

Perché il calcio viene chiamato in modo diverso da inglesi (football) e americani (soccer)?

I due termini, football e soccer, si usano per indicare lo stesso sport sebbene football sia presente in un maggior numero di lingue con un più alto numero di occorrenze.

Footballrisale a un decreto del 1424 in cui re Giacomo I di Scozia bandiva il gioco con la frase: "That na man play at the Fute-ball".

Nel 1863 viene fondata a Londra la Football Association (FA), la prima federazione calcistica nazionale che unificò definitivamente il regolamento. Queste regole furono adottate da tutti eccetto che dalla Scuola di Rugby, che preferiva un gioco più fisico in cui si potesse toccare il pallone anche con le mani. Si venne a creare cosi il termine soccer, entrato a far parte dello slang universitario comeabbreviazione colloquiale di Assoc., da  Association football+ la formazione agentiva "-er" per distinguerlo dal Rugby Football.



Current Terminology Management Systems: designed to make you think hard

Current TMSs have been developed according to the requirements defined by ISO standards for terminology management systems. Nevertheless, the process of creating a new entry is still very time-consuming. A couple of weeks ago, I have been contacted because of a post I wrote years ago on this blog (I guess they read this: How would a collaborative platform improve terminology work?).  The sender message reads as follows: ‘Dear Maria, I read your blog article and just wanted to let you know we are building the collaborative terminology system you envisioned at the very moment. It would be a pleasure to get in touch to see if you want to test and send some feedback on our current status!’ Well, we scheduled a video call in the following days, during which they showed me the platform in progress and some mockups about a few future features they expected to implement. What I was shown looked very promising indeed - since that old post influenced somebody, I also felt encouraged to write …

Football or soccer, which came first?

With the World Cup underway in Brazil, a lot of people are questioning if we should refer to the "global round-ball game" as "soccer" or "football"? This is visible from the queries of the readers that access my blog. The most visited post ever is indeed “Differenza tra football e soccer” and since we are in the World Cup craze I think this topic is worth a post.

According to a paper published in May by the University of Michigan and written by the sport economist Stefan Szymanski, "soccer" is a not a semantically bizarre American invention but a British import.

Soccer comes from "association football" and the term was used in the UK to distinguish it from rugby football. In countries with other forms of football (USA, Australia) soccer became more generic, basically a synonym for 'football' in the international sense, to distinguish it from their domestic game.﻿

If the word "soccer" originated in England, why did it f…