By Sarah-Claire Jordan
We have already come a long way in terms of translation technology since the innovation of the first computer assisted translation (or CAT) software programs. These allowed translators and clients alike to save time and money when dealing with translations related to each other in some way. The advent of the translation memory is probably the most important part of said software, as it allows translators to save and look up entire phrases that have been translated a certain way already, and simply copy and paste that phrase instead of having to translate it all over again.
The amazing thing about translation memories is that, as a translator is working, they can save phrases and words, even entire paragraphs if they want, to be used later by anyone else who has access to the document. Clients and companies can also create their own translation memories with certain translations already uploaded and saved, so translators know which translations to use, in the case of multiple possibilities. Both the source and target texts are saved in the translation memory for future reference.
Another common feature of CAT tools is “interactive machine translation”, which is not the same as regular machine translation. Just with translation memories, it is a feature that depends on human input. Interactive machine translation is a tool that tries to predict what the human translator is going to put as the translation for something. If it gets it wrong, the translator corrects it, and the ITM tries again. This goes on until a correct translation is predicted, and thus the tool learns and can accurately predict some translations in the future.
The latest innovations in translation tools have been translation platforms, which seek to combine CAT tools with machine translation, video translation, and website translation tools, along with search tools that can find more terms faster thanks to big data and the cloud. All of these tools combined, plus some others that are being developed, will create amazingly innovative and efficient translation software that can be used together with similar software in a platform format.
Huge documents will be translated at record speed, with less errors. These same documents will be easily broken down into sections, so that different translators can work on the same document at the same time. The translation tools of the future will allow translators to communicate in real time with others working on the same project. Best of all, access to big data and other sources of almost unlimited information means translation software that can improve itself as it is being used. All of this adds up to translation being a trade that will require less work, less time, and, on the client’s end, less money. As the world continues to globalize, new tools to speed up translation while making it more accurate will help bridge the gap between cultures and languages.