Electronic Tools for Translators

Frank Austermuhl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317641919
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Electronic Tools for Translators offers complete explanations of a wide range of software products, information resources and online services that translators now need to understand and use. Individual chapters run through the origins and nature of the internet, the many ways of searching for information, and translation resources on the web, CD-ROMs as information sources, computer-assisted terminology management, the use and construction of corpora, translation memories, localization tools, and the incorporation of machine translation programmes into the translation process.

Austermühl explains all these tools and resources in a clear, step-by-step way, suggesting learning tasks and activities for each chapter and guiding the reader through the jargon. Examples are drawn from English, French, German and Spanish. The book can be used as a text in regular classes on computer-assisted translation, in translation practice classes, as well as for self-learning by professionals wishing to update their skills.

1. Translation in the information age

Perhaps more than other professionals, translators are feeling the long-term changes brought about by the information age. The snowballing acceleration of available information, the increase in intercultural encounters, and the continuing virtualization of private and business life have resulted in drastic and lasting changes in the way translators work.

The main task of translation – the transfer of technical and cultural information – can now only be achieved through the use of extensive knowledge bases. As a knowledge-based activity, translation requires new strategies and a paradigm shift in methodology. This shift must embrace practice, teaching and research.

The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with guidelines on how to incorporate electronic language resources into the translation process. This first chapter will describe the socio-economic background against which the use of computerized translation aids has to be seen. A new model for the integration and evaluation of electronic translation tools will then be introduced.

This chapter has the following general goals:

• to explain why translation, as a by-product of the information age and globalization, has become a computer-based activity;

• to describe the types of electronic tools available, the degrees to which they make the translation process automatic, and their functions within the translation process;

• to present a model of translation that can be used as a guide to the integration of electronic translation tools into translator training.

When reading this book, please bear in mind that the term ‘electronic translation tools’ does not refer exclusively to machine translation (MT). MT systems are only one of many kinds of translation tools. Indeed, since MT systems neglect the communicative, cultural and encyclopedic dimensions of translation, it is questionable whether they really provide ‘translation’ at all.

It is also important to understand that the tools demonstrated in this book are not replacements for human translation. There is no such thing as a computer-aided cure-all that will make a poor translator into a good one. However, used properly, the right tools can help good translators improve the efficiency and quality of their work. Indeed, quality is the primary yardstick for assessing electronic translation tools.

The need for electronic tools

Readers might ask themselves the following basic questions: First, as translators and cultural-linguistic mediators, do we need tools to assist us in our tasks? And if so, do those tools need to be electronic? Instead of answering these questions immediately, I would like to set the stage by describing one of the contexts in which translation is currently being carried out. It is a context characterized by globalization, specialization and digitization.

Globalization

Globalization: What happens when the degree of global human interaction increases to such an extent that both its primary effects and the reactions it provokes give rise to numerous new developments. General globalization is caused on three basic levels: technological globalization, political globalization and economic globalization. The three levels initiate a process in which geographical distance is diminished as a factor in the establishment and maintenance of border-crossing in long-distance economic, political and socio-cultural relations.(http://www.globalize.org/lexicon.asp?term=globalization)

The concept of globalization entails another crucial question, one that might make the entire translation profession obsolete: Do we, as citizens of the ‘global village’, really need translation at all? Why bother with 4,000 to 6,000 different languages if we can make do with only one, namely English? After all, English is the dominant language in international politics, business, technology, science, education, aviation, seafaring, etc. It is the lingua franca of the global market economy, especially in the field of business–to–business communication. For example, 80 percent of all business transactions in Denmark are carried out in English (Lockwood 1998:16). International business negotiations and contract talks among non-native English speakers from Algeria and Germany are conducted in English. The importance of English as a promoter of economic growth is further demonstrated by the fact that within the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), English-speaking countries receive three times as much foreign direct investment as those where English is not the official language (Mai & Wettach 1999:130). Globally, many large corporations have adopted English as their official language. About 85 percent of international organizations use English as their working language. In Europe, 99 percent of all international organizations have English as one of their official languages (Mai & Wettach 1999:130). The world of technology, too, is heavily influenced by English, or more accurately by its American variety. Roughly 80 percent of the contents of the 1 billion Internet pages on the web at the time of writing are in English. Almost 60 percent of all Internet users are native speakers of English. The lion’s share of the 8,000 online databases currently available is taken by information in the English language. The global scientific community, as another example, is even more monolingual. About 90 percent of all scientific publications are written in English (ibid.:130). Some 98 percent of all German physicists publish their findings in English, while 83 percent of their colleagues in the field of chemistry do the same. Even in France, two-thirds of scientists use English to communicate research results to a global audience (Raeithel 1999:1). Publications in German or French make up less than 3 percent of the total global number of scientific publications (http://www.br-online.de/bildung/deutsch2000/05_publikationen.html). The majority of Nobel Prizes go to laureates who are citizens of countries where English is the official language, and English is the default language for international scientific conferences, no matter where they take place or what their specific topics are.

So is English ringing the death knell for the rest of the world’s languages? Is ‘linguicide’ in sight? Will the vision of a monolingual world lead to the end of translation?

Well, for the moment at least, the answer is no. Most notably, the European Union stands as one of the few bastions against linguistic uniformity, granting each of its current 15 member states the privilege of using their state languages to conduct their official business within EU institutions. This institutionalized multilingualism is made possible by the work of about 4,000 in-house translators, interpreters and terminologists, and many more freelancers. Each additional official language increases the demand by 250 to 300 linguists (Stoll 1999:17). With 11 official languages and 110 possible language-pair combinations, it is not surprising that in 1997 2 billion euros were spent on translation (including interpretation and terminology work). This does not include the more than 200,000 pages channelled through the EC-Systran MT system each year (European Commission 1999:16). With a possible expansion of the EU by as many as 12 new members and the integration of anywhere between 6 to 10 new languages, the number of combinations would increase exponentially, resulting in 420 combinations for 21 languages. Nevertheless, most of the expansion talks with future EU candidates are being conducted in English. Perhaps the EU will not be the sole saviour of translation.

Beyond political institutions, economic reasons may well contribute to keeping translators in business. This is because knowledge of foreign languages is not as widespread as one might assume. Only 28 percent of German executives, for example, consider their English skills to be very good. Nor is insecurity in English usage limited to the business sector. According to a 1999 study, about one in four German university professors would refrain from attending a conference if English were the sole working language (Mai & Wettach 1999:132). The increasingly multilingual nature of the business world can be explained to a large extent by the simple and ancient trading axiom that clients will only buy in their own language. For sellers, this implies the need to speak the language of the customer and to adapt their conduct and products to the specific characteristics of the local market. The globalized economy means that businesses are trying to sell the same goods – from iMacs to Eastpacks to Big Macs – in every corner of the world. This requires traders to accommodate their marketing and selling strategies to local idiosyncrasies. Globalization thus automatically entails localization, as is expressed in the term glocalization and slogans such as ‘Think globally, act locally’.

A powerful catalyst for translation has thus been created by the rapid internationalization of markets, particularly by the need to localize not only products but also the methods of designing, producing, marketing and distribution.

The growing demand for translation

The increase in cross-border communications, intensified international competition and stricter product-related regulations have led to the rapid growth of international demand for translation. The German translation market, for example, has been experiencing a steady 14 percent annual increase for several years. Currently, the total annual translation demand from German businesses amounts to 30 million pages (http://dsb.uni-leipzig.de/~xlatio/FALT.HTM).

In 1997, the EU-funded ASSIM study estimated the total turnover of the translation markets of 18 member states of the European Union and the European Economic Area (EEA) to be 3.75 billion euros, with software, audio-visual and multimedia translations constituting 20 percent of the total turnover. According to that study, the total number of in-house and external translators exceeds 100,000 (http://www.hltcentral.org/usr_docs/project-source/Assim/Assim-EN.doc). The global translation market, encompassing human and machine translation as well as software and website localization, is expected to grow from over US$10.4 billion in 1999 to close to US$17.2 billion in 2003, according to a study by Allied Business Intelligence (http://www.theinfoshop.com/study/ab3365_languagetranslation.html).

The mushrooming of the electronic market will have a huge effect on the translation industry. In particular, the growing demand for the translation of websites and other forms of multimedia texts (e.g. for DVD productions) will add to this development. By 2002, transactions over the Internet will be worth more than US$400 billion (Gantz 1998). The demand for software localization will further contribute to the expansion of the industry. It is estimated that between 1994 and 1997, translation services underwent a growth rate of 55 percent and now have growth rates of up to 20 percent. However, note that between 1994 and 1997 employment among translators only rose by 18 percent (ASSIM 1997).

This increase in demand results from the development of the Internet from an English-only medium to an international platform for communication and information. Non-English speakers are the fastest growing group of new Internet users, with a rapidly growing interest in non-English sites as the Net becomes genuinely multilingual. Websites in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Chinese and Scandinavian languages are showing the strongest growth rates. It is estimated that although 57.4 percent of Internet users were based in English-speaking countries in 1999, this figure will drop to 43 percent by 2005. Growth rates in the number of Internet users in non-English-speaking countries are already much higher than in English-speaking countries. While the number of English-speaking Internet users is expected to rise by 60 percent over the next six years, the number of non-English-speaking users is expected to increase by 150 percent. At the same time, it is estimated that the total number of Internet users worldwide will increase from 171 million in 1999 to 345 million in 2005. This will lead to a growing number of multilingual sites and thus to a growing demand for website translation.

Part of this increase in translation demand will be absorbed by more sophisticated methods of machine-aided translation. Also, owing to international competition, translation pay-rates might be expected to stagnate or even decline in the future. Nevertheless, globalization is definitively promoting the demand for translations and translators. This is also confirmed by the increasing number of translation programmes in universities worldwide. In Europe alone, there are about 80,000 students in 150 institutions studying translation on the level of higher education (ASSIM 1997). For an updated list of translator training institutions, see Anthony Pym’s page at http://www.fut.es/~apym/tti/tti.htm (see also (see also Snell-Hornby 1998 and Pym 1998).

Digitization, automation and their impact on the translation market

Automation: The application of machines to tasks once performed by human beings or, increasingly, to tasks that would otherwise be impossible. […]. Automation has revolutionized those areas in which it has been introduced, and there is scarcely an aspect of modern life that has been unaffected by it. (Encyclopaedia Britannica CD 2000)

Digitize: Function: transitive verb Inflected Form(s): -tized; -tiz·ing Date: 1953 to convert (as data or an image) to digital form dig·i·ti·za·tion noun dig·i·tiz·er noun (Oxford English Dictionary)

In addition to the developments in international competition and the expansion of the Internet, a further reason for the growing aut...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• How to use this book
• 1. Translation in the information age
• 2. Translator–client communication and information transfer
• 3. Translation and the Internet
• 4. Searching the web
• 5. Translation resources on the worldwide web
• 6. The world on a disk – Translation resources on CD-ROM
• 7. Computer-assisted terminology management
• 8. Corpora as translation tools
• 9. Déjà Vu?- Translation memories and localization tools
• 10. A translator’s sword of Damocles?
• Glossary
• References
• Index