Computer-assisted translation

Computer-assisted translation, computer-aided translation or CAT is a form of language translation in which a human translator uses computer software to support and facilitate the translation process.

Computer-assisted translation is sometimes called machine-assisted, or machine-aided, translation (not to be confused with machine translation).

Overview

The automatic machine translation systems available today are not able to produce high-quality translations unaided: their output must be edited by a human to correct errors and improve the quality of translation. Computer-assisted translation (CAT) incorporates that manual editing stage into the software, making translation an interactive process between human and computer.^[1]

Some advanced computer-assisted translation solutions include controlled machine translation (MT). Higher priced MT modules generally provide a more complex set of tools available to the translator, which may include terminology management features and various other linguistic tools and utilities. Carefully customized user dictionaries based on correct terminology significantly improve the accuracy of MT, and as a result, aim at increasing the efficiency of the entire translation process.

Range of tools

Computer-assisted translation is a broad and imprecise term covering a range of tools, from the fairly simple to the complicated. These can include:

• Spell checkers, either built into word processing software, or add-on programs
• Grammar checkers, again either built into word processing software, or add-on programs
• Terminology managers, which allow translators to manage their own terminology bank in an electronic form. This can range from a simple table created in the translator's word processing software or spreadsheet, a database created in a program such as FileMaker Pro or, for more robust (and more expensive) solutions, specialized software packages such as SDL MultiTerm, LogiTerm, Termex, etc.
• Electronic dictionaries, either unilingual or bilingual
• Terminology databases, either on the host computer or accessible through the Internet, such as TERMIUM Plus or Grand dictionnaire terminologique from the Office québécois de la langue française
• Full-text search tools (or indexers), which allow the user to query already translated texts or reference documents of various kinds. Some such indexers are ISYS Search Software, dtSearch Desktop and Naturel
• Concordancers, which are programs that retrieve instances of a word or an expression and their respective context in a monolingual, bilingual or multilingual corpus, such as a bitext or a translation memory
• Bitext aligners: tools that align a source text and its translation which can then be analyzed using a full-text search tool or a concordancer
• Project management software that allows linguists to structure complex translation projects, assign the various tasks to different people, and track the progress of each of these tasks
• Translation memory tools (TM tools), consisting of a database of text segments in a source language and their translations in one or more target languages.

Concepts

Translation memory software

Translation memory programs store previously translated source texts and their equivalent target texts in a database and retrieve related segments during the translation of new texts.

Such programs split the source text into manageable units known as "segments". A source-text sentence or sentence-like unit (headings, titles or elements in a list) may be considered a segment, or texts may be segmented into larger units such as paragraphs or small ones, such as clauses. As the translator works through a document, the software displays each source segment in turn and provides a previous translation for re-use, if the program finds a matching source segment in its database. If it does not, the program allows the translator to enter a translation for the new segment. After the translation for a segment is completed, the program stores the new translation and moves on to the next segment. In the dominant paradigm, the translation memory, in principle, is a simple database of fields containing the source language segment, the translation of the segment, and other information such as segment creation date, last access, translator name, and so on. Another translation memory approach does not involve the creation of a database, relying on aligned reference documents instead.

Some translation memory programs function as standalone environments, while others function as an add-on or macro to commercially available word-processing or other business software programs. Add-on programs allow source documents from other formats, such as desktop publishing files, spreadsheets, or HTML code, to be handled using the TM program.

Language search-engine software

New to the translation industry, Language search-engine software is typically an Internet-based system that works similarly to Internet search engines. Rather than searching the Internet, however, a language search engine searches a large repository of Translation Memories to find previously translated sentence fragments, phrases, whole sentences, even complete paragraphs that match source document segments.

Language search engines are designed to leverage modern search technology to conduct searches based on the source words in context to ensure that the search results match the meaning of the source segments. Like traditional TM tools, the value of a language search engine rests heavily on the Translation Memory repository it searches against.

Terminology management software

Terminology management software provides the translator a means of automatically searching a given terminology database for terms appearing in a document, either by automatically displaying terms in the translation memory software interface window or through the use of hot keys to view the entry in the terminology database. Some programs have other hotkey combinations allowing the translator to add new terminology pairs to the terminology database on the fly during translation. Some of the more advanced systems enable translators to check, either interactively or in batch mode, if the correct source/target term combination has been used within and across the translation memory segments in a given project. Independent terminology management systems also exist that can provide workflow functionality, visual taxonomy, work as a type of term checker (similar to spell checker, terms that have not been used correctly are flagged) and can support other types of multilingual term facet classifications such as pictures, videos, or sound.^[2]

Alignment software

Alignment programs take completed translations, divide both source and target texts into segments, and attempt to determine which segments belong together in order to build a translation memory or other reference resource with the content. Many alignment programs allow translators to manually realign mismatched segments. The resulting bitext alignment can then be imported into a translation memory program for future translations or used as a reference document.

Interactive machine translation

Interactive machine translation is a paradigm in which the automatic system attempts to predict the translation the human translator is going to produce by suggesting translation hypotheses. These hypotheses may either be the complete sentence, or the part of the sentence that is yet to be translated.

Crowd translation

Crowd-assisted translation refers to employing large numbers of bilingual human translators who collaborate via social media. When Facebook needed to translate a large body of existing English language text on its graphical user interfaces, the company made use of the voluntary help of its already-existing bilingual user base, organized by Yishan Wong.

Some notable CAT tools

The list below includes only some of the existent and available software. It is not exhaustive and is only intended to be taken as example, not as a complete reference. Several relevant tools are missing in the list.

Name	Supported File Formats	OS	Language	Widget tool	License
Across Language Server[3]	Microsoft Word (DOC, DOT, DOCX, and DOCM files), Microsoft Excel (XLS files, and XLSX and XLSM files), Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT and PPS files as well as PPTX, PPSX, and PPTM files), Rich Text Format1 (RTF files), text files (TXT files), TeX (TEX files), HTML, XHTML, XML, SGML, Adobe FrameMaker (in MIF format), Adobe InDesign (IDML files, in INX exchange format) Adobe InCopy (INCX format), BroadVision QuickSilver (ILDOC files), QuarkXPress (export to XTG format, re-import upon translation), Executable files (EXE files); Dynamic Link Library (DLL files), Resource Script files (RC, RC2, and DLL files), .NET RESX files (RESX files), .NET RESOURCE files (RESOURCE files), .NET Satellite Assemblies (RESOURCE.DLL files), Windows Installer (MSI files), configuration files (INI files), OLE Control, extensions (OCX files), Screen Saver (SCR files), Control Panel Extensions (CPL files), National Language Support (NLS files, Portable Object (PO files), MC files (Message Compiler), PROPERTIES files (Java Property), Android: (string XML files with HTML markup), iOS (text-based strings files (UTF-8 or UTF-16)), BlackBerry (ANSI-based text files in rrc format), XML Localization Interchange (XLIFF or XLF), Drawing Interchange Format (DXF files)	Windows			Proprietary
Déjà Vu[4]	Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, also embedded objects, and Access), Help Contents (CNT), FrameMaker (MIF), PageMaker, QuarkXPress, QuickSilver/Interleaf ASCII, Java Properties (.properties), HTML, HTML Help, XML, RC, C/Java/C++, IBM TM/2, Trados Workbench, Trados BIF (old TagEditor), Trados TagEditor, JavaScript, VBScript, ODBC, TMX, EBU, InDesign (TXT, ITD, INX, IDML), GNU GetText (PO/POT), OpenOffice, OpenDocument SDLX (ITD), ResX, XLIFF (XLF, XLIF, XLIFF, MQXLIFF, unsegmented and segmented SDLXLIFF), Visio (VDX), PDF, Transit NXT PPF, WordFast Pro TXML	Windows			Proprietary
GlobalSight	Text ANSI / ASCII / Unicode for Windows, Text for Apple Macintosh, HTML, XML (ASP.NET, ASP, JSP, XSL), SGML, MS Word for Windows, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, RTF, RC, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe InDesign	Java platform / Java			Apache License 2.0
gtranslator	PO	POSIX	C	GTK+	GNU General Public License
Lokalize	Gettext PO, Qt ts, XLIFF, TMX	Cross-platform	C++	Qt	GNU General Public License
MateCat	doc, dot, docx, dotx, docm, dotm, pdf, xls, xlt, xlsm, xlsx, xltx, pot, pps, ppt, potm, potx, ppsm, ppsx, pptm,pptx, odp, ods, odt, sxw, sxc, sxl, txt, csv, xml, rtf, htm, html, xhtml, xml, xliff, sdlxliff, tmx, ttx, itd, xlf, mif, inx, idml, icml, xtg, tag, xml, dita, properties, rc, resx, sgml, sgm	web based (supports Safari and Chrome)	PHP		GNU Lesser General Public License
Redokun	Adobe InDesign (IDML files)	Cross-platform			Proprietary
memoQ[5]	.MIF, InDesign formats (.INDD, .INX, .IDML), .XML, .DITA, .XML, .MM, .PO, .HTML, .HMT, .SHT, .properties, .DOC, .RTF, .BAK, .DOT, .DOCX, .XLS, .XML, .XLSX, .XLSM, .XLS, .XLT, .PPT, .PPS, .POT, .PPF, .PPTX, .PPSX, .POTX, .SLDX, .VDX, .HHC, .HHK, .ODT, .ODF, .TXT, .INF, .INI, .REG, .PDF, .SVG, .SDLPPX, .TTX, .SDLXLIFF, .TMX, .TXML, .RESX, .XLF, .XLIF, .XLIFF, XLIFF:doc	Windows			Proprietary
Memsource	.doc, .docx, .dot, .dotx, .docm, .dotm, .rtf, .ppt, .pptx, .pot, .potx, .pptm, .potm, .xls, .xlsx, .xlt, .xltx, .xlsm, .xltm, .htm, .html, .idml (.indd), .icml, .mif (version 8 and above only), .svg, .ttx (pre-segmented), .sdlxliff, .xml, .xhtm, .xhtml, Android .xml, .xliff, .xliff for WordPress, tmx, .dita, .ditamap, .pdf, .catkeys, .csv, (Magento).csv, .dbk, .desktop, (Mozilla).DTD, .epub, (Joomla).ini, .json, .lang, .Plist, .po, .properties, (Java).properties, .resx, .srt, .strings, .sub, .ts, .txt, .wiki, .yaml, .zip	Web, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux			Proprietary
MetaTexis	Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, all kinds of text formats, XML, HTML, XLIFF, RTF, TRADOS Studio (SDLXLIFF), TagEditor (TTX), POT/PO, Manual Maker, several further formats...	Microsoft Office Word add-in			Proprietary
OmegaT	Plain text, HTML, XHTML, StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, OpenDocument (ODF), MS Office Open XML, Help & Manual, HTML Help Compiler (HCC), LaTeX, DokuWiki, QuarkXPress CopyFlow Gold, DocBook, Android Resource, Java Properties, Typo3 LocManager, Mozilla DTD, Windows RC, WiX, ResX, INI files, XLIFF, PO, SubRip Subtitles, SVG Images	Java platform / Java			GNU General Public License
Open Language Tools	XLIFF, HTML/XHTML, XML, DocBook SGML, ASCII, StarOffice/OpenOffice/ODF, PO, .properties, .java (ResourceBundle), .msg/.tmsg (catgets)	Java platform / Java			CDDL
Poedit	PO	Cross-platform	C++	GTK+	MIT License
Pootle	PO, XLIFF, OpenOffice GSI files (.sdf), TMX, TBX, Java Properties, DTD, CSV, HTML, XHTML, Plain Text	Cross-platform	Python	Web	GNU General Public License
SDL Trados	Features four translation environments: dedicated TagEditor, MSWord Interface, SDLX, the integrated interface SDL Trados Studio 2014. Filters for translating with Trados Studio or TagEditor available: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenOffice, InDesign, QuarkXPress, PageMaker, Interleaf, Framemaker, HTML, SGML, XML, SVG, Xliff, Legacy Trados files TTX, ITD, Word Bilingual, Wordfast, MemoQ .... Includes SDL MultiTerm for terminology management and Project Management Dashboard for automating tasks and tracking.	Windows			Proprietary
SmartCAT	Text documents: DOCX, DOC, TXT, RTF. PowerPoint presentations: PPTX, PPSX, PPT, PPS. Excel spreadsheets: XLSX, XLS. Scanned documents and images: PDF, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PNG, GIF, DJVU and more. HTML pages: HTML, HTM. OpenOffice files: ODP, ODS. Resource files: RESX. Bilingual files: TTX. Industry-standard formats: SDLXLIFF, XLF, XLIFF, TMX. HTML pages: HTML, HTM. InDesign CS4 Markup: IDML.	Cross-platform	C#	Web	Proprietary
TM-database	XLIFF, TMX,TBX,TXT, XLSX, XLS, XML, RESX, HTML, HTM, INX, UNI, JS, SMALI, PO, TS, IDML.	Windows	C++		Proprietary
Virtaal	XLIFF, PO and MO, TMX, TBX, Wordfast TM, Qt ts Many others via converters in the Translate Toolkit	Cross-platform	Python	GTK+	GNU General Public License
Wordfast Classic	Microsoft Word, Rich Text...	Microsoft Office Word add-in (Windows / Mac)			Proprietary
Wordfast Pro	MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint (all versions), PDF, SGML, HTML, XML, InDesign, FrameMaker, tagged documents, XLIFF, etc.	Java platform / Java			Proprietary
Xliffie	XLIFF	Mac	Objective-C		MIT License
XTM[6]	Microsoft Office (doc,docx,xls,xlsx, xlsx, ppt,pptx), Microsoft Visio (vdx), Open Office ( sxw, odt, ods, odp ), FrameMaker (MIF), Adobe InDesign ( idml), Adobe Illustrator (fxg, svg), Adobe Photoshop, Wordfast, PDF, Sdf, Svg, Yml, Yalm, iPhone apps ( strings ), Php, Xml, Xhtml, Xht, Xlf, Xliff, Sdlxliff, Trados (ttx) Java Properties (.properties), HTML, HTM, Rtf, Po/pot, DIta, Asp, Aspx, Txt, Tpl, Resx, Ini, Json	Cross-platform			Proprietary

According to a 2006 survey undertaken by Imperial College of 874 translation professionals from 54 countries, primary tool usage was reported as follows: Trados (35%), Wordfast (17%), Déjà Vu (16%), SDL Trados 2006 (15%), SDLX (4%), STAR Transit (3%), OmegaT (3%), others (7%).^[7]

See also

• Computational linguistics
• Computer-assisted reviewing
• Fuzzy matching
• Translation

References

1. Barrachina, Sergio; et al. (2009). "Statistical Approaches to Computer-Assisted Translation" (PDF). Computational Linguistics 35 (1): 3–28. doi:10.1162/coli.2008.07-055-r2-06-29. ISSN 0891-2017.
4. Supported file type reference list for Déjà Vu X3
5. Supported file type reference list for memoQ
6. Supported file type reference list for XTM X1
7. "Imperial College London Translation Memories Survey" (PDF). 2006. pp. 8, 25–6, figure 25. (Permalink)

External links

• Computer Aided Translation at DMOZ
• Machine Translation and Computer-Assisted Translation:a New Way of Translating?