RE: translation

As a former translator, I would not recommend using Google online
translation software to start a translation.  In my opinion it is more
likely to introduce errors than to speed things up.  
 
In a former life I used to project manage work with Systran when Xerox was
sponsoring the development of new MT language pairs, and part of my role was
to test the effectiveness of the translations.  We found that once you got
beyond a certain level of language complexity or left behind controlled
English source authoring, the editing required to fix up even reasonably
good automated translations took longer than it would take a translator to
create the translation from scratch.  In addition, not all the
idiosynchrasies of the machine-generated translation get worked out during
editing.  A translator working from scratch never puts those in.
 
What is useful, on the other hand, is to be able to quickly substitute
technical terms from a pre-validated list.  Whether dealing with automated
translation or not, you will probably do well to develop a list of
domain-specific and organization-specific terminology, and validate it with
your in-country contacts.
 
Richard.
 
 
PS: I hope that no-one is translating W3C documents using this
machine-translate and proof method.  I don't think it's appropriate to call
those translations unless you clearly provide a disclaimer that indicates
the method you used, and invites replacement by a proper translation, if
someone is willing to provide it.
 
 

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/blog/
http://rishida.net/




 


  _____  

From: w3c-translators-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-translators-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of CE Whitehead
Sent: 03 January 2008 20:51
To: mkivo1@comcast.net
Cc: w3c-translators@w3.org; site-comments@w3.org
Subject: RE: translation




Hi, maybe try google's online translation software to get a rough
translation, and then send the results of thatwith the original document(s)
to anyone you can find to proof them (searching for translators you should
find a few companies that provide translators for fees).
 
That's all I can think.
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Please see this FAQ question:
> http://www.w3.org/Help/Webmaster.html#source
> 
> W3C is not involved with this site; W3C produces the XHTML
> standard, which is what you found in the HTML source for that page.
> 
> _ Ian
> 
> On Wed, 2008-01-02 at 10:44 -0600, Monte K wrote:
> > I’m having a website built that I need a language selection for
> > several different Countries.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > I noticed a site that was using what appeared to be a translation
> > script from your web address:
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > http://www.idealshippingltd.com/
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Is this a translation script? As I’m having trouble finding someone
> > that can do a translation into different languages.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Mikhail
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> -- 
> Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org) http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
> Tel: +1 718 260-9447