Preparing a TM of potential translations
Thread poster: Brent Sørensen
Brent Sørensen
Brent Sørensen  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 18:07
Member (2016)
German to English
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Feb 14, 2020

Every once and a while, I have a slow day or two where I don't have much translation work. I try and use this time to do think of new ways to improve my translation efficiency.

I thought it could be a good idea to translate some "potential" sentences and add them to a TM to save time later on. I'm just not quite sure how to go about this. Is there any way to acquire a list of commonly used sentences and phrases for a particular language?


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 18:07
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Rather create glossaries Feb 14, 2020

Brent Sørensen wrote:
I thought it could be a good idea to translate some "potential" sentences and add them to a TM to save time later on.


Well, if we look at how many segments you use more than once across different jobs, it should be obvious that the odds of such an advance translated sentence appearing as a fuzzy match in any future translation job are very, very low. If you want to spend time doing translation-related work on speculation, I suggest you create glossaries by working your way through reference materials. This will, at least, help you to learn more about the subject fields that you want to work in.


Gerard de Noord
esperantisto
Sandra & Kenneth Grossman
Kevin Fulton
Sheila Wilson
Philippe Etienne
Tina Vonhof (X)
 
Philippe Etienne
Philippe Etienne  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 18:07
Member
English to French
What's common? Feb 14, 2020

By purpose, the really "common" translations are already somewhere in your TMs. Or 100% matches.

Adding to Samuel's post, there are dedicated programs that could mine through a pile of your source texts in a given area to extract a list of relevant e.g. one-, two-, three- and four-word phrases that are repeatedly found in your line of work. Not sure it would be worth the trouble though, as these programs often mean you have to sift through a lot of rubbish. And they cost money.
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By purpose, the really "common" translations are already somewhere in your TMs. Or 100% matches.

Adding to Samuel's post, there are dedicated programs that could mine through a pile of your source texts in a given area to extract a list of relevant e.g. one-, two-, three- and four-word phrases that are repeatedly found in your line of work. Not sure it would be worth the trouble though, as these programs often mean you have to sift through a lot of rubbish. And they cost money.

Another (and more pleasant) way to improve translation efficiency when you're idle is to go out for walks - or run away from screens -, eat good food, sleep well and exercise!

Philippe
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Robin LEPLUMEY
Oriana Bonan
 
Multiverse Solutions s.r.o. (X)
Multiverse Solutions s.r.o. (X)
Local time: 18:07
Polish to English
+ ...
Glossary is more important Feb 17, 2020

The simple way is to rely on automation. You will save loads of time. Chances are, you will populate your TM and GLO files with rubbish. Smart rubbish is disguised as professionally sounding phrases. Stupid rubbish means uncorrected linguistic errors. Ultra rubbish means mismatches.

You can also manually (or mentally) comb through your files, re-translate when possible, and correct all doubtful or makeover translations. And use the 100% perfect, clean translation to generate 'Approv
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The simple way is to rely on automation. You will save loads of time. Chances are, you will populate your TM and GLO files with rubbish. Smart rubbish is disguised as professionally sounding phrases. Stupid rubbish means uncorrected linguistic errors. Ultra rubbish means mismatches.

You can also manually (or mentally) comb through your files, re-translate when possible, and correct all doubtful or makeover translations. And use the 100% perfect, clean translation to generate 'Approved' TM or glossary. If you go this way, you will learn a lot about the subject matter - for which typically there is no time when processing actual orders.

By the way, it is a common misconception that TM is the golden key to translation. TM is the record of your work, not the source of language re-use. Except when you work with highly repetitive texts from the same authors (provided that they follow strict grammar rules).

Fast 'alignment' appear attractive, generating trillions of TUs in a nanosecond. But how often will you really come across identical segments?

On the other hand, GLOssary is made up of actual building blocks of the language. Nicely developed, verified and approved glossary will save you time, effort, or embarrassment, if you are new to the field of the customer.

As an example: I have a customer (lawyers) who produces literally dozens of legalese pages every day. Due to the intricacies of legal terms, translation is always slow and rarely crosses the 400 wph speed. However, once I decided to extract glossary pairs from old translations for this customer. It took me three full days to come up with a decent glossary. Since then, translations for this customer are routinely finished at about 1600 wph. Including quality checkup and 100% legal terminology matching.
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Preparing a TM of potential translations







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