Machine Translation

Machine translation and Translation software is the same, it is often called by either term.  It is software that performs the process of automatic translation from one natural language to another by a computer.  

When buying translation software (Machine Translation Software) it will help to learn a little more about the technology and what to look for in a good Machine translation package.

SYSTRAN Software is one of the largest and most established Machine Translation companies in the world, and the creator of AltaVista's Babelfish. Babelfish was one of the first online translation tools that made it easy for users to translate text in minutes. You will find many portals online use Systran's translating software for customers to translate text. Systran has been developing Machine Translation Systems for over 30 years and considered the leader in the technology.

Machine Translation Software:

The Systems

The demand for machine translation is growing rapidly with internet the world becoming more of a global market place. Machine translation systems are built around what is referred to as the translation engine. This translation engine uses complex algorithms or set of computer instructions to analyze, parse text and perform the process of translating text.

The first machine translation project was created back in 1954 and with the processing power of computers increasing over the last 20 years you will find it is much more advanced and accurate than it was back then. Machine translation systems just keep getting better. Today's systems feature much higher accuracy, larger dictionaries, faster processing power and advanced tools allow the user to accomplish tasks in less time and more efficiently.

Machine Translation Software

Translate 28  Languages

Systran has been the leader in translation software development for the past 30 years. Systran actually holds patents for their translation engine so no other translation software has these same features. Learn more about Systran Translation Software and which translator will best meet your translation needs. 

Learn more about Systran's  Machine Translation and which  translator will best meet your translation needs.

Learn More About Machine Translation

The heart of machine translation is the translation engine. When you consider buying translating software you should look at the translation engine, this is the heart of the product. Software companies that develop translation software start with the translation engine and then add additional tools and features that make it easier to use and integrate with other products. For example tools such as, larger dictionaries, plug ins for Microsoft Word, Outlook Email, Power Point, Excel, Chat, Website translation on the fly or Web pages, file filters for support for Html, Doc, RTF, PDF and more. These features can be very important for increasing productivity and reducing costs in a business environment.

Machine Translation

Machine Translation Engine - Important Features Explained:

Lexical lookup - Process of looking up terms in the software's dictionary. When choosing language translation software you should look at the number of terms in the dictionary. A good translation software will allow you to add additional terms and phrases. The lack of this feature will limit the ability to increase the accuracy of the translations.

Grammar / Linguistics Analysis - Every language in the world has its own distinct grammar rules. Good machine translation software should be able to look at the grammar and sentence structure to determine the proper translation. Grammar is part of the general study of language called linguistics. Under the heading of grammar a there is a subset of items that are also very important, for example phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.

Semantics based methods - Semantics is the meaning or the interpretation of a word, sentence, or other language form. So good software must be able to perform complex analysis of text in order to convey the proper meaning in the translation results.

Machine Translation Memory Tools - Translators for years have learned that there are many repetitive phrases and sentences in documents they translate. Translation memory tools is really just a large database of text phrases or segments in a source language and their translation into a target language. Basically think of this like a search and replace, if the software sees a phrase that is in the database it can replace it. Many translators use memorization tools to increase productivity and performs repetitive tasks when translating documents. Some translation memory tools attempt only literal matching to retrieve the exact match of a sentence, while others use fuzzy matching algorithms to retrieve similar target language strings, flagging the differences. Some memory tools are more robust than others, some people may prefer a more literal approach while others may want the software to try and perform fuzzy match results.

Good machine translation must have an extensive dictionary, the larger the dictionary the better the chances the software can find the word or phrase, a word must be in the dictionary before it can be translated. Even though good machine translation software uses word phrasing / grammar it must also be able to do single word translation. There are millions of words in each language and each year more words are added. There are at least 10,000 new words that have been added to the English language with the development of the internet alone.

Linguistic rules based methods - Machine translation can use a method based on linguistic rules, which means that words will be translated in a linguistic way —the most suitable (orally speaking) words of the target language will replace the ones in the source language.

How good is Machine Translation Software?

Even though you can do research and find the best translation software on the market, it still cannot completely replace a human translator, language is too complex. Each year translation software just keeps getting better and more accurate. Even in the past three years I have seen a dramatic increase in accuracy and customer satisfaction in working with software solutions. Language translation software can be an extremely useful tool to reduce translation costs and improve productivity. Just the fact you can take a document and translate it in seconds to give you the gist of what is being said is nothing less than a technological miracle.

Good machine translation also allows you to increase the accuracy by creating your own dictionaries. Giving the user more control by modifying the dictionaries with additional terms is invaluable. Even if you cannot speak the language there are many words that can be added. For example if a word is not in the dictionary you can find the translation for this word and add it. A good source is foreign language dictionaries.

Also another feature that is important is the ability to tell the software not to translate certain terms. For example company or personal names addresses or perhaps you simply want to keep a company slogan from being translated. This feature is commonly referred to as "Do Not Translate" tools.

Learn more about the accuracy of  Machine Translation.