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Posted on by Michael Farrell Posted in Food translation

Cooking up the right words

Spotlight on specialization: a three-part medley

It is hard to imagine two things more intimately tied than language and food. Not just because they both require our mouths and tongues and involve our emotions, but because they are two fundamental, defining aspects of the culture of a people. Translating food therefore poses some particularly demanding challenges that call for highly transcreative, outside-the-box thinking. Michael will give some practical examples of how to tackle this task on the menu and in the cookbook.

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Posted on by Michael Farrell Posted in Food translation

Il legame culturale tra lingua, cucina e popolo

TranslatingEurope Workshop 2020

Anche se la definizione di cultura varia, sia la lingua che la cucina normalmente appaiono fra i fattori distintivi. Dunque, il nesso fra le due cose è di fatto inestricabilmente radicato nella cultura di un popolo. L’importanza di una lingua comune per unire un popolo fu sentita dai padri fondatori dell’Italia unita, che non persero tempo nell’imporre l’italiano come lingua nazionale. Oggi si può affermare che, almeno per quanto riguarda la lingua, il processo di unificazione è riuscito, ma non si può dire altrettanto per la cucina: i diversi piatti della cucina italiana hanno ancora forti connotazioni regionali.

Forse non tutti gli italiani, però, sanno che anche la lingua inglese non è monolitica in cucina: ci sono numerosissime differenze lessicali fra l’inglese britannico e quello americano.

La presentazione in oggetto analizza le problematiche che nascono da queste premesse.

Guardare la registrazione.

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Posted on by Michael Farrell Posted in Aspects of marketing for translators

The conspicuous translator

at METM Revisited

Is it ever our moral duty to stick out like a sore thumb?

Virtually all professional translators are told at some point in their career that they should strive to be invisible in order to produce faithful renditions, and some theorists even go as far as considering translator’s notes to be a sign of defeat. However, the speaker believes that there are some circumstances when the best way to remain invisible in the eyes of the reader is actually to go beyond a simple note and ask the author straight out to consider rewriting the original to fit the translation.

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Posted on by Michael Farrell Posted in Computer tools for translators

È opportuno servirsi del full post-editing anche nel caso di testi creativi?

TranslatingEurope Workshop 2019 a Milano

Dal confronto fra la traduzione umana e la traduzione automatica post-editata si nota che certi giri di parole, espressioni e scelte di termini si trovano con maggiore frequenza nella seconda di quanto non si trovino nella prima. Ciò implica che i testi post-editati, in media, sono meno ricchi nella varietà e nell’inventiva tipiche della traduzione umana, e qualsiasi tentativo di eliminare quelli che sono a tutti gli effetti marcatori di traduzione automatica richiederebbe ulteriori sforzi di post-editing e annullerebbe la maggior parte del risparmio di tempo e dei vantaggi economici. Naturalmente varietà e inventiva non sono sempre caratteristiche auspicabili in una traduzione. Tuttavia ci sono numerose tipologie di testo in cui l’omogeneizzazione e l’uniformità renderebbero la traduzione meno interessante da leggere e meno stimolante intellettualmente. In questi casi, la mancata eliminazione di questi marcatori può portare a lungo andare all’impoverimento lessicale della lingua target.

In questa presentazione si illustrano i rischi connessi all’utilizzo indiscriminato della traduzione automatica post-editata per mettere l’LSP in condizione di valutare quando è opportuno usarla.

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Posted on by Michael Farrell Posted in Computer tools for translators

Is full post-editing of machine translation output a pipe dream?

Comparison shows that certain turns of phrase, expressions and choices of words occur with greater frequency in post-edited machine translation output than they do in human translation. This implies that post-edited texts, on average, lack the variety and inventiveness of human translation, and any attempt to eliminate what are effectively machine translation markers would require additional post-editing effort and nullify most, if not all, of the time and cost-saving advantages. Of course variety and inventiveness are not always desirable features. Nevertheless, there are various kinds of text where homogenization and uniformity would make the translation less interesting to read and less intellectually stimulating. In such cases, failure to eradicate these markers may eventually lead to lexical impoverishment of the target language.

This talk will illustrate the risks involved in using post-edited machine translation output indiscriminately and put the translator in a position to explain when its use might be detrimental.

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Posted on by Michael Farrell Posted in Computer tools for translators

Machine Translation Markers in Post-Edited Machine Translation Output

Photo courtesy of Sarah Bawa Mason

The author has conducted an experiment for two consecutive years with postgraduate university students in which half do an unaided human translation (HT) and the other half post-edit machine translation output (PEMT). Comparison of the texts produced shows – rather unsurprisingly – that post-editors faced with an acceptable solution tend not to edit it, even when often more than 60% of translators tackling the same text prefer an array of other different solutions. As a consequence, certain turns of phrase, expressions and choices of words occur with greater frequency in PEMT than in HT, making it theoretically possible to design tests to tell them apart. To verify this, the author successfully carried out one such test on a small group of professional translators. This implies that PEMT may lack the variety and inventiveness of HT, and consequently may not actually reach the same standard. It is evident that the additional post-editing effort required to eliminate what are effectively MT markers is likely to nullify a great deal, if not all, of the time and cost-saving advantages of PEMT. However, the author argues that failure to eradicate these markers may eventually lead to lexical impoverishment of the target language.

Read the full academic paper.

Download the presentation.
Translating and the Computer 40

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Posted on by Michael Farrell Posted in Aspects of marketing for translators

The conspicuous translator at the Translating Europe Workshop

The Conspicuous Translator

Photo courtesy of Claudia Benetello

Is it ever our moral duty to stick out like a sore thumb?

Virtually all professional translators are told at some point in their career that they should strive to be invisible in order to produce faithful renditions, and some theorists even go as far as considering translator’s notes to be a sign of defeat. However, the speaker believes that there are some circumstances when the best way to remain invisible in the eyes of the reader is actually to go beyond a simple note and ask the author straight out to consider rewriting the original to fit the translation.

This presentation was streamed live and you can watch the recording on YouTube.

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Posted on by Michael Farrell Posted in Computer tools for translators

The stink of machine translation

Listen to Lisa Agostini’s interview of me talking about my presentation. Thanks to MET and Julian Mayers (Yada Yada) per their permission to post the interview here.

Post-editors are asked to do either light post-editing, to get rid of the worst machine translation errors, or full post-editing, to bring the output up to the same standard as human translation.

But is full post-editing in reality a pipe dream?

The speaker has conducted an experiment for two years running with groups of postgraduate university students in which half do an unaided human translation and the other half post-edit machine translation output. Comparison of the texts produced shows that certain turns of phrase, expressions and choices of words occur with greater frequency in the post-edited machine translation output than they do in human translation. This is easily explained by the fact that even neural machine translation systems seem to choose the most statistically frequent solutions even when those solutions occur less frequently than the sum of the frequencies of all the other possible solutions, and post-editors faced with an acceptable solution tend not to edit it. This however implies that post-edited machine translation output, on average, lacks the variety and inventiveness of human translation, and therefore does not in fact reach the same standard. It is evident that the additional post-editing effort required to eliminate what are effectively machine translation markers would nullify most, if not all, of the time and cost-saving advantages of post-edited machine translation. On the other hand, failure to eradicate these markers may eventually lead to lexical and syntactic impoverishment of the target language.

The speaker provides examples of post-editing and translation from English into Italian. However, with the aid of some back-translations, the mechanisms at play should be equally clear to non-Italian speakers, particularly if they are familiar with other Neo-Latin languages.

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Posted on by Michael Farrell Posted in Transcreation

Transcreation: when simple translation is not enough

Michael Farrell sets about establishing what transcreation actually involves by analysing how it differs from other language services, such as localization and traditional translation, and provides a little background and history of the term. He then goes on to perform a Gedankenexperiment to look at what the layman, including potential clients, might think transcreation actually is. Primarily, however, the main purpose of the presentation is to unmask the closet transcreators among the attendees through a group therapy approach and encourage them to admit publicly to their repressed true nature in the interest of their health, well-being, and possibly even their bank balances.

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Posted on by Michael Farrell Posted in Internet search techniques for translators and interpreters

The Web’s the Limit with IntelliWebSearch (Almost) Unlimited

Translators often need to check large numbers of terms on the Internet as efficiently as possible. Without the right tool, this entails repeatedly copying terms, opening your browser, pasting terms into search boxes, setting search parameters, clicking buttons, copying solutions, returning to Wordfast and pasting the terms found. Are you tired already?

IntelliWebSearch semi-automates the terminology search process so your task can be completed more rapidly and effortlessly. This brief presentation will show IntelliWebSearch’s basic features to see how it can be used to speed up and simplify terminology searches.

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