BIK Terminology

Solving the terminology puzzle, one posting at a time

Machine translation and excellence

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What does machine translation do in a blog on terminology management? And how on earth can MT and excellence appear in the same sentence? Terminology management is one of the cornerstones of MT. And excellence isn’t tied to a technology, it is tied to you!

After a seven-year hiatus, I finally joined my friends in the American Translators Association again this year. And last week, I was in my former US hometown of Denver at the annual conference of the ATA. I was surprised about a couple of things.

For one, the profession has matured incredibly since I last attended the conference in Phoenix 2003. The number of government representatives who attended and spoke coherently about the field bears witness to that. There was great news coverage. But most of all, I could sense a different attitude among attendees many of whom I have known since I first joined the ATA in 1996: There is pride in what we do and the courage to stand up for it!

The other surprise was that this apparently was the first time a real interaction between representatives of human AND machine translation took place (“Man vs. Machine,” a panel discussion of representatives from both camps moderated by Jost Zetzsche). That is stunning to me, since I spent the last six years in an environment where MT is routine.

As terminologist, I look at MT as an opportunity for cooperation. In fact, it was Microsoft Research, where machine translation research is located within Microsoft, who declined, when we first suggested collaboration years ago. It made sense to us to supply well-researched terms and appellations to support MT. Terminology from Term Studio has since been integrated into the MT process at Microsoft.

I suppose it is fear that still seems to have a hold on translators. It might be the fear of losing market share, of needing to change to more tools or automation, or of failing with clients. Let’s go through this one by one.

In my mind, there is one market for translation; we could even say one market for content production in target and/or source languages. This market consists of different segments, and we, as language professionals, have a choice on where we want to play. The segments are not strictly delimited, meaning a translator could move between them, but let’s focus on the following three.

  • A Chris Durban, who represented human translators in the panel discussion and who is serving the high-end translation market (marketing, financial reports, etc.), chooses to stay away from automation. I venture to say that her work is better carried out without automation. The key is that she achieves excellence in what she does. And she asks to be paid for it, and paid well.
  • Another translator might choose to focus on the high-volume market of manuals and handbooks in a particular industry. He will work with what Jost Zetzsche calls translation environment tools, short TEnTs. That will enable him to produce higher volumes than Chris, but with equal excellence.
  • And then there are those, such as the translators at PAHO, the Pan American Health Organization, who post-edit machine translation output. Again, they have a different environment, but they do what they do successfully, because they strive to do it well.

At times, an individual might choose to stay in the segment they are in or to make a transition into another segment, which requires flexibility and diligence. If you thought you could get away with less than hard work, you might have chosen the wrong profession (or planet, for that matter). I believe in that, but I also believe in the fun and gratification that comes from delivering excellence.

The last point is working with clients. The need for client education is high. The ATA has contributed a lot in that area. If you are a member, just check out all the different resources available to us. True, it is tough to do client education when you are making a living being paid only for the word in the translation. It takes skill to find the right balance. Nonetheless, clients must be informed about what they ask for, especially those who say that “quality doesn’t matter,” because very likely they have no clue. Once you have done your duty and the client still insists on some form of “quick and dirty,” you can always say no to the job. I saw projects not succeed despite warnings and suggestions. But it is not the end of the world when someone insists on, say, machine translation without preparatory or complementary work and then fails with their own customers. You could consider it self-education. You just don’t want to be in the middle of it.

In my experience, if we aim for excellence, we will be financially successful and professionally gratified. Then, it doesn’t matter so much whether we chose “pure human translation”, decide on some form of translation automation environment, or focus completely on terminology management.

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Jump List? Or what should we call it?

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Giving a new concept a name in a source language often leads directly to the question of what to do with it in another language. This seems like a problem for target terminologists and translators, right? It isn’t. Marketing, branding and content publishing folks listen up!

We have just created a new term or appellation according to best practices from ISO 704. Now, what do we call it in the target language? What do we do with new designations, such as Azure or jump list? Well, the same best practices apply for target language terms as well. But there is a difference for terms and appellations.

Terms represent generic concepts. They are the parent concept or superordinate to other concepts. The concept called “operating system” in English has many different subordinate concepts, e.g. Windows, Linux, or Mac OS. Many times generic concepts have native-language equivalents in other languages. Of course, a particular language may borrow a term from another language, a direct loan. But that should be a deliberate term formation method and it is just one of them, as discussed in What I like about ISO 704.

An appellation represents an individual concept, one that is unique. Like you and me. And just as our parents gave us names that should represent us to the world—some very common and transparent, others peculiar or extraordinary—products get names that represent them to buyers. The criteria for good formation are weighted slightly differently than they are when used during new term formation: An appellation might be deliberately not transparent or consistent with the rest of the subject field. After all, it is a new product that is supposed to stand out. And it might be deliberately in another language.

Windows Azure™ is the appellation for “a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform,” according to the official website. If we leave aside the trademark for a moment, nobody in their right mind would use the literal translations “Fenster ‘Azurblau’”, “Fenêtre bleu” or “Finestra azzurra”.

Once again, I find ISO 704 very helpful: “Technically, appellations are not translated but remain in their original language. However, an individual concept may have an appellation in different languages.” Good examples are international organizations which tend to have appellations in all languages of the member states, such as the European Union, die Europäische Union, or l’Union européenne.

ISO 704 goes on to say that “whether an individual concept has an appellation in more than one language depends on the following:

  • The language policy of a country;
  • How internationally well known the concept is;
  • The multilingual nature of the entity in question;
  • The need for international cooperation and relations.”

Based on this, it is pretty clear that an international organization would have an appellation in each of the languages of the member states. What about product names, such as Windows Azure? As terminologists for the target market, we should make recommendations in line with the above.

That is exactly what happened with a new feature for Windows 7, called Jump List in English. The message from the marketing department was that it was to remain in English even in the localized versions of Windows. But the problem wasn’t that simple.

There are actually two concepts hidden behind this name:

  • Jump List: The Windows feature that allows users to display jump lists.
    • A unique feature and therefore an individual concept.
    • An appellation.
  • jump list: A list associated with programs pinned to the taskbar or Start menu.
    • A generic concept that can happen multiple times even within one session
    • A technical term.
    • Erroneously capitalized in English.

Generally, when a new feature is introduced the feature gets a name and many times, the individual instances of the feature take on a term derived from the feature name. In this case, the feature was named Jump List and the instances were called Jump Lists. The later should not be uppercase and is in many instances not uppercase. But the two concepts were not differentiated, let alone defined up front.

So, when the German localizers got the instruction to keep the English term for all instances of the concept, they had a problem. They would have gotten away with leaving the appellation in English (e.g. Jump List-Funktion), but it would have been nearly impossible to get the meaning of the generic concept across or even just read the German text, had the term for the generic concept been the direct loan from the English. We could argue whether the literal translation Sprungliste represents the concept well to German users.

Naming is tricky, and those who name things must be very clear on what it is they are naming. Spelling is part of naming, and casing is part of spelling. Defining something upfront and then using it consistently supports clear communication and prevents errors in source and target texts.

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Terms—A translator’s perspective vs. a terminologist’s perspective

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Any translator can do a terminologist’s work. The best translators compile lists of terms, equivalents, maybe a piece of context or even a definition before or at least while they are translating. So, theoretically the above statement is correct. But let’s take another look at the focus of a translator and the focus of a terminologist with regard to terms.

Although a term can be at the same time a unit of translation and a term described and defined in a terminology database, translators and terminologists treat that unit differently. A translator works in context and arrives at a target solution that is correct for that particular text. Based on Saussure, Juan Sager calls terms in a translation text “instances of parole” or “language in use” (Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies).

In Quasi dasselbe mit anderen Worten, Umberto Eco says “in light of [all the] meanings made available by a dictionary entry and its applicable encyclopedic information, the translator must choose the most probable, reasonable and relevant sense for the context in question and this possible world” (translation by BIK). That means that the translator cannot simply copy what he finds in a dictionary or terminology database; he actually has to be, as Robin Bonthrone put it years ago, “switched on.” If that wasn’t a condition, machine translation would have long since taken over.

That context then becomes part of the translated text, which in our scenario of technical translation, usually becomes part of a translation memory (TM). And it also becomes part of a product. As part of the product, the term is now part of history, as it were. As part of the TM, the term may be reused for the next version of the product, and it may also serve as reference material to others. But a translation memory does not equate to managed terminology. Strings in TMs contain terminology, but TMs are generally static and hardly ever managed.

In applied terminology, the starting point might be the term in the translation environment above. But a terminologist must research and understand the term not only in one particular context, but in as many as it takes to uniquely identify its meaning. Once that meaning has been identified, the terminologist creates a terminological entry. According to Sager, terminologists use the term, the “instance of parole”, to get to langue, i.e. the abstract system behind the linguistic sign. The entry is part of the terminological system in the database and can now be applied back in parole, in more than one situation or context, to more than one product or company. Therefore, it must be comprehensible to people other than the terminologist, and it must reflect the understanding and knowledge of the subject matter expert (see also Terminology by Maria Theresa Cabré).

While both translators and terminologists research terms, the product of their work is different. The translator is responsible for the delivery of a correct target language text with correct technical terms (parole or language in use). The terminologist is responsible for the creation of a correct and complete terminological entry in a database (langue or the abstract system underlying speech acts). That entry may over time be used for many different products and versions inside or outside the company; the entry may become obsolete or even incorrect and the terminologist may need to modify it or add a new entry to the database accordingly. Monetary compensation, as described in What do we do with terms? method and goal of translators and terminologists are different. Therefore, translators translate, terminologists research and document.

[This posting is based on an article published in the Journal of Internationalisation and Localisation, which can be downloaded for free.]
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