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Future of Translation
Thread poster: sdvplatt
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:43
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
JP-EN OK, EN-FR NG? Aug 8, 2018

David GAY wrote:
Hard to compare.
The most efficient MT engines don't work in this pair yet.

I use Google Translate for mailing list emails almost every day. I am sort of appalled by how poorly it handles DE-EN, which I would have thought would be a pair in which it shone. It seems to gist well, but is otherwise rubbish.

Perhaps a more specialised engine working with more focused material might do better. I can see that MT is used by some companies (Experia) for huge volumes of fairly trivial text that simply could not be done by human translators as the economics would not make sense. That is a market that did not and could not exist prior to MT.

Anyway, I digress.

What I wanted to say is that you make gloomy statements while avoiding specific facts and data, so it is hard to know exactly what it is that you are trying to assert. Are you saying that you are being supplanted by MT in your pair? Because a few days ago in a different thread you were saying that your business is great, which would presumably indicate that MT is not a problem for you in the EN-FR pair.

And yet your very downbeat comments in this thread suggest that all is not well, which (again presumably) means you, because typically our evidence in this forum is anecdotal. Or do you have some way of knowing how every other translator in the EN-FR pair is doing (you appear to believe they are doing badly...?) and are basing your comments on that unique insight?

Just a bit confused here. Happy to be educated, but currently not understanding the situation.

Regards,
Dan


sdvplatt
 
gayd (X)
gayd (X)
No Aug 8, 2018

Dan Lucas wrote:

David GAY wrote:
Hard to compare.
The most efficient MT engines don't work in this pair yet.

I use Google Translate for mailing list emails almost every day. I am sort of appalled by how poorly it handles DE-EN, which I would have thought would be a pair in which it shone. It seems to gist well, but is otherwise rubbish.

Perhaps a more specialised engine working with more focused material might do better. I can see that MT is used by some companies (Experia) for huge volumes of fairly trivial text that simply could not be done by human translators as the economics would not make sense. That is a market that did not and could not exist prior to MT.

Anyway, I digress.

What I wanted to say is that you make gloomy statements while avoiding specific facts and data, so it is hard to know exactly what it is that you are trying to assert. Are you saying that you are being supplanted by MT in your pair? Because a few days ago in a different thread you were saying that your business is great, which would presumably indicate that MT is not a problem for you in the EN-FR pair.

And yet your very downbeat comments in this thread suggest that all is not well, which (again presumably) means you, because typically our evidence in this forum is anecdotal. Or do you have some way of knowing how every other translator in the EN-FR pair is doing (you appear to believe they are doing badly...?) and are basing your comments on that unique insight?

Just a bit confused here. Happy to be educated, but currently not understanding the situation.

Regards,
Dan


No, as I wrote, it has no impact on my business so far and I have more work than I can deal with. I have even
stopped working for some agencies and given up my German pair as it is not as profitable as the others
(1000 sw in German=1300 target words in French)
But I'm lucky enough to work for very good LSPs which provide me with large volumes on a daily basis. I don't have to work for non payers, bottom feeders and the like, which in my opinion are going to disappear quite soon (that's what I wrote). If you want to know who works for these outsourcers, just have a look at their BB. But I think that everybody will be more or less affected in the medium/ long term.
And of course, Google translate is not the one I was referring to

[Modifié le 2018-08-08 19:20 GMT]

[Modifié le 2018-08-08 19:26 GMT]

[Modifié le 2018-08-08 19:31 GMT]


 
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