Machine translation is the translation of text by a computer, with no human involvement. Pioneered in the 1950s, machine translation can also be referred to as automated translation, automatic or instant translation.
There are two types of machine translation system: rules-based and statistical:
- Rules-based systems use a combination of language and grammar rules plus dictionaries for common words. Specialist dictionaries are created to focus on certain industries or disciplines. Rules-based systems typically deliver consistent translations with accurate terminology when trained with specialist dictionaries.
- Statistical systems have no knowledge of language rules. Instead they "learn" to translate by analysing large amounts of data for each language pair. They can be trained for specific industries or disciplines using additional data relevant to the sector needed. Typically statistical systems deliver more fluent-sounding but less consistent translations.
When translating with SDL Trados Studio, any segments not leveraged from translation memory can automatically be machine translated for the translator to review, then accept and amend if necessary, or decide to manually translate instead.
As a translator, you can configure how much machine translation is used and which machine translation engines to use.
Respecting client confidentiality
If the projects you work on are commercially sensitive, your customer may require that information is not disclosed to any third parties. Carefully consider how and when to use machine translation as you could be sharing segments of the source with a third party.
Audit files are automatically generated by SDL Trados Studio which record the use of machine translation.
SDL Trados Studio supports a number of machine translation engines that are available over an internet connection. The machine translation solutions provided by SDL include; SDL Language Cloud Machine Translation for Studio and SDL BeGlobal. You can choose between various options when choosing your machine translation solution. Starting with a free package of baseline (untrained) translation up to industry specific trained engines, we have an option that is right for you.
With SDL BeGlobal, it is also possible to use your customer's trained machine translation systems to deliver even faster results.
Increased productivity – deliver translations faster
- Use freely available machine translation to pre-translate new segments that are not leveraged from translation memory.
- Connect to and use a customer's or supplier's trained engine through SDL BeGlobal or use the industry specific machine translation solution SDL Language Cloud Machine Translation to achieve better quality results every time.
Flexibility and choice – to suit all types of project
- Select from a number of different machine translation engines.
- Choose from over 50 languages and more than 2, 500 language pairs to suit your project.