A question for you translators out there
John W.
do you run through translation software first.
Thanks!
John W.
Dave Fossett
> How much of your translation work do you 'automate', meaning how much
> do you run through translation software first.
None. It would probably make the job even harder. I believe there is
software that can be used to translate individual words rather than entire
paragraphs to ensure uniformity of terminology, but at this point in time, I
think that is about the limit of machine translation.
--
Dave Fossett
Saitama, JAPAN
Ryan Ginstrom
"John W." <worth...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:73fde4f0.03061...@posting.google.com...
> How much of your translation work do you 'automate', meaning how much
> do you run through translation software first.
All of it. I just run all my texts through babblefish, spruce them up a bit,
then send them off. No one has complained yet!
What, you didn't think we actually read that ying-yong, did you?
--
Regards,
Ryan Ginstrom
Louise Bremner
> How much of your translation work do you 'automate', meaning how much
> do you run through translation software first.
I saw a copy of a certain well-publicized MT package that had been
reduced from the original price of 198,000 yen to 99,000 yen by the
producer (I wonder why?) and had been further reduced in T-Zone's
clearance sale by 80%, so I thought I'd give it a try, seeing as how I'd
get a further 20% back as a tax-rebate on the purchase. If I've done my
sums right, that cost me 15,840 yen, which was an expensive mistake.
But I often do a series of search-and-replaces on the original Japanese
file to create a base for the real translation, especially if it's
something that requires a strict sentence-to-sentence correspondence.
________________________________________________________________________
Louise Bremner (log at gol dot com)
If you want a reply by e-mail, don't write to my Yahoo address!
Scott Reynolds
> How much of your translation work do you 'automate', meaning how much
> do you run through translation software first.
Whoops! Looks like all the other translators on the group have beaten me
to the punch. But I'll just chime in with "none."
Like Louise I do use search and replace on repetitive terms or proper
names from time to time, but this is a technique you have to be careful
with -- it can end up making the text harder rather than easier to
translate if you're not careful.
--
_______________________________________________________________
Scott Reynolds s...@gol.com
Ryan Ginstrom
"Scott Reynolds" <s...@gol.com> wrote in message
news:bcubqe$3od$1...@newsflood.tokyo.att.ne.jp...
> On 6/20/2003 7:04 AM, John W. wrote:
>
> > How much of your translation work do you 'automate', meaning how much
> > do you run through translation software first.
>
> Whoops! Looks like all the other translators on the group have beaten me
> to the punch.
Yeah, but I was the only one to come clean about not being able to read
Japanese.
--
Regards,
Ryan Ginstrom
John W.
I ran into this issue in a little translation test a company gave me.
I thought I could handle it, but that was one of the worst experiences
of my recent professional life. Three pages J-E, one page E-J, 2.5
hours, no tech dictionary.
But it's such a cool company.
John W.
Ryan Ginstrom
> I ran into this issue in a little translation test a company gave me.
> I thought I could handle it, but that was one of the worst experiences
> of my recent professional life.
Does this mean that you are now gainfully employed?
> Three pages J-E, one page E-J, 2.5
> hours, no tech dictionary.
My first J/E translation gig was a baito when I was in college, at an auto
plant. They had me translating both from Japanese to English, and English to
Japanese. I knew the Japanese I was putting out was shit, and I told them
so, but they didn't care, and I was getting paid by the hour so I decided
that I didn't care either.
Via this little foray into automotive translation, I learned a bit about
plastics (they had me in bumpers), but I generally deny any such knowledge
when approached to do automotive translation today. Freaking wretched field
to work in, IMO.
--
Regards,
Ryan Ginstrom
Scott Reynolds
It takes a big man to come clean about something like that.
Brett Robson
>
>
>"John W." <worth...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:73fde4f0.03061...@posting.google.com...
>> How much of your translation work do you 'automate', meaning how much
>> do you run through translation software first.
>
>All of it. I just run all my texts through babblefish, spruce them up a bit,
>then send them off. No one has complained yet!
>
Me too. But be careful, once I accidently translated everything into German and
didn't notice. The client never said anything so I guess it's fine.
---
"he [John Ashcroft] deliberately left Jesus out of office prayers to avoid
offending non-Christians." - Ben Shapiro 27/2/2003
John W.
> "John W." <worth...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:73fde4f0.03062...@posting.google.com...
> > I ran into this issue in a little translation test a company gave me.
> > I thought I could handle it, but that was one of the worst experiences
> > of my recent professional life.
>
> Does this mean that you are now gainfully employed?
>
something permanent is close enough. Interestingly the two companies
that are interested in me are on the US West coast; that'd be great if
I wasn't now on the East coast.
> > Three pages J-E, one page E-J, 2.5
> > hours, no tech dictionary.
>
> My first J/E translation gig was a baito when I was in college, at an auto
> plant. They had me translating both from Japanese to English, and English to
> Japanese. I knew the Japanese I was putting out was shit, and I told them
> so, but they didn't care, and I was getting paid by the hour so I decided
> that I didn't care either.
>
> Via this little foray into automotive translation, I learned a bit about
> plastics (they had me in bumpers), but I generally deny any such knowledge
> when approached to do automotive translation today. Freaking wretched field
> to work in, IMO.
This stuff was hard core programming stuff. It was one of those things
where I thought it'd be no big problem because I'm familiar with the
topic. Obviously I'm not because it was hella hard.
John W.
Ryan Ginstrom
> something permanent is close enough. Interestingly the two companies
> that are interested in me are on the US West coast; that'd be great if
> I wasn't now on the East coast.
I thought you were living in the green rolling hills of Tennessee?
> This stuff was hard core programming stuff. It was one of those things
> where I thought it'd be no big problem because I'm familiar with the
> topic. Obviously I'm not because it was hella hard.
Heh, that's exactly the kind of stuff that I like the most. I remember being
pretty dismayed when I first started reading Japanese computer docs though.
I thought that since I already knew programming and read Japanese fairly
well, it would be a breeze.
--
Regards,
Ryan Ginstrom
mtfe...@netscape.net
> "John W." <worth...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> This stuff was hard core programming stuff. It was one of those things
>> where I thought it'd be no big problem because I'm familiar with the
>> topic. Obviously I'm not because it was hella hard.
> Heh, that's exactly the kind of stuff that I like the most. I remember being
> pretty dismayed when I first started reading Japanese computer docs though.
> I thought that since I already knew programming and read Japanese fairly
> well, it would be a breeze.
Reminds me of when I lived there; I ended up getting a project to update
a company's application, which was written in FORTRAN. I didn't know much
about FORTRAN, but I *knew* it didn't have recursion... except this version
did, according to the Japanese documentation, if I was reading it right
(the old Apollo-Domain FORTRAN 88 compiler.) Always fun trying to figure
out whether you don't understand Japanese, or didn't understand the
computer language (though, of course, that's not necessarily an "or"
statement :-))
Mike
John W.
> "John W." <worth...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:73fde4f0.03062...@posting.google.com...
> > Nope. I'm at the stage where even work done in hopes of landing
> > something permanent is close enough. Interestingly the two companies
> > that are interested in me are on the US West coast; that'd be great if
> > I wasn't now on the East coast.
>
> I thought you were living in the green rolling hills of Tennessee?
>
> > This stuff was hard core programming stuff. It was one of those things
> > where I thought it'd be no big problem because I'm familiar with the
> > topic. Obviously I'm not because it was hella hard.
>
> Heh, that's exactly the kind of stuff that I like the most. I remember being
> pretty dismayed when I first started reading Japanese computer docs though.
> I thought that since I already knew programming and read Japanese fairly
> well, it would be a breeze.
That's what I thought as well. I got criticized a couple of weeks ago
for not doing a 'direct' translation. I said that I thought it best to
write well.
John W.
Ryan Ginstrom
<mtfe...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:bd2mck$698$1...@news.Stanford.EDU...
> Reminds me of when I lived there; I ended up getting a project to update
> a company's application, which was written in FORTRAN. I didn't know much
> about FORTRAN, but I *knew* it didn't have recursion... except this
version
> did, according to the Japanese documentation, if I was reading it right
It has (thankfully) been many years since I did fortran, but couldn't you
fake recursion with gotos?
--
Regards,
Ryan Ginstrom
Kevin Wayne Williams
>
> It has (thankfully) been many years since I did fortran, but couldn't you
> fake recursion with gotos?
>
Yep. Took some array manipulation to simulate a stack, but it worked. No
worse than trying to code true "call by reference" in Algol-58 and
Algol-60 (my first programming language). They both used "Call by name."
Call by name was a real bitch, both for the compiler implementer and the
unwary coder that wrote a simple line of code like swap (i,x[i]). In
call by name, once you changed the value of i, the location pointed to
by x[i] moved accordingly, even though neither x or i was in the scope
of the subroutine. Wirth later admitted that it was a mistake, and he
just hadn't specified "call by reference" correctly.
KWW
Michael Cash
the alphabet and kept on going with:
>That's what I thought as well. I got criticized a couple of weeks ago
>for not doing a 'direct' translation. I said that I thought it best to
>write well.
Candor isn't always the number one quality employers are looking for.
This reminds me of the time my wife had to get her photo taken for
renewing her passport or some such. She wasn't satisfied with the
photo and wanted to retake it. I told her there was no need to retake
it, the one she had would do fine.
"It doesn't have to look good. It just has to look like you."
--
Michael Cash
"There was a time, Mr. Cash, when I believed you must be the most useless
thing in the world. But that was before I read a Microsoft help file."
Prof. Ernest T. Bass
Mount Pilot College
Michael Cash
<gins...@hotmail.com> belched the alphabet and kept on going with:
Why do you assume he worked for the Gotos?
Ryan Ginstrom
> for not doing a 'direct' translation. I said that I thought it best to
> write well.
It's hard to say without seeing what they were complaining about, but a lot
of Japanese customers aren't happy unless every word of the Japanese is
present in the translation. So you see "corrected" translations coming out
like:
When you click on the [Set] button, the file name of the file targeted for
setting is set.
Yee-haw!
Fortunately, most customers who want that kind of shrek go to translators
who charge much less than me and for whom such prose comes naturally.
--
Regards,
Ryan Ginstrom
mtfe...@netscape.net
Yeah, this one had the real deal. Just one of those things you look at in
the documentation, and just KNOW you're a bit out of your depth in a foreign
language.
Mike