This article is the first article in a two-part series exploring translation memory technology and its application in CAT tools, which help translators provide faster and more accurate translations for organizations around the world.
CAT tools powered by translation memory technology have brought a welcomed disruption to the translation industry and its stakeholders. With this cutting-edge technology, translators are able to provide much more accurate translations and localizations at much faster speeds.
In this article we discuss in detail what exactly translation memory is and how it works inside of CAT tools. We also highlight three of the biggest benefits translation memory has brought to organizations needing high quality translation services.
What is Translation Memory (TM)?
Simply put, a translation memory (TM) is a database consisting of two languages that contain terms, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that have already been translated. Translation memory captures existing translation data in order to reuse it in future translations. As new content is translated, translation memory recognizes new phrases and the database grows.
How Does Translation Memory Work?
While a translation memory database may seem simple enough, there’s more going on underneath the surface than you may realize. Specifically, translation memory encodes pieces of language in pairs. This means that each phrase or sentence translated in a target language will have a corresponding phrase or sentence in the source language. Each of these bilingual pairs is known as a translation unit (TU).
Translation memories are an integral part of computer assisted translation (CAT) tools. CAT tools are software platforms that professional translation services use to reduce errors, increase consistency, and provide faster translations for clients. One of the most powerful features of CAT tools is their ability to segment phrases that need translation and present them in a form that is much more efficient to translate.
With CAT tools, a professional translation service provider will upload the document that needs to be translated (commonly called the source file) into the CAT program. At this point, the translation memory of the CAT tool will screen the document to identify any phrases from recently uploaded content that have already been translated. Specifically, the CAT tool will return “100% matches” and “fuzzy matches”. 100% matches are matches that are identical. In contrast, fuzzy matches are matches that are similar, but not identical. Fuzzy matches are returned by the CAT tool if there is not a 100% match for a phrase, but there are phrases in the translation memory that are similar. In many cases, fuzzy matches for phrases only differ by one word.
After 100% matches and fuzzy matches are returned by the CAT tool, the translation service provider will accept, modify, or replace the matches from the translation memory. It is at this point that the element of human judgement on the part of the translator becomes vital to ensuring that the translation and localization is accurate and contextually relevant. Just because the translation memory returned a 100% match, doesn’t mean the match is correct. The translator must carefully verify that the matches are used properly in the target language based on context.
What happens if a phrase in the source file has neither a 100% match nor a fuzzy match? In these cases, it means that the source phrase hasn’t been previously translated. For these phrases, the translation memory will add the new translation unit to its database, which will continue to optimize and grow the TM long term.
Why You Need Translation Memory
Translation memories provide many key benefits that are important to understand:
Benefit #1: Consistency
One of the most important goals of a professional translation services provider is to provide clients with consistent translations. If clients receive inconsistent translations of the same phrase in the same context, this can seriously affect the success of their business as their customers become confused and lose confidence in the brand.
For example, when the same source phrase is present several months apart, relying on manual human translation could create an opportunity for inconsistency in translations. In fact, the translator may need to do some research to try to remember what the appropriate translation is, but even then the translation may not be the same the second time around. Moreover, even if a human editor reviews the second translation it doesn’t mean that the editor will catch the discrepancy from the fist translation months earlier.
For all these reasons, translation memory is an ideal solution for ensuring consistency across similar translations over time. With translation memory, the CAT tool automatically and instantly recognizes the same source phrase from the past and returns the correct, consistent translation every time.
Benefit #2: Faster Translations
Another valuable benefit of using translation memories is the faster turnaround times it provides. Translation memory significantly increases the speed of the translation process. The reason for this is that translators do far less redundant work thanks to all the translation units that are stored in the TM database. Moreover, the more the translation memory grows over time, the faster future translations become.
With translation memories, translation service providers can easily view the matches that are returned in the CAT tool alongside the source phrase and make an accurate decision quickly as to the appropriate final translation. This technology means that the total time spent translating new source documents is substantially decreased because of the ability to instantly reference past translations. As a result of faster translations, clients enjoy quicker turnaround times and are able to market and operate their businesses much faster in the long run compared to their competitors.
Benefit #3: Cost Savings
The cost of translations is always a concern for the budgets of organizations operating in multiple languages. Thankfully, the use of translation memories is one of the best ways clients can cut down on their translation bills.
Less time spent by the translation service means lower translation costs for clients. Over time these cost savings on translations powered by the TM add up to make a large positive impact on clients’ translation budgets. Moreover, the longer the TM is used, the more the database grows, which means that over the long term, the cost savings will also grow since the translations get even faster as more and more translation units are stored.
Leverage the Power of Translation Memory at Translation Source
At Translation Source, we know from experience that translation memories are some of our clients’ biggest assets when it comes to localizing their content. That’s why we use translation memories as powerful catalysts to speed up your multilingual operations and provide consistency across all your translation and localization initiatives.
For more information on how Translation Source can help you leverage the power of translation memory for your organization, reach out to one of our translation memory experts today!
