companies are localising their
products. The term localisation refers to the process of customizing or
adapting a product (e.g. a software package, a Web site) for a target language
and culture.
Localisation has grown into a big business (Brooks 2000; Thibodeau
2000). Market watchers at Allied Business Intelligence suggest that the
value of revenues from software localisation could reach US$3.4 billion
by 2007, while those from Web page localisation could reach US$3.1 billion
by the same date (ABI 2002).
This trend towards localisation has resulted in a significant increase in the
volume of material to be translated, which has been accompanied by an
increase in pressure on translators to work more quickly while still maintaining
high quality output. The deadlines that translators are expected to
meet have also grown shorter. This is in part because companies want to
get their products onto the shelves in all corners of the world as quickly
as possible, and the practice of ?simship? or simultaneous shipment
means that they want to release all language versions of that product at
the same time, or within a reasonably short period of time. In addition,
electronic documents such as Web sites may have content that needs to
be updated frequently (Cheng 2000). Companies want to be sure that
their sites reflect the latest information, so translators are under pressure
PRODUCTIVITY VS QUALITY?
A pilot study on the impact of translation memory
systems
Lynne Bowker, School of Translation and
Interpretation, University of Ottawa, Canada
to work very quickly to ensure that the up-to-date information is reflected
in all language versions of the site.
Translators are therefore faced with a dilemma ? how can they translate
faster but still maintain a high standard of quality? Maintaining high
quality is essential since a poor translation could result in, at best, wasted
time and money, and at worst injury, illness or loss of life (e.g. if
medical or maintenance information is mistranslated). One way in
which translators working in the localisation industry are trying to
achieve this balance is by turning to technology, such as translation
memories (TMs), for assistance.
It is this question of balancing speed and quality with the help of a TM
that I wish to examine in this article. As previously mentioned, there
have been numerous investigations reporting that TMs can help to
improve productivity. By re-using parts of previous translations, translators
are bound to save time. However, there have been fewer investigations
into the effects that the use of this type of technology has on the
quality of the resulting translation.
This paper will be divided into six main sections. Following this introduction,
section 2 will briefly explain how a TM works. Section 3 will
explore the impact on productivity and quality as observed by other
scholars and practitioners. Section 4 will outline a small pilot study
undertaken to explore the balance of speed and quality obtained by translators
using TMs. Section 5 will discuss the results of this experiment.
Finally, section 6 will offer some concluding remarks.
2. How a Translation Memory Works
Translation memory tools are computer-aided tools, which means they
are designed to help (rather than replace) human translators. Although
they were conceived of as earl
本论文由英语论文网提供整理,提供论文代写,英语论文代写,代写论文,代写英语论文,代写留学生论文,代写英文论文,留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。