Latest Developments In Translation Technology

In the recent past, a number of innovations have been made in the area of translation technology making language translation easier and much faster. Translation is the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language and the production, in another language, of an equivalent text that communicates the same message.

For successful translation to take place, the constraints of the context, the rules of grammar of the two languages, their writing conventions, and their idioms must be taken into account. This recent advanced translation software have many advantages when compared to traditional method of hiring a translator.

These technologies have brought among other benefits the capability to translate multiple languages, faster results, and at lower costs as compared to what used to obtain in the past.

Some of the most recent developments in the translation technology include;

1. Transphere Hybrid Machine Translation (MT) Solution

This is an AppTek’s state-of-the-art invention that can be used to translate several languages at the same time. TranSphere can be integrated with AppTek’s automatic speech recognition product, Plain Speech, and text-to-speech for a speech machine translation system loadable on PCs and wearable devices.

The software came into being after several years of extensive linguistic research in the United States, Asia, and the Middle East that brought into forth real-life, high-volume industrial and commercial applications.

Some of the benefits of TranShere are: it supports translation between English and a variety of other languages (bidirectional); it analyzes semantic, morphological, and syntactic structures and produce the output translation; it function as a fully automated Machine Translation system and it utilizes a general-purpose lexicon among other useful features.

2. SDL Trados Studio 2009 Service Pack 2 (SP2)

The SP2 is another new invention that has revolutionalized the translation industry. The software provides all the translation tools in one integrated editing, reviewing, project management and terminology environment.

The software combines the leading translation memory technology with a number of powerful features, such as AutoSuggest, QuickPlace, and real time preview to Context Match to help the translated projects get completed in a record time.

Furthermore, the software has a cutting edge translation memory (TM) engine that can recycle previously translated content and increase productivity.

3. Google Mobile App for iPhone

This voice search application for the iPhone offers the user two new ways of searching with the new voice search and ‘My Location’ features. The software will enable the user to simply speak into the mouth piece, as they would during a conversation, slowly and clearly with their request.  Voice search uses speech recognition technology, transforming spoken words into text, running the query through Google as though it has been manually typed.  

The ‘My Location’ software uses GPS to personalize search results dependent on your location; making searching for businesses, movie info, weather or take-away quick, easy and convenient to you without needing to enter your post code or address. The technology has also incorporated previous version of Google Mobile App like the ability to launch Gmail, Google News and more from one place.  And when typing in the search box, suggestions appear to save time.

4. Projetex

Projetex is project management software for Translation Agencies that is designed to simplify the task of corporate and freelance workflow management for system administrators, general management, sales representatives, project managers, human resource managers, accountants etc and smaller work environments, where single team members may have two or more of these roles combined.

Projetex accommodates, simplifies and optimizes the project management, accounting of translation projects, client accounts management and billing, issuing workflow, documents, fully customizable and printable,  Freelance translators’ accounts management and billing among others. Projetex is also beneficial in saving time and organizing workflow of multiple translation projects.

5. Translation Office 3000

Translation Office 3000 is a highly developed accounting tool for freelance translators and small translation agencies. TO3000 easily and seamlessly integrates into the business life of professional freelance translators in a big way that transforms the complex and diverse world of the translation business into a manageable concept implemented in software.

The new VERSION 9 is a distinctive combination of many benefits for freelance translation business because it is in a single software package that is specially designed for the international community of freelance translators. Furthermore the TO3000 fully supports accounting of translation jobs in multiple currencies.

Translators can also find this software useful because can use both words and ANY other text volume units (e.g. page of 1800 characters with spaces, page of 1500 characters without spaces, line of 50, 55 or 60, or 62 characters).

6. Mini Digital Voice Changer

This ingenious gadget features three different voice changing options that users can find useful, more so for the James Bond pranksters. It digitally changes the user’s voice frequency to enable them to remain completely undetected.

This is the perfect device for prank phone calls that can easily put off the intended victim.

7. VoiceType Dictation

IBM’s VoiceType Dictation is a high accuracy, large vocabulary speech recognition solution that can help doctors, lawyers and other professionals improve their productivity and effectiveness.

The software is capable of recognizing 32,000 words at a rate of approximately 70-100 words per minute, with 97% accuracy. It’s available for OS/2, Windows, and is also supported for laptop and notebook computer users via a PCMCIA digital signal adapter card. It is also available in a number of languages besides English.

Professionals whose work includes extensive writing have been able to reduce the amount of typing required to do their jobs, and can achieve immediate document turnaround without waiting for someone to transcribe notes for them. Physically- challenged users who cannot use a keyboard now have greater access to computers through IBM’s VoiceType Dictation.

8. IBM’s RTTS

Under the “n.Fluent’ project, IBM has installed the RTTS technology that has already been made available to IBM’s approximately 400,000 employees for chat, email, web page, crowdsourcing, eSupport, blogs, knowledge portals, and document translation. 

In its initial deployment, the tool has been used by IBMers to translate more than 100 million words and now the company will be partnering with Lionbridge to have the RTTS deployed to help clients manage multilingual content across their enterprise without having to deploy expensive translation management software throughout their global organization.

IBM’s RTTS technology translates text in one language (such as English) into text into another language (such as Spanish).  As such, it removes language as a barrier and helps expand commerce and collaboration opportunities for globally-integrated enterprises. 

Besides, RTTS improves the localization efficiencies of human translators by post-editing machine translation output, enabling multilingual e-support and social networks. 

9. Heartsome Translation Studio R7

This new technology uses a Mac and Vista-style graphical user interface which have been integrated to save time and cost.

It Integrates the most current versions of all available open language technology standards — XLIFF, TMX, TBX, SRX, GMX and it remains to be the only truly cross-platform computer-aided translation tool — Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris and Unix.

The technology also is supportive of the latest in publishing and documentation formats including among others XML, DITA, Office 2007, Framemaker, InDesign…

9. Google Speech to speech Translation

Google is in the process of rolling out a speech to speech translation software to be installed on phones to enable people of different foreign languages to chat without necessarily having a translator dictionary nearby.

Like voice recognition, the technology does have its draw backs which will need ironing out such as different voices, accents and pitch but when the technology is finally integrated into mobile phones then the possibilities for users could be endless.

With technology breaking down language barriers, is the timing right for translating your website into multiple languages? Will technology catch up in the near future? The invariably is yes to both, but at this point in time and certainly for the next decade it’s safe to say that highly skilled translator will remain at the forefront of any language translation technology.