Machine Translation

For companies facing extremely high volumes of text or extremely fast turnaround times, or both, machine translation may be a viable option. On its own, current machine translation technology cannot produce the same level of quality as a human translator. However, depending on time constraints, cost requirements, and end use, the machine translation process can be customised with an ideal combination of terminology glossaries, translation memory technology, optical character recognition (OCR), and post-editing by human linguists.

Machine translation on its own may be a good solution if you need a 'rough' translation of thousands of documents quickly in order to determine which ones are significant and need to be translated by a human being – this process is called ‘gisting’. However, if you need a better quality, machine translation can be combined with human linguists who review the machine output, making appropriate changes in spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. The end result is a significantly more accurate translation, which, although not perfect, is a notable improvement on machine translation alone; it can also be produced in a fraction of the time needed for a regular translation by a human being.

Please contact us to learn more about our machine translations and to talk with our client services team to determine whether machine translation is a potential solution for your needs.

 

 


 

Overtaal’s basic MT methodology

  • Documents are collected in electronic or hard copy formats
  • Front-end source material analysis and source sampling help determine the ideal project strategy
  • OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software is used on hard copy documents to create electronic files where possible
  • All documents are run against an existing translation memory (TM) for matching segments
  • Remaining text is translated by advanced machine translation (MT) software
  • Reviewers comb through machine-translated text, correcting basic spelling and grammar issues
  • Final files are delivered to the client in electronic format

 


 

Multilingual OCR

Our OCR technology allows us to convert image-based and paper documents into editable digital characters. We can then import the results directly into our Translation Management Software.

We can convert high volumes of hard-copy documents into machine-readable text. This text is then processed in conjunction with live data files to help you pinpoint where to spend your translation budget most effectively. Taking into account the quality and complexity of the original documents as well as the end-use of the translation, we will provide you with a Source Material Analysis proposing the best-fit solution for your project. In advance of the process, this analysis allows your organisation to verify that the strategy and file formats will suit your needs and fit with your systems and applications.