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| My Personal Translator : What is Translation Memory? |
What is Translation Memory?
Translation Memory can be defined as a store of source and translated target language value pairs. It is based on fuzzy logic and is the ultimate solution to the problem of inaccuracy of Machine Translation faced by many users.
Let us try an understand how Machine Translation works. Machine Translation substitutes words in one language with those in another language. Understanding sentences and translating is a complex procedure where the meaning of the source text has to be understood in its entirety. All features of the text must be analyzed, a process which requires in-depth knowledge of both the grammar, semantics, syntax, idioms of the source language, as well as the culture of its speakers. The same in-depth knowledge to re-encode the meaning in the target language. The main challenge for Machine Translation is to understand nuances of both the source and the target language.
Many a time, you tend to translate the same text over and over again. In such cases, the translation provided by Machine Translation could be sometimes inaccurate. You would thus like to edit the translated text and store the result. Thus the next time you translate the same text, you get the translated text previously defined for that source text. This is where the need for Translation Memory arises.
Translation Memory helps you to customize the data base of translated phrases to overcome the inherent flaws in the word substitution process on which Machine Translation works. You can edit the translated value returned by Machine Translation or hire people to translate certain information for your organization and provide your clients with a consistent and accurate translation. Translation Memory is based on fuzzy logic i.e. it can give results even when the data is not totally accurate, precise and logical as in case of languages which can never be mathematically defined. The accuracy of Translation Memory improves with increasing number of inputs and outputs.
The Percentage Match i.e. Percentage accuracy for finding the match of a source text in the Translation Memory is set to 100% by default. Every source text is automatically searched in the Translation Memory and only if not found then, as per the percentage match, it is sent for Machine Translation. Machine Translation in the context of Site Translator means that the text to be translated is searched for in a remote language server and then translated.
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