Summary
Using machine translation (MT) correctly requires insight, expertise and
careful planning. We do not believe that fully automated localisation
processes are likely to happen anytime soon.
The quality of machine translation output depends on many factors:
the way the source text is written, how creative it is, whether the MT engine
has been trained with appropriate data, etc.
In audiovisual (AV) content, the meaning of words is affected by the sound
and image. MT engines do not understand context and merely reproduce
existing translations. This makes machine translation less suitable for
audiovisual translation.
Translators are rarely invited to participate in the design of MT solutions,
and it is assumed that one size fits all, although translators have different
styles of work.
A better dialogue between developers and AV translators could help to shift
the focus from MT to other technologies which might be of greater benefit,
such as some CAT (computer-assisted translation) features, voice-input
technologies and quality assurance tools.
Although proponents of MT claim that efficiency gains are guaranteed,
fixing a poor translation can take longer than translating the same text
from scratch. Some translators produce translations of worse quality when
using MT. This means that the effort is merely shifted from the translator to
the reviser.
Unscrupulous use of MT will increasingly lead to brain drain and talent
crunch. This undermines the long-term sustainability of the industry.
To reinforce sustainability, translators’ working conditions need to be
improved. This includes adequate remuneration both for their work and for
training MT engines, guaranteeing their status as authors, adjusting the
expected output both for translators and post-editors and attention paid to quality.
Ethical aspects are no less important: as MT is sometimes passed off as
human translation, clients are not made aware of this fact. Translators are
often not aware that their work is used to train MT engines, nor are they
remunerated for this. MT makes translators lose their unique translation
style, and the language becomes more bland and homogeneous.
The ecological cost of MT should be taken into account, too.
We are in favour of the concept of the augmented translator that puts the
human front and centre and uses technology to enhance their capabilities.
Introduction
Nothing has ever changed the localisation industry quite like the quantum
leap in machine translation technology made in the last decade.
While some parties are already celebrating the end of human translation
and ushering in the era of “post-localisation”, we should keep in mind that
artificial intelligence (AI) is merely using large amounts of reference data
to often produce correct results, while the human translator knows how
words and concepts relate to each other in the world, which is the more
robust basis for quality output.
As Aljoscha Burchardt, principal researcher at the German Research
Center for Artificial Intelligence, put it, “MT is a clever parrot, but still a
parrot” (Augmented Translation, Dr. Arle Lommel, CSA Research, 34:37).
Unfortunately, working conditions for human translators have
historically been poor, and the recent hype around machine translation
has only made things worse.
Since MT is here to stay and certainly has potential, we would like to give
an overview of the current state of affairs and recommend guidelines for
AI-powered human translation as well as best practices for the
sustainability of the industry in general.
“MT is a
clever
parrot, but
still a
parrot”
CAPABILITY
OF MT
Current experience
Contrary to the belief that AI will now effortlessly serve as our personal
interpreter, using the technology correctly requires insight, expertise and careful
planning. We are far from being able to copy-and-paste any piece of text into the
graphical interface of an MT engine and get a polished result.
Humans are still an integral part of the localisation
process, and often human translation is the only way of Humans are still an
producing a fit-for-purpose result. This is due to the integral part of the
fact that the quality of machine translation output varies localisation process, and
wildly, as it depends on many factors: often human translation is
the only way of producing
Is the source text written in a way that facilitates
a fit-for-purpose result.
translation by the machine? Does it use many
abbreviations or very specific lingo, as would be the
case with a video-game developer talking about the
latest game update, or does it adhere to common linguistic standards
and is written by a professional writer (e.g. a journalist)?
Does the content require creative translation (e.g. a high-fantasy drama)
or is it repetitive and follows recognisable patterns (e.g. a recipe)?
How well is the MT engine trained in the specific field, and what is the
quality of the corpora (databases filled with existing phrases in source and
target languages) used for training? Or is the MT engine all-purpose and
favours quantity over quality regarding its underlying data?
Are there extensive corpora available for the language pair in question,
or do you have to use a pivot language (third language, e.g.: source >
English > target) for translation?
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All these factors and more influence the quality of the MT output,
and as a consequence it is difficult to make generalised statements about it.
If used correctly and with the individual scenario in mind, the technology can
assist the human translator. We envisage that in the future AI will not replace
human translators but will rather augment their skills. The machine’s ability to
quickly parse large amounts of data and present relevant results to the human
in the driver’s seat could prove invaluable to efficiency and quality levels moving
forward.
Similarly, it is important to keep in mind that AI merely reproduces existing
translations, which means that it cannot come up with creative solutions.
It looks for words and phrases in the available training data and constructs
translated sentences based on that. The way it reaches those results
is unpredictable, which means that sometimes catastrophic errors
(completely unusable translations) occur.
At the same time, AI does not understand context
(or only in a limited way) and, due to the way
the algorithms are designed, will not be able to
improve on this in the near future. Experts say that
a couple of pages in a book will be the limit.
The machine’s
ability to quickly
When localising audiovisual (AV) content,
parse large amounts
however, context is key. The image on the
screen, the action, the tone of voice and gestures of data and present
all affect the meaning of the words, and as long as relevant results to
machines are not capable of taking all these the human in the
elements into account, MT will be lacking in AV driver’s seat could
translation and in all (creative) translations that prove invaluable to
heavily rely on context, for that matter. efficiency and
quality levels
moving forward.
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Features currently
in development
While machines might never read and understand entire books, industry experts
can give us a glimpse of incremental updates to the current technology. Both
Evgeny Matusov and Yota Georgakopoulou have published articles talking about
improvements which are likely to appear very soon in our daily workflows.
In terms of pre- and post-processing of text, metadata could help MT to take
factors such as register, text-length restrictions and gender into account, and
audiovisual translation (AVT) specialists could also fine-tune this information
on a per-segment basis. At the same time, intelligent text segmenters could
reduce the amount of editing necessary for suitably formatted subtitles.
While automatic grammar correction could remove grammatical errors,
glossary implementation could help improve consistency, and indicators for the
estimated quality of the MT can automatically filter out suggestions that do
not meet a certain standard.
Newly trained engines for specific language pairs, which eliminate the need
for pivot languages, are also expected to appear in the coming years.
While these features will make working with MT more comfortable, we do not
think that fully automated localisation processes without human intervention
are likely to happen anytime soon.
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IMPLEMENTATION
OF MT
Current experience
Translators are rarely invited to participate in the design of MT solutions,
nor is adequate feedback solicited from them, although they could offer valuable
suggestions. Consequently, their needs and user experience aren’t taken into
account. The assumption is that one size fits all, although translators have
different styles when it comes to the use of MT – while some translators want to
display the MT suggestion only occasionally and don’t want to allow the MT
output to affect their style, others prefer rewriting whatever is provided by the
machine. However, MT suggestions are usually prefilled in the translator’s
working area (boxes) and aren’t always easy to hide.
A better dialogue between developers and
translators could help to shift the focus from
MT to other technologies which seem to A better dialogue
be overlooked, although they might have a between developers
greater practical benefit both for the and translators could
translators and the overall quality. help to shift the focus
Such technologies include a number of CAT from MT to other
features, voice-input technologies and other technologies which
solutions. Although they are used as a matter seem to be overlooked,
of course in other domains of translation,
although they might
they are almost nonexistent or unsupported
in audiovisual translation. have a greater
practical benefit both
for the translators and
the overall quality.
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It is usually agencies or end clients that decide whether or not and how MT
should be used on a given project. This decision is often made by a project
manager with no training or experience in translation, while the translator,
an expert in the area, has no say in the matter. Sometimes, translators are
instructed to keep as much of the MT output as possible. In fact, this is an
approach called light post-editing. Unlike full post-editing, which is used to
“obtain a product comparable to [that] obtained by human translation”,
light post-editing merely allows the user to get a sense of the meaning and
doesn’t “attempt to [create] a product comparable to [that] obtained by human
translation”. While this may be suitable for internal communication or media
monitoring, it isn’t appropriate for most audiovisual content.
Although enthusiastic statements by proponents of MT may suggest that
efficiency gains are guaranteed, most translators disagree: fixing a poor
translation, whether it has been produced by a machine or a human, can take
longer than translating the same text from scratch. Indeed, revisers (known as
QCers, proofreaders, adaptors, etc. in different AVT fields) complain that some
translators produce translations of worse quality when using MT. As a result,
some of the effort is merely shifted from the translation stage to the
quality-control stage, while the revisers’ remuneration remains the same.
Fixing a poor
translation, whether it has
been produced by a machine
or a human, can take longer
than translating the same
text from scratch.
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What we want
User-friendly, intuitive interface that makes it easy to
concentrate on the task at hand. This can best be achieved if
translators are involved in MT design and setup.
MT should be an optional tool which stimulates human creativity
instead of inhibiting it. In practical terms, we would like to have an
MT input toggle to display/hide and insert MT suggestions easily by
means of a customisable shortcut. Ideally, it should be possible to
display only MT suggestions exceeding a selected quality threshold.
We would like to be able to choose the type of MT output
presentation to accommodate different styles of work: overtyping
the MT suggestion in the box vs. typing in an empty box while the
suggestion is displayed in a separate field (if activated by a toggle).
In addition to MT, we’d like to have access to other, more
traditional tools as well. Translators should be put in full control,
which also means that all the tools can be turned on and off as
needed and can be accessed with customisable shortcuts.
In particular, they should include the following functionalities,
some known from computer-assisted translation (CAT) applications:
Translation memory search, also known as
concordancing, giving easy access not only to existing
translations of related content, e.g. other episodes/seasons
of the same series, but to other bilingual content as well.
When both MT and translation memories (TMs) are used
to leverage suggestions, it should be clear at first sight
which source each suggestion comes from. MT could be
used to enhance TM technology and introduce
subsegment matching;
Termbase lookup, giving on-the-fly access to glossaries
of key names and phrases, terms, etc. and enhance the
data with the help of AI (Automated Content
Enrichment); predictive typing (autocomplete) that
anticipates what words you will need to type when
translating a specific sentence;
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Voice input (dictation) functionality customised for
colloquial spoken language and supporting voice
commands for operations such as timing and
segmentation;
Up-to-date spell checkers customised for
colloquial/spoken language rather than just widely
available open-source ones that haven’t been updated for
years and, for some languages, have inadequately sized
dictionaries with countless errors;
Quality assurance tools that focus not only on technical
aspects such as reading speed and gaps between subtitles
but on linguistic aspects as well. Examples of items that
may be checked include trailing spaces, double spaces,
repeated words, grammatical errors, words that shouldn’t
appear at the end of lines and glossary conformance.
Supporting regular expressions in find-and-replace
operations is another important tool.
Applications facilitating collaboration among
translators on larger projects either within a language
(e.g., several people working on a series) or across
languages (e.g., several translators, each working into their
target language) and across functions (translator, QCer,
template maker, script authors, etc.).
New innovative tools that could be developed in
collaboration with translators who use language
technologies such as language corpora. One such example
is having access to lemma-based translation equivalents
(word alignments) or simple access to existing
dictionaries.
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FAIR PAYMENT,
SUSTAINABILITY
AND QUALITY
Current experience
In the field of audiovisual translation, big technological turns have become
associated by practitioners with pay cuts, as historically many such turns,
e.g. the introduction of fuzzy matches in game localisation and the use of
automatic speech recognition in captioning, have led to exactly that.
Another example of this comes from the subtitling industry. In an attempt to
maximise efficiency, companies have fragmented what used to be a job for one
specialist, the subtitler, into smaller parts performed by different people — the
template maker, the template proofreader, the translator, the translation
proofreader, etc. — each paid considerably less due to “having to do less work”.
The pay reduction was disproportionately large, and that’s one of the reasons
why very few subtitling professionals nowadays earn a decent wage
commensurate with their qualifications, skills and experience.
Rates were already low in the pre-MT era, not least because they’d been stagnant
for more than a decade and hadn’t been adjusted for inflation, but now that the
use of MT has exploded in popularity among companies, there’s been even more
fragmentation in the workflow (via post-editing and
metadata management) and even more pay cuts,
as some companies have aggressively slashed their
rates on the basis of “huge efficiency gains” that MT The shift to
supposedly brings — a claim that audiovisual post-editing has
translators have contested all along. not only led to
lower pay and
The shift to post-editing has not only led to lower decreased work
pay and decreased work satisfaction but it has also satisfaction but it
put the translators’ authorship status in has also put the
jeopardy. With the raw translation now being translators’
provided by the machine, unless policymaking goes authorship
in the right direction, AVT specialists might lose status in
their authors’ rights, including the right to receive jeopardy.
royalties for the use of their work, which would
decrease their income by up to 50% in some cases.
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All this has exacerbated the so-called brain drain — a phenomenon which was
acutely felt even before the advent of MT — with professionals quitting in
search of better working conditions and university graduates failing to
find their footing in our trade. This, in turn, has contributed to the “talent
crunch” — one of the biggest talking points in the industry today.
Translation quality has also suffered due to MT and will likely continue to be
eroded further unless proper measures are taken. This process may even
accelerate, as increasingly more machine translated content is fed back into MT
engines. These days, industry-led discussions surrounding machine translation
seem to focus solely on maximising efficiency, while the effect of MT on quality
is mentioned only briefly or not at all. Indeed, it doesn’t seem to be a priority —
as mentioned above, post-editors are often instructed to keep as much of the
machine translation output as possible, and even when that’s not the case, lower
rates force them to adopt the “this will do” approach, i.e. accepting barely
passable translations in order to work as fast as they can to try and earn a decent
wage. An already demanding and stressful job, post-editing in such a hectic
manner is bound to affect not only translation quality but also one’s mental
health.
With rates, working conditions and quality deteriorating and with veteran
translators leaving the industry and being replaced by students, amateurs and
part-timers, we fear for the
long-term sustainability of
our profession and lament the
role of the exploitative use
of MT in this decline.
An already demanding
and stressful job, post-editing in
such a hectic manner is bound to
affect not only translation quality
but also one’s mental health.
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What we want
Translation rates, which will be affected by MT, should be adjusted
for the inflation of the past 10+ years and reflect the average
salary of similarly skilled employees in other fields and the
employment benefits they get, such as paid leave, paid vacation,
healthcare and pension benefits, maternity leave, etc.
The efficiency gain via MT should primarily be used to scale with
the increasing demand, which would justify the investment in
MT training and implementation by itself. MT could be used to
support less demanding projects and free up highly skilled AVT
specialists for more demanding ones.
Remuneration for machine translation post-editing should be
commensurate with the high level of expertise required to perform it.
Translators should be made aware of and remunerated
for the use of their work for training an MT engine.
Translators’ author status should be retained even with the use of
MT.
Mental health should be taken into account when adjusting post-
editors’ expected output, since it is not possible to proofread MT
as quickly as human translation.
Quality should be brought to the forefront.
Measures that can prevent its erosion include adequate
recruitment, regular training, continuous quality
assessment, etc.
Quality assessment (evaluation of quality) and revision
(improvement of quality) are different parts of the
workflow. Revisers shouldn’t be routinely asked to provide
quality assessment at the same time: when revisers have to
assign an error type and severity to each change they
make, it makes their task much more time-consuming and
may negatively affect their choices.
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Quality assessment shouldn’t be based exclusively on
counting errors, as this weakness-focused approach
disregards the strengths such as creative solutions and
idiomatic expressions.
Quality assessment shouldn’t be confined to assessment of
translators and post-editors but should cover revision as
well.
It should be kept in mind that reliable revisers are more
difficult to recruit than reliable translators.
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The Ethical Aspect
of MT
Like many other powerful technologies, machine translation doesn’t come
without ethical issues, which mostly stem from the unscrupulous
practices surrounding its use. An example of one such practice is that of
companies trying to pass MT off as human translation or not telling their
clients whether MT was involved in the localisation process. Most filmmakers,
producers and content creators would likely object to having their work
translated by a machine, even if post-edited afterwards, but more often than
not they simply aren’t made aware of the fact.
Translators, in turn, aren’t made aware (or asked for consent) when
their work is used to train an MT engine, which could be seen as
infringement of intellectual property in some countries. More generally,
practitioners’ opinions of MT and post-editing remain largely ignored,
even though many have openly stated that they don’t want to be correcting
what a machine wrote and to see their creative profession, an art form even,
turn into a more mechanistic, routine job.
An unwelcome result of translators’ shift to post-editing is the loss of their
unique translation style and linguistic signature.While a fair amount of
localisable content, e.g. corporate materials, conference presentations and
e-learning courses, can potentially be suitable for the use of MT and not
benefit much from what’s known as the “translator’s voice”, what happens
when the human touch and creativity are crucial, as in the case of films?
According to research, when post-editing MT, translators lose about one-third
of the stylistic features that make up their individual voice.
As far as potential issues are concerned, there’s the one of language
becoming more bland and homogeneous, and less rich and diverse.
Beyond this, as previously stated, authors’
rights in the era of MT have not been
sufficiently discussed yet, and the jury is still An unwelcome
out in terms of appropriate legislation. result of translators’
As it is currently not clear who owns text created shift to post-editing is
by the collaboration of machine and post-editor, the loss of their
audiovisual translators might end up losing the unique translation
right to be credited for their work and becoming style and linguistic
nameless, voiceless cogs in the localisation signature.
machine.
And finally, as is the case with all types of technologies in our digital day and
age, MT and AI in general come at an ecological cost, since training MT
engines as well as using them requires a tremendous amount of energy.
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Looking Ahead
While machines have come a long way since their rule-based days, human
parity under real-world circumstances has not yet been achieved and will not
be achieved anytime soon. Because of this, despite technological advances,
humans will remain the bottleneck and therefore a key element in sustaining
our industry. And so, their needs must be met.
In his recent talk about augmented translation, Dr. Arle Lommel from CSA
Research provided a valuable insight into a future of MT that centres around
the human. In that future, AI is used not to replace translators or make them
post-editors but rather to enhance their capabilities and boost the speed,
comfort and ease with which they do their work. Surrounded by cutting-edge,
next-generation technology, translators are not forced into using any of the
available tools. Instead, they’re free to choose whatever tools they think will
work best for each particular project, be it automated content enrichment for
research-heavy tasks, enhanced translation memory and adaptive neural
machine translation for assignments with a fair bit of terminology and
repetition, or perhaps even nothing at all for highly creative jobs.
This is a vision we share. By using MT to empower translators and improve
their working conditions, we can secure a sustainable future for the field of
AVT and continue to bridge linguistic divides across different countries and
cultures.
For that, a constant dialogue between all stakeholders is crucial, to ensure
that the needs of all parties are being met. We also encourage more research
into such aspects of MT as quality, cognitive effort, mental health and work
satisfaction, with a special focus on creative translation (so far, research has
primarily focused on legal and technical texts) in order to build a healthy,
productive and sustainable working environment. Cutting costs,
putting pressure on collaborators and phasing out human translators based
on a surface-level understanding of MT technology is not acceptable to us.
We can secure a sustainable
future for the field of AVT and
continue to bridge linguistic divides
across different countries and
cultures.
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We hope that this document will serve as a basis for the best practices in the
field of augmented translation and inspire fruitful relationships
between everyone involved. After all, our industry has always been about
helping to foster understanding and bringing the world closer together.
AUGMENTED TRANSLATION
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Text: Max Deryagin, Miroslav Pošta, Daniel Landes
Review: Vanessa Wells, Claudia Carrington
Design: Emma Carraud
Consultation: Estelle Renard
Published by Audiovisual Translators Europe (AVTE) in 2021
http://avteurope.eu/
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