T&I Business: November 2009

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

$2 Billion Machine Translation Market - How Did WinterGreen Research Calculate This Number?

WinterGreen Research came out with a 668-page report last month about the machine translation market. This report estimates the machine translation market at $2 billion in 2009, growing to $7 billion by 2015. These numbers are strikingly different from Language Weavers $67.5 billion estimate of the "untapped" machine translation market by 2011. Why is that? Well, just as has been noted about the general translation market, the size of the machine translation market depends largely on how it is defined. In this case, WinterGreen Research does not appear to include "untapped" potential, but in these numbers it does broadly include translation services and non-MT tools that may be used in conjunction with MT. When asked to clarify its definition of the market, WinterGreen Research said,

The report profiles the machine translation market, the services and maintenance market, the language translation services directly associated with the machine translation. The machine translation is used in many industry segments and there are discussions of those different segments and how the software is able to support efforts to achieve localization in different regional and industrial market segments. This study is a discussion of the translation tools market to the extent that the tools are part of machine language software and repositories used to facilitate accurate translation by humans....

I have not commented on this report until now because I needed to obtain some clarification regarding the topic of the report. The description of the report has a heavy SCIgen-like feel that makes it difficult to determine which market is actually being discussed. Let me know if you encountered the same challenge. Read the description here and please tell me what you glean. At first glance, does this report appear to cover machine translation, translation tools (i.e. TEnTs, TMs, CAT, etc), software localization, all human translation services, or a specific combination of these markets? Or does the report not distinguish one of these markets from another?

The title and the last two paragraphs really left me puzzled at first:

Language Translation Software and Services Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2009 to 2015

....Worldwide language translation services software license shipments market share analysis indicates that LionBridge has 16% share of a $2 billion language translation services market. LionBridge and SDL are market leaders with IBM participating in the services portion of the market supported by its WebSphere product that offers portal technology...

Localization translation services based on software at $2 billion in 2009 are forecast to become $7 billion markets by the end of the forecast period. Software is becoming much more accurate as it combines the separate rules engine, translation memory, and statistical technique algorithms that have been used separately hitherto to support translation services. The combination of technologies is anticipated to create systems that are more accurate. These markets are part of a $10 billion larger translation market, forecast to reach $21 billion by 2015.

Contradicting my initial interpretation of the report description, the list of companies mentioned includes mostly MT providers and the table of contents leans heavily toward MT.

Fortunately, that has all been clarified now and you can read the report with the expectation that you will be reading an analysis of a broadly defined machine translation market. The entire report is likely even more interesting than the summary description. If any of you pay the $5,000-$10,000 for the report, please share your opinion of it and let others know if you think it was worth the investment.

Those who enjoyed this article may be interested in reading more about SCIgen.

Monday, November 09, 2009

NEC Tele Scouter Projects Translation Directly onto User's Retina

The idea of "simultaneous interpretation goggles" has been around for a few years. Now NEC is taking it a step further by introducing the Tele Scouter, which can combine with voice recognition and machine translation and then instantly project translations directly onto a user's retina. Yes, onto the retina, not the lenses, thus adding a clever feature to augmented reality.

You'll probably agree that "they have a bit of the sense of the Borg from Star Trek," as Don DePalma observed in this BBC audio interview.

The Tele Scouter will go on sale in 2011 at 7.5 million yen (approximately $83,000) for a set of 30 headsets. The first version "will use face-recognition software to help shop sales staff identify customers and access their shopping history for that 'personal' sales touch." That gives NEC some time to hopefully see a few more advances in voice recognition and machine translation, both of which are imprecise sciences.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Baby Cry Translator for iPhone

Yes, "there is an app for that." Geek.com reports that the Cry Translator is available on the App Store for $9.99. The app not only provides a "translation" but also suggests appropriate responses.

Clinical studies have shown the Cry Translator can decipher the broad meaning of a baby’s cry with 96 percent accuracy.

Read more about the Cry Translator on Geek.com.

This is not the first time we've seen such a device. You may recall that "Bowlingual" and "Meowlingual" came out in 2002 and 2003 to offer translation of barks and purrs for pet owners. These inventions took a classic Far Side cartoon about Professor Schwartzman's "canine decoder" and made it into a reality.

Here is a phony behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Bowlingual:

You May Need a New Translation Provider if It Claims to Be a "Translations" Company

How can a company trust its language service provider to use the most appropriate industry terminology for finance, technology, law, health care, or any other industry when that service provider does not even use the most appropriate terminology for the translation industry? There are many subjective ways to evaluate a translation company's expertise in various industries. However, one way to tell that the service provider is not very particular about using appropriate terminology for any industry is to see that it butchers the terminology of the translation industry - the industry it should know best of all!

An example described below shows why a translation company may not be very professional if it defies common usage and employs the term "translations" as an adjective. This offense is not as grievous as confusing the terms "translation" and "interpretation" or as atrocious as saying "interpretate" and "interpretator," but it is still a significant error.

Why should anyone care? Many companies have complained about bad translations by indicating, "The translated words were not technically wrong. The definition of each word was right; however, it just didn't sound natural and correct to someone in our industry." Good translation is not 'word for word,' but 'meaning for meaning.' Furthermore, a really good translation evokes the same audience reaction intended by the original text, as if it had originally been written in the translated language.

Usage
An important part of evoking the appropriate reaction and thus producing good writing and good translation involves choosing the correct words not only according to their definitions but also according to common usage.

Usage : the ways and contexts in which spoken and written words are used, determined by a lexicographer's intuition or from corpus analysis.

Based on Common Usage, the Correct Adjective is "Translation," not "Translations"

When used as an adjective, the singular "translation," not the plural "translations," is the correct word choice. It is correct to say "translation service," "translation projects," or "translation department," but NOT "translations service," "translations projects," or "translations department." There are a number of ways to tell that this is the correct usage.

I. Lexicographer's Intuition
Anecdotally, I find that only non-native English speakers and people lacking experience in the translation industry ever use the incorrect plural "translations" as an adjective. I'm not claiming to be a professional terminologist or to have a degree in lexicography; however, lexicography is a skill that is necessarily adopted to some degree by all translation professionals. Most of my colleagues agree with me that the singular "translation" is more appropriate as an adjective than the plural "translations."

II. Corpus Analysis
Based on corpus analysis, we see that the singular "translation" is much more commonly used as an adjective than the plural "translations."

A. Authoritative Sources
How do authoritative sources use the terms in question?

Using Google, search the MultiLingual Magazine website for "translation service" and "translations service" (or comparable terms) and you'll see an obvious difference in results. [site:multilingual.com "translation service']returns 166 results and [site:multilingual.com "translations service"] returns only one result, which turns out to be an error.

Using Google, search the Monterey Institute of International Studies website for "translation project" and "translations project" to come to a similar conclusion. [site:miis.edu "translation project"] returns 22 results and [site:miis.edu "translations project"] returns zero results.

B. The Internet via Google: a Large Corpus to Analyze Common Usage
How does the world at large use the terms in question?

Google makes it very easy to determine relative frequency of use when searching for a term or phrase to assess appropriate usage. Googlefight is another tool that can make such assessments more efficient by comparing result volumes for two searches side by side. For example, the following image compares the results obtained when searching Google for "translation services" versus "translations services."

The following table summarizes additional results using Googlefight to compare the frequency with which online authors use the adjective "translation" versus the adjective "translations."

These results show that, depending on the exact phrase, the singular form of "translation" is 7 to 100 times more common.

Nouns
Although it appears that the singular form of the noun is also more common than the plural form of the, the above data regarding usage of adjectives does not indicate that it is wrong to refer to "translations" as a noun. My personal preference is to use the terms "translated files," "translated documents," or "translation projects," but it appears that this personal usage preference is more open for debate. Often, the plural form may actually sound better as part of a company name.

Lessons Learned
Don't worry about it if your language service provider refers to the noun "translations" in their company name or in conversation.

Don't worry about it if a non-native English speaker at you language service provider uses "translations" as an adjective.

However, if your native English speaking language service provider introduces you to one of their "translations managers" in their "translations department" to help you with your "translations project," I recommend you run away!!! Run away fast and find a new translation company!!! This service provider either does not have much experience or they don't really care about using industry-appropriate terminology.

What do you think? Do you have arguments or evidence to the contrary? ...maybe something written in a usage dictionary... Or do you have similar examples of translation companies being betrayed by their own words? If so, please share them in the comments below.

Final note:
Yes, I know that I'm inviting a lot of bored people to point out every grammatical error and typo ever to appear on this blog. Oh, well.

Related posts:

Monday, November 02, 2009

Twitter Translation Directory List: Find and Follow Translation Pros

Two weeks ago, many of you began providing suggestions for translation industry professionals to follow on twitter. Thank you for all the suggestions you made here on the T&I Business Blog and also in many translation-related LinkedIn Groups. Fortunately, some people have begun creating directories that make it much easier to identify and follow these lists of translation professionals. Here are a few directories/searches that you can check out to quickly find and follow these pros:

Twitter Searches

TweepSearch