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Bryan Johnson reports: <<My current employer has a need to translate
some of our documents (FM) to Spanish (LA) and French (Canada). Many
of our customers are asking/demanding our manuals be translated. I
have investigated various translation services etc. and have together
with our VP of International sales, proposed a plan to recoup our
translation costs. Everything looks good... We presented our plan to
our CEO who promptly shot it down saying he wouldn't approve the plan
but would approve "software" to do the translations...>>
Charitably? He may have heard the phrase "machine-assisted
translation", and if that's what he means, you can defuse the whole
situation simply by pointing out to him that the translators you
chose do use this software. If that's not the case, and he really
does believe that there's a magic box that can do this:
<<how can I go about educating him on the short comings of machine
translation?>>
First, let's distinguish between machine-assisted translation, which
is a tool used by human translators to increase their productivity
and accuracy, and machine translation, which is a fun but only
marginally useful toy like Babelfish. The former doesn't have major
shortcomings in the hands of a pro; the latter has a great many
shortcomings.
Let's assume he really does mean the magic toy. In that case, the
simplest solution is the best: Agree to his suggestion, but with a
caveat: "I have reservations about this approach, but I'm willing to
give it a try on the condition that our customers approve the
results. If they're happy, we'll all be happy. If not..."
Then do a trial translation using the toy, pass it to a typical
customer, and ask the customer to provide feedback. Odds are good
that they'll give you an earful, and you can pass that along to your
boss as proof that his idea won't work. In the interests of not
looking like an idiot to the customer, and possibly scaring them into
the arms of one of your more clueful-seeming competitors, you may
want to do a bit of expectations management to explain what you're
doing and why before you send them the test. <g>
Another useful trick is to offer your boss a translation produced by
Babelfish and other toy translators. Ask him to pick his favorite
language, find a text sample in that language, and run it through the
translator. He'll get the point. My personal experience with this (a
French author who thought they were doing me a favor by giving me a
Babelfish translation "to save time") is that these tools are a
complete disaster if you're trying to do anything more than get the
gist of a text. Even then, use them very cautiously.
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