Originally published on Kirti Vashee’s blog eMpTy Pages. Lilt is an interactive and adaptive computer-aided translation tool that integrates machine translation, translation memories, and termbases into one interface that learns from translators. Using Lilt is an entirely different experience from post-editing machine translations — an experience that our users love, and one that yields substantial productivity gains without compromising quality. The first step toward using this new kind of tool is to understand how interactive and adaptive machine assistance is different from conventional MT, and how these technologies relate to exciting new developments in neural MT and deep learning. Interactive MT doesn’t just translate each segment once and leave the translator to clean up the mess. Instead, each word that the translator types into the Lilt environment is integrated into a new automatic translation suggestion in real time. While text messaging apps autocomplete words, interactive MT autocompletes whole sentences. Interactive MT actually improves translation quality. In conventional MT post-editing, the computer knows what segment will be translated, but doesn’t know anything about the phrasing decisions that a translator will make. Interactive translations are more accurate because they can observe what the translator has typed so far and update their suggestions based on all available information.
Happy Translator’s Day, my fellow Translators and Interpreters! On this day, I would like to recognize and commend fellow translators for the work we do and what it requires, and address any layperson’s misconception that a fluent bilingual may as well serve as a qualified translator. That this is not so may be so (painfully) obvious to us, but the confusion persists. Translation and interpretation are very specific skills which, just like any specialized capability, requires certain cognitive and operational faculties. Some of these are: a quick aptitude for understanding complex and diverse subjects; an analytical mind, and extensive research ability — one has to analyze complex information, deduce what additional information they may need, and identify the resources of where and how to find it.