How Do Translation Memory Tools Work?

It's important to understand that translation memory tools are quite different and far more sophisticated than machine translation tools.

Machine Translation

Many of us have used Internet translation similar to that provided by the Language Tools on Google or AltaVistas Babel Fish in an attempt to translate an email or unknown text. We quickly realize that while it may give us an idea of the underlying message and prove to be a quick low-cost solution, it is certainly not perfect.

While this technology is useful if you get a document or email in German and want to know what is says, the results are far from publication quality. It is also limited in the languages it supports.

Some time ago, we received an unsolicited email offering to translate our entire website into 7 languages automatically. It even had an example of our front page. On this page we have a strap line, "Affordable Content Management". One of our staff speaks Chinese and translated the example they provided - he looked at it for a while then said "Cheap happy management". Not exactly the message we were looking for. Needless to say we did not take up their offer.

So as you can see, machine translation is no match for a real person!

Translation Memory Tools

A segment is a string of text, usually a sentence, but in some languages a segment may be a whole paragraph.

Translation memory tools store previously translated segments in a database, enabling translators to work more efficiently and reducing the need for retranslation. When translating a new document, these tools find and retrieve identical or similar matches of these segments for reuse. The results are returned with a rank or score according to the percentage of similarity between the text being translated and the match found.

• An exact match (100%) is returned where there is no difference or variation between the two strings.
• A fuzzy match is returned where the strings are very similar but not identical. The same string that uses different formatting can return a fuzzy match.

Translators often charge different rates when text is found as an exact match, as a fuzzy match (with the match falling between a certain percentage), or is a new translation.