CAT Individual Peer Review
The peer review always gives my surprise. The researches my classmates did are what I am very interested about but dare not to try, as these topics seem big and complicated for me.
For example, we usually say that it’s difficult to apply CAT tools for translation between English and Asian languages. But why? Helen Lee analyzed the differences between Korean and English, which gave me clues to the differences between Chinese and English and also helped me to better understand when tools might not work and why.
Cira Ortiz researched the MT in the perspective of cognitive science. Her acute observations on both human and machine helped me see the direction — let the machine help but not control. For CAT beginners, it’s easy to go from one extreme (staying away from tools) to another — keep looking for new tools and try to find an omnipotent one. But do remember, every tool has its limit, and human is the core.
Another interesting project was done by Vanesa Cao. She listed useful tools for freelance translators. In some degree, every translator is freelancer who can work independently and be responsible for their own work. So no matter if I work as a freelancer, it will be very helpful to learn some skills to prepare myself to “be a solution.”
Tingting Xu translated a political speech with Google Toolkit and the result was very satisfied. It made me think that machine translation should perform very well for the “dead” language like political speeches, government documents, and regulations and laws. In some way, they are very controlled language in terms of emotion and grammar.
I also learned a lot from several other videos, like the Google Translate Community, Memsource and the post-editing of machine translation. Many thanks to my smart and diligent classmates:
A04 CAT Tools for Freelancers: Vanessa Cao
A19 MT Comparison Google SYSTRAN Microsoft Babylon: Helen Lee
A35 Google Translator Toolkit: Tingting Xu
A31 Post-Editing in Memsource vs Google Translator Toolkit: Jingxiao Wang
B02 Memsource Trial vs Wordfast Anywhere: Ryan Baker
B18 Undestanding Google Translate MT: Xian Lu
B24 Cognitive Science & MT – Cira Ortiz Cognitive Science & MT Cira Ortiz
