(McElroy + Machine) Translation Services—Human Optimized
McElroy Translation is committed to being Your Language Solution ProviderSM. Long known for our high-quality human translation, we now offer a range of machine translation services that extend and complement our core linguistic competence. We are ready to work with you to identify your language-related problems and to propose an optimal mix of human and automated components for a cost-effective solution.
(MT)2
McElroy works with technology partner Asia Online and other leading machine translation (MT) vendors to provide three basic levels of machine translation. The kind of “raw” machine translation available on the internet typically varies from “poor” to “useless” for human understanding of technical content. Our experience with MT in technical domains demonstrates, however, that MT can be useful as a screening tool, especially in conjunction with up-front terminology work and automated English-language search tools.
MT Plus is machine translation that includes custom dictionaries based on our 40 years of technical translation activity, enhancing the output of a typical MT engine to increase the probability that documents of interest will be identified with keyword searches or other more advanced search techniques. A single subscription fee covers a fixed monthly volume of translation across all supported languages, and there are tiers of service to fit any projected demand. The service is also available on a “one time use” basis for large stand-alone projects.
MT Supreme is a project-based approach for which McElroy translators complete high-quality translation that is used to customize an MT domain specific to the client’s project. This results in an MT engine with substantially better objective quality than the MT Plus option above. Up-front investment varies, but ongoing operational costs are reduced, since the customer owns the rights to the custom domain. This solution is preferred when:
• The subject matter is highly technical or specialized and primarily in a single field, or
• The specific quality expectations are such that additional up-front investment is warranted, or
• The volume is such that the up-front investment can be justified based on operational cost savings.
Examples include litigation support (e-discovery) or patent searching applications.
This solution allows you to create a unified search space so that knowledge workers can use familiar English-based search strategies to effectively identify documents of interest in a multi-language document set.
As a variant we can also create a domain intended for permanent deployments such as web-based customer self-service portals. This involves translating a volume of training material to create a stand-alone environment that generates automatic translations useful in deflecting customer support phone calls. In practice, most applications in this area involve English as the source language rather than the target, since the goal is to reach out effectively to non-English-speaking customers through the web.
Human Translation On Demand will occur once documents of interest have been identified. McElroy offers quick-turn post-editing or human translation of documents or portions of documents “on demand.” Certified human translations are also available if needed to meet a legal or regulatory requirement.
Related MT Services
McElroy provides a variety of MT-related services, either stand-alone or in conjunction with the above translation services.
• OCR Processing
• Custom Terminology Development
• MT Quality Assessment
• MT Quality Improvement Services