In that time, machine translation (MT) has gone from:

鈥淣ot there鈥� to

鈥淵eah right, ha ha, never going to happen鈥� to

鈥淥h, this client鈥檚 doing it, but it鈥檚 pretty awful鈥� to

鈥淢aybe we should consider doing it?鈥� to

鈥淒oing it, and it鈥檚 not that bad鈥� to

鈥淎ctually, it鈥檚 just another productivity tool鈥�.

These days, we see a lot of MT at STP. Our excellent Technology team develop and maintain a host of MT engines for our internal use. We get MT output from clients and end-clients, and it ranges in quality and type from pure Google Translate to highly customised account-specific engines. What has been interesting is that companies have almost exclusively wanted a product which is full human quality.

If you ask me, the bottom line with MT is that when it鈥檚 used correctly, it allows us to translate more content faster, and within the same budget than before MT. And that鈥檚 great, it means that our target languages aren鈥檛 particularly threatened by English, as companies continue to see the value in producing content in their customers鈥� native tongues. For someone with a degree in Finnish translation, that鈥檚 a nice thought 鈥� there are only 5.5 million of us Finns after all!

What has become abundantly clear in the past few years of STP ramping up our use and development of MT is that our linguists鈥� MT post-editing skills are at the core of our ability to produce that full human quality. And that requires training.

This spring, we were certified to ISO 18587 on machine translation post-editing. This is a new ISO standard that has been developed to address the requirements for post-editing skills and training, rather than the technical development or implementation of MT engines. It鈥檚 not a particularly onerous standard to meet, provided that you are running a legitimate operation.

What the standard does do, though, is put the onus on the language service provider (LSP) to provide appropriate, robust training which ensures that the linguists working on MT output know how MT works, how post-editing is different to editing translation memory matches, how to give feedback and improve the engines efficiently, and how post-editing is best approached. And I think that鈥檚 the least we owe our translators.

And what being certified to the standard does is that it tells not only the outside world but also our clients and translators that we as a company know what we鈥檙e doing with MTPE. It tells them that our linguists are trained and know what they鈥檙e doing with MTPE, and that, essentially, it鈥檚 safe to trust your MT in our hands 鈥� what comes out the other end is another great STP translation.

I am sometimes a bit jealous of our translators who have made my old dream a reality, especially when it comes to figuring out how to use technology in the translation process. That said, I realised a long time ago that I would have at best been a mediocre translator, so I鈥檓 glad I found my calling on the business side of things. I certainly wouldn鈥檛 want to move to another industry, that鈥檚 for sure!

Raisa McNab is STP鈥檚 Learning and Development Manager and the ATC鈥檚 Lead on Standards. She holds an MA in Translation from the University of Turku in Finland.

This article first appeared in the June 2018 edition of STP’s Icebreaker newsletter.

Learn more about聽machine translation here.

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These two words encapsulate a key feature of the Icelandic psyche in one succinct phrase. Icelanders are (in)famous for their reluctance to plan too far into the future. This national personality trait is rooted in the physical environment Icelanders inhabit. In Iceland, your best-laid plans often just don鈥檛 pan out as expected due to some unforeseen circumstance, usually weather-related.

脼etta reddast聽also embodies a particular kind of Icelandic optimism and hard work that has been attributed to all manner of feats, including the 1986 meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjav铆k. Another more recent example from 2014 is the rebuilding of a road bridge in southern Iceland that had been wiped out by a flash flood in just one week.

This means that Icelanders are generally fairly recalcitrant when it comes to planning things too far in advance. A reluctance to be bound by arrangements set in stone makes sense when you don鈥檛 even know what the weather will be like in five minutes鈥� time.

Another example of this from Icelandic history is聽厂铆濒诲补谤忙惫颈苍迟媒谤颈冒, or the 鈥淗erring Rush鈥�, which swept across many Icelandic fishing villages in the 1960s. A glut of herring led to fisheries and processing plants being established almost overnight, only to close down a few years later once stocks had been exhausted.

What we can learn from the聽镁etta reddast聽mentality is not to take life too seriously. The future is impossible to plan out precisely, as Icelanders鈥� centuries of poverty and struggle have taught them. The other thing to remember is this: if you鈥檙e planning on taking your next holiday in Iceland, be flexible! That Northern Lights trip you鈥檝e got booked might not work out as planned, or your geyser excursion might be cancelled due to a freak snowstorm (or failure to erupt). Do as the Icelanders do, and go with the flow!

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