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Machine Translation: Latest Innovations and their Impact on Commercial Translation

SDL Customer Success Summit MontrealRodrigo Fuentes Corradi, MT Business ConsultantJune, 2015

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Agenda

○ Evolution of MT

○ Common MT Use-Cases

○ Engine Training

○ Introducing SDL XMT

○ How to Deploy MT

○ MT and the Post-Editor

Evolution of MT

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1950s

2002

2010

2011

2015SDL acquires RBMTengine…establishes

MT group dedicated to improving quality for

enterprise applications

First SDL Post- Editing projects

using SMT go into production

Post-Editing booms: 4-fold

increase

SDL launches PE Certification

Program

War-time cryptography requirements,

with subsequent experiments & investment in

automated translation

SDL launches XMT next-

generation MT platform

2014

Brief history of Machine TranslationSDL acquires

Language Weaver / BeGlobal Statistical Machine Translation (SMT)

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Overview: The SDL MT Team

Who we areFirst to commercialize Statistical

Machine Translation

o 50+ Professionalso Over 10 Nationalitieso Across 5 Time Zoneso 8 Locations

o Ex-translatorso Computational

Linguistso Project

Managers

Widespread team of language lovers:

o Data Specialists

o Post-Editors

o Architects

…all gathered from the four corners of SDL!

What we doDrive MT Adoption:

Educate, promote and support MT usage in existing SDL accounts

& new opportunities

o Designo Createo Testo Implemento Monitor

Custom Engine Builds:

…custom Statistical Machine

Translation engines

Linguistic Projects:Semantic annotation projectsfor US Government bodies

& academic institutes

How we do it

o Los Angeles, CAo Cambridge, UK

Two Research Labs:

o 100s of Scientific Publications

o Over 50 Patents Approved or Filed

We’re Evangelists…about Machine Translation, using automation to accelerate

productivity

Common MT Use-Cases

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Global Content Explosion

Communication Channels

Consumer PreferencesIncreased Global

Competition

Export Market Growth

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Right translation method, right price, right timeQ

ual

ity

Volume

Human Translation Machine Translation

Blogs

User Forums

Reviews

ChatEmail

Support

FAQ

Websites

Wikis

KnowledgeBase

Alerts/Notifications

Help

UserGuides

Documentation

Post-Edit

Newsletters

Advertising Content

Legal

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Description:

○ Direct access to machine translation from SDL Trados Studio

Benefits:

○ Improve the efficiency of translators by providing results of machine translation to them for segments that do not match entries in translation memory

Translator productivity

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Description:

○ Real-time translation of web-basedchat conversations

Benefits:

o Reduces cost of staffing the support/sales operations as theydo not need multi-lingual agents

o Customer acquisition rates and satisfaction are much higher if you engage the customer in chat.

Live chat translation

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Description:

○ Translation of user-generated contentin web-based community forums

Benefits:

o Enable interactions between customers who speak different languages

o Leverage community expertise across languages instead of only within the language of community experts

Community forum translation

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Description:

○ Translation of knowledge base content for local language customers of technical solutions

Benefits:

o Reduces customer support costsand activity level by allowing remote language customers to directlyaccess solutions

o Increases customer satisfaction by providing solutions in their native language

Knowledgebase content translation

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Case study: MT for online customer reviews

Requirements:o Share customer reviews with

international audienceso Automate the translation of customer

reviews into 13 languages

Results:o Reduced bounce rate from 70% to 25%o Increased user dwell times and page viewso Economically translate 2 billion words/month

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Case study: MT for instant MS Office translation

[a large global

retail client]

Requirements:o Improve communication among

geographically scattered company employees

o Fast, low-cost translation of MS Outlook emails & MS Office business documents

Results:o BeGlobal Machine Translation integrated

via API with MS Office appso Any employee can instantly translate emails

or attachments with a simple double-click

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Engine training: Making MT smarter

Customized engines

Domain verticals

Baselines

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Baselines

Baselines

Data mined from reliable

sources available in the public domain,

covering various subjects

Core generic MT engines for each

language pairWork well for

general & varied content

Can be usedas backup for

verticals & customized

engines

Contain hundreds of millions of words of

bilingual data

100Ms+

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Domain verticals

Domain verticals

Trained statistical engines exclusive

for a domain

Data selected from sources within a

domain or industry

MT output more likely to follow

technical terminology

Solution used when client-specific data is not available or not enough for a

customization

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Customized engines

Customized engines

Optimize the MT output for

specific client projects

Training based on client-specific

bilingual data

More data usually has a positive effect

on the MT output

Quality & consistencyof data is as important as

quantity

Adherence to client-specific terminology

& style

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How SDL trains an MT engine

Training Data Prep &Engine Customization

Prep of Testing Material

Evaluate MT Output

MachineTranslation

Post-Edit

Quality Assessment& Translation

Delivery

Update Translation

Memory

SourceContent

ApplyTranslation

Memory

Content Evaluation MT Customization Production QA

Refine Training or Deployfor Production

Integrate MT on Translation Process

SDL MT Server

TranslationMemory

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SDL MT Group developers are constantly researching ways to improve Generic, Vertical, and Customized MT Engines

SDL Research Scientists are continuously improving the Statistical Machine Translation algorithms (e.g. Language Models, Translation Models, Reordering Models, Syntax, Transliteration, Rule-Based Components, etc…)

SDL Data Engineers are continuously mining large amounts of good data used by the statistical algorithms

Continuous improvement

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Introducing SDL XMT…

A NEW, modular & flexible technology that will power the

“next generation” of SDL MT

Syntax-based Machine

TranslationPhrase-based

Machine Translation

Word-basedMachine

Translation

2002

2003

2008

2015

XMTXMT

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Legacy MT

Legacy MT(Monolithic

Phrase-based)Foreign

LanguageYour

Language

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……

Neural Networks

Compound Splitting

Phrase- Based

Finite State

Automata

String to Tree

Rule- Based

Tree to String

Pre- Ordering

Trans-literation

Hidden Markov Model

HyperGraphs

Modular &Flexible

“State-of-the-Art”Machine Learning

Better Translation Quality

Rapid Research Transition

SDL XMT: Next generation technology, higher quality

XMT

Foreign Language

Your Language

M O D U L A R C O M P O N E N T S

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Language Learning in XMT

Continuous improvement by

learning fromPost-Editing.

○ The machine learns how to translate from source to target during the training process

○ The machine doesnot learn during the translation process

Machine TranslationMachine Translation+ Language Learning

○ The machine learns howto translate from source to target during thetraining process

○ The machine learns & improves seamlessly, continuously, and inreal-time from user feedback during the translation process

○ See it in action: SDL XMT

XMT

How to DeployMT Post-Edit

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Post-Editing experience in Montreal

Quality delivered & owned by SDL, therefore commitment to qualityremains our number #1 priority ! 

o Costs reductions up to 40% vs.conventional translation

o File Formats received, TXT, XL, and XML

o Unique client-specific process developed with collaborationof engineering & IT Teams from SDL& customers

SDL Canada

Post-EditedPost-Editing Large Retail

Customers e-Commerce Sites

Post-Edited(Forecasted)

2013

2014

2015

25M

10M 15MWords

Words

Words

40%

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Quality in MTBuilding blocks are there as a lot of content is pulled from the engines

Allows the linguist to focus on refining the output

Custom engines pull in client terminology & style

Fewer resources equals greater consistency

Trained linguists well-versed in handling MT output & certified

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Post-Editing quality requirements

When post-editing to publishable quality, the following basic principles still apply:

o The same references mustbe used for asfor conventional translation (project-specific guidelines, TMs, glossaries, termbases, etc.)

o Grammar, spelling and punctuation must be correct

o Appropriate style & correct terminology must be used consistently

o The translation must read well and be suitable for its intended purpose

CustomerUser Guide

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Features to watch out for in SMT output…

Incorrect Formatting

Additional or Missing words

Words Not Localized or

Wrong Flavor

Gender, Number, Agreement or Verb Inflection

Issues

Articles & Prepositions

Syntax & Word Order Issues

Wrong Punctuation

Inconsistent or Non-compliant Terminology

Mistranslations

!

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Post-Editing Machine Translation certification

○ The demand for MT solutions is growing quickly & Post-Editing is becoming a mainstream skill for translators

○ In response, SDL have created Post-Editing Certification – released in June 2014

○ 85% of in-house staff completed the Certification in 2014

○ 2,500+ freelancers signed up for the course

○ The Certification covers the theory behind Machine Translation as well as practical approaches to Post-Editing

○ Our Certification is for anyone impacted by Post-Editing – certified translators can offer an extended skill set

JUNE 2014

85%

2,500+

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SDL iMT: Key steps in the process

○ Evaluate content and translation assets

○ Train MT engines for your content or use existing solution

○ Configure the trained MT engines with SDL’s translation environment (TMS, WS, Studio)

○ Post-edit the MT output to full publishable quality

○ SDL infrastructure to support these steps

Evaluate Train MT Configure Post-Edit

SDL Infrastructure

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