“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

If not acquainted with the translation industry, you most likely confuse the meaning of translation memory and glossary. On the contrary, those initiated in the industry understand how these functions dramatically help increase efficiency, save time and increase clients’ satisfaction if these tools are used. Therefore, it would be beneficial to explain what distinguishes a translation memory from a translation glossary.

What is Translation Memory?

A translation memory (TM) is a database that stores "segments", which can... [Read more]

What is a CAT tool?

The “CAT” in CAT tool stands for “Computer Aided Translation” or “Computer Assisted Translation” but, as you might already know, it doesn’t mean that a computer is actually completing the translation for you. CAT tools are different than “machine translation”  – they assist a human translator in doing their work more quickly and in managing their translation projects. CAT tools typically contain a translation memory, which stores previous source and target translations for easy reference while working. Term bases are also an integral part of t... [Read more]

Many companies are interested in using machine translation for their businesses. It offers a number of advantages over traditional human translation, particularly when dealing with very large volumes of text.

For one, it is much, much faster. A human translator can translate a maximum of 2000 - 3000 words per day, but machine translation can do the work of hundreds of human translators. Of course, this also means that machine translation is much less expensive than human translation. The cost savings can be enormous when working with large projects.

However, the quality of machine translation is considerably lower than with human translation. The trans... [Read more]

If your company needs a large volume of translation work done, or if you are just looking to reduce translation costs in general, you might already have considered using machine translation (MT) or a combination of machine translation and post-editing (MTPE) by a human translator. These can both be good options in certain cases, but to determine whether MT or MTPE is the right solution for your particular project, you need to consider a number of factors in addition to the cost.

What language pairs do you need to have translated?
As many people are aware, machine translation has improved by leaps and bounds since its introduction to the market. Thanks to... [Read more]