Category Archives: Translation technology

In the 21st century, “accessibility” often includes language, but translating a test into the strongest language of all test takers may not be realistic. Nevertheless, passing or failing a test should not depend on reading proficiency. Tests and exams are a gate for life chances and—unless being proficient in the language of the test is …

“How fair is it to deliver your exams only in English?”

With the epic backdrop of geopolitical turmoil and environmental urgency, it may seem awkward to dwell on our minute successes. What with the barbaric invasion of Ukraine? What with the courageous revolt of the Iranian people in general and of Iranian women in particular? What about the denial of the right to education for Afghan …

“Walking at a Brisk Pace, by cApStAn’s co-founder Steve Dept  “

The latest edition of the International Education Association (IEA)’s newsletter, the IEA Insider, is just out! It is released annually at their General Assembly and this issue features an article by cApStAn founder Steve Dept. In the article Steve talks about cApStAn’s experience with machine translation (MT) and (human) post-editing, and reflects on the role …

“Latest “IEA Insider” now out featuring article by cApStAn LQC co-founder Steve Dept”

Imperfections in machine translation (MT) have long motivated systems for improving translations post-hoc with automatic post-editing (APE). (1) In contrast, up to now, little attention had been devoted to the problem of automatically correcting human-generated translations. A study introducing for the first time ever an automatic human translation correction model (TEC) was presented by language …

“After automated post-editing, APE, the next new hot topic is automated (human) translation error correction, or TEC”

by Adrien Mathot, Translation Technologist @cApStAn First of all what is a standard? According to the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) standards “provide people and organizations with a basis for mutual understanding, and are used as tools to facilitate communication, measurement, commerce and manufacturing.” What happens when things are not standardised Or are not …

“A Brief Introduction to Translation Technology Standards, Tools & Best Practices”

cApStAn organises its language services into 22 modules, or building blocks. Depending on the client’s requirements, on time and resources available, and on the purpose and life cycle of the document, cApStAn will combine different modules to assemble a coherent project with the most suitable workflow. You will ultimately decide on which modules to keep. …

“Preparation of Translation Process: Legacy Content Transfer & Management”

Computer-assisted translation tools (CAT tools) have been around for 30 years, and they are designed as productivity tools for professional translators. Using CAT tools effectively increases quality, consistency and productivity at scale. Term bases, style guides and translation memories form a powerful combination that (still) give the human translator a competitive edge in terms of quality/price …

“On-Demand Webinar | How to leverage CAT tools to achieve more savings than MT”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Language really matters when it comes to scientific communication and education. How can you have conversations about science when the scientific terms you wish to talk about do not exist in your own language? Sibusiso Biyela is a science communicator and journalist from South Africa, …

“In South Africa a new AI-based project offers the opportunity for a large corpus of scientific terms to be translated into six indigenous languages”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Webinar hosted by CITLoB with Steve Dept and Sandeep Nulkar, 7.1.2021 “Quality is the most used word in our industry but it is one thing to say you provide quality translation, it’s another to say you can actually measure it”. These opening words by Sandeep …

“Using linguistic quality evaluation to drive revenue”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Google launched “Fabricius”, a web based AI tool to let users interact with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, on July 16, 2020, to coincide with the anniversary of the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta stone was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text (Egyptian/Ancient Greek) to be recovered in …

““Fabricius”, Google’s new AI tool, unravels the symbols of Ancient Egypt”

by Steve Dept, cApStAn CEO Beyond the AI hype and controversial reports about automatic translation achieving parity with human translation, neural machine translation (NMT) has undoubtedly made spectacular progress in the last three years. Should professional translators resist or should they use it? Machine translation software has been around for a long time. In the …

“Should professional translators shun machine translation?”

Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village People across China have been very creative in past weeks in finding ways to get around the ban on an article that was critical of how the government handled the coronavirus epidemic. The article, written by Ai Fen, director of the emergency department at a hospital …

“Skirting online censorship in China by “translating” a banned article into Morse, hexadecimal code, emoji and elvish language”