Challenges of Automatic Translation Tool: Notes on Translating Proper Nouns

Table of Contents

1. Importance of Terminology

2. Terminology is not recognized in neural automatic translation!?

3. How to Use the Glossary Function

4. Free Trial Now Available

1. Importance of Terminology

Let's say you had dinner at an Italian restaurant. What should you eat after the main dish?

Dessert? Sweets? Dolce?

There are various ways to call it, but they all refer to sweet Western-style confectionery. No matter what you choose, it looks delicious.

There may be cases where even with similar names, the meanings are completely the same, and there may also be slight differences.

What about for business?

Businesses are filled with various names. For example, product tags need to include company names, product names, part names, and raw material names. The marketing department handles words that are directly related to the brand, such as corporate slogans and catchphrases for each product. Software development companies pay close attention to button and label names within their apps. Some companies also use names that are only used internally to enhance confidentiality and security.

In some cases, simply using the wrong name can lead to a decrease in user experience, trust in the company, and security. That's how important terminology is in business.

By unifying these names, we can prevent accidents from happening. A useful tool for organizing names is a "glossary".

2. Terminology is not recognized in neural automatic translation!?

There is a place called "Umi no Nakamichi" in Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture. It is surrounded by the sea and has a sense of openness.

"I want to go to the underwater road."

When I entered the feeling into an online automatic translation system,

"I want to go to the middle of the ocean (海の真ん中に行きたいな)"

An English sentence was obtained. A float ring was needed.

As such, general automatic translation systems have weaknesses in translating proper nouns such as names, places, and product names. Even if there is an official name, it is not uncommon for it to be replaced with a completely different name when translated using an automatic translation system.

Human Science's automatic translation service MTrans Team includes a "glossary function" to avoid such issues.

In this article, we will introduce the terminology glossary feature to improve the accuracy of automatic translation.

3. How to Use the Glossary Function

Let's take a look at how to use this feature using an example from an electric company.

The company has decided to release an electric shaver called "Super Smooth Shaver". It will be sold simultaneously in the United States and Germany, as well as in Japan. The names in each country are as follows:

Japan	United States	Germany
Super Smooth Shaver	Super Smooth Razor	Super-glatter Rasierer

And, for internal presentations, I have prepared a rough sketch like this in PowerPoint.

Mtrans_Blog4

We will translate this rough sketch with MTrans Team. Simply drag and drop the file you want to translate to get the translated text.

★MTrans Team - This is the point★

When you drag and drop Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) files to MTrans Team, the text in the file will be automatically translated. You can edit the automatic translation on MTrans Team or export the translation file and edit it directly.
If you are using the "Phrase Collection" introduced in the previous MTrans Team blog, we recommend editing it on MTrans Team. By utilizing the Phrase Collection, you can reuse translations from previous projects, resulting in higher translation quality.

Translated as follows.

Overall, corrections are necessary, but this time we will focus on the product name in the red line.

Once the product name is decided, it is generally not changed, so we always want to get the same result. However, the translated text obtained by automatic translation often becomes the most commonly used words, and the general translation term is also applied to the product name.

In this example, the English name for "スーパースムーズシェイバー" should be "Super Smooth Razor", but it has been translated as "Super smooth shaver".

Now, let's register the product name in the glossary. Registering terms is very easy.

Select "Glossary" from the menu list on the left side of the screen.

A list of terms will be displayed. Click on the section that says "Enter a term" and enter the terms in Japanese and English.

When you enter information in both fields, the Japanese and English terms will be registered as a pair in the glossary.

That's all!

Once you have finished registering the terms, let's try uploading the file again.

The product name that was registered in the glossary earlier is now applied. The capitalization is also perfect!

Edit other phrases and download the English version of the PowerPoint file.

"Select "Download" and then "Translated Text" to download the English version of the file."

Now, the English version of the rough sketch is complete. We will also create a German version in the same way.

This "glossary function" is not currently available in typical online automatic translation services.

For those who want accurate translations even with automatic translation, we highly recommend MTrans Team.

★MTrans Team - This is the point★

"Some customers may want to incorporate their existing glossary," thinks MTrans Team. If you have created a glossary in spreadsheet format such as Excel, you can easily import it into MTrans Team.
In addition, glossaries can be shared among MTrans Team users, allowing for team collaboration. For example, when the person in charge of managing terms in each language registers important keywords in the glossary, the correct terms will be applied to all translations by all users.
For customers who say, "I want to create a glossary, but I don't know how," please use Human Science's glossary creation service. We will support your glossary creation.

For more information on "MTrans Team", which can easily streamline English communication, please visit the MTrans Team product introduction page.