This time, we would like to introduce the contents of the "English Writing Seminar for Translation and Machine Translation" that we conducted in December 2015 for domestic companies.
"English Writing Seminar for Translation and Machine Translation"

At this company, machine translation has already been introduced for some languages in the support content on the web.
At Human Science, we continue to provide consulting services such as quality verification of the original English text and creating guidelines for English writing when introducing machine translation.
We continue to provide consulting services such as quality verification of the original English text and creating guidelines for English writing when introducing machine translation.
We continue to provide consulting services such as quality verification of the original English text and creating guidelines for English writing when introducing machine translation.
We continue to provide consulting services such as quality verification of the original English text and creating guidelines for English writing when introducing machine translation.

In 2016, we are planning to introduce machine translation to our instruction manuals, which are currently available in 29 languages.
We want to fully implement machine translation.

However, there are some issues with the current English text that have been hindering the improvement of machine translation quality.

・Long sentences
・Contains unnecessary and redundant words
・Complex syntax, difficult to read
・Vague and unclear
・Inconsistent writing style and terminology

As a result, we have decided to hold a seminar to establish a writing style for
"concise and easy-to-understand English sentences that are suitable for translation and machine translation." This will help us solve English language issues and improve the quality of machine translation.

The 49 participants included DTP operators involved in the production of internal manuals, as well as English writers and translators from production companies who have been commissioned for English writing and translation.

During the seminar, we explained
17 specific techniques for writing English sentences that are easy to translate and machine translate. We also worked on workshops to explain them.

Here are some of the comments we received from the post-seminar survey.

 

●Good points, points that I thought would be useful in practical work

 

・The key to easy translation is to use it in your everyday writing (such as emails and document creation).

・We are considering using machine translation from Simple English in practice.
   So, we were able to understand the points to keep in mind and the accuracy was very good.

- "The perspective of considering translating from English to other languages and learning from it was fresh and educational."

・Points to keep in mind when creating English text
such as "Using ○○ is a guideline for × times per sentence"
   It was helpful to have specific examples.
Now I will be more conscious and pay attention when writing.

- Even with machine translation, it was shown through concrete examples that improvement can be expected to a certain extent by brushing up on the English text.
  

・The skill to rewrite long and difficult sentences into concise and easy-to-understand ones is always a challenge for writers, so I want to consciously practice it in my work.

 

●Points that were unsatisfactory, points that I wanted to know more about

 

- Information about machine translation (such as the use of corpora),
   I wanted to know more

・How do you check for incorrect English (not suitable for machine translation) and prevent leaks?

・Wanted to know more about the points of English sentences suitable for machine translation

・I wanted to know the priority of the introduced techniques

・It would have been better if there were more example sentences after rewriting.

 

It's great that you have had the opportunity to review your own English writing that you create on a daily basis!

 

The quality of the original text is a very important factor that affects the quality of machine translation.
By creating English sentences with translation and machine translation in mind on a daily basis, it is possible to greatly improve the quality of machine translation.
In addition, not only the quality of translation, but also the English text itself becomes more concise and easy to understand,
which leads to an improvement in the quality of the content of the English text as well.

Everyone, please take a moment to review the quality of your current English content when it comes to translation and machine translation.

At Human Science Co., Ltd., we provide guidelines for creating English documents suitable for translation and machine translation, as well as customized seminars for corporations.

We also provide advice on evaluating and improving the current English text quality, so please feel free to contact us.

Blog Writing Team

Tokuda Ai

・As a machine translation consultant, I provide consulting services for Japanese companies on machine translation implementation and process building.
・I place importance on the quality of the source text, which affects multilingual translation, and also provide consulting services for manual creation suitable for machine translation in the Japanese writing process.
・I also give presentations on the following topics related to machine translation.
- Presentation at the 23rd JTF (Japan Translation Federation) Translation Festival in 2013
"Approaches to Machine Translation in Multilingual Environments
- From the Perspectives of Evaluation and Process"
- Presentation at the 2014 AAMT (Asia-Pacific Association for Machine Translation) Machine Translation Fair
"Mastering Machine Translation - Improving Quality and Productivity"