1. Translation in the 21st Century

2. January 1954

3. Translation is very difficult …
Tower of Babel
Divide & Unite
Language as Instinct
Translation is very difficult …

4. October 2004
Reality Check
… TAUS founded.

5. Let a Thousand MT Systems Bloom!
Effectiveness of Data
Profit from sharing
(“Pirate’s Dilemma”)

6. Five years ahead … MT is here to stay Translation as a Utility
… as a Human Right
Five years ahead …

7. Enterprises in 5 Years
Need a Language Strategy not just reducing word rates
“Dual Linguaspheres”
Automate
Innovate
Collaborate

8. Technology in 5 Years No Real Breakthroughs Hybrid Systems
Targeted Correction
(communities, games)
Real-time Training

9. Exciting new perspectives …
TMs in 5 Years
Cleaning
Semantic Clustering
Corpus Linguistics
Preserve Endangered Languages
Exciting new perspectives …

10. Profession in 5 Years Choices End to Repetitive Tasks
Productivity 5 to 10 Times Higher
Supplemented by Non-Professional Volunteers

11. Applications in 5 Years Translation out of the Wall Virtuous Circle
Spoken Translation

12. ? Helping the world communicating better … Industry in 5 Years
Machines
New Business Models ?
Shared Resources & Utilities
Growth
Open
(Collaborative)
Closed
(Competitive)
Innovation comes from outside
It’s all about the data
Helping the world communicating better …
Human & Machine

13. Scenario-Based Planning
Adobe
Autodesk
Bowne
CA Technologies
Cisco
Dell
eBay
EMC
Google
Intel
Lionbridge
McAfee
Microsoft
Oracle
Paypal
Philips
SDL
Siemens
Symantec
Yahoo!
9/22/2018

14. Thinking about Drivers/Trends (notes from the Copenhagen meeting)
Certain
Content explosion
Shift from text to text and multi-media
Mobile user, hand held devices
Real time/Just in time demand
Balance of cost, timeliness and quality
Uncertain
Cloud translation replaces LSPs
Open (collaborative) Vs Closed (competitive)?
Fee Vs free?
Human Vs Machine? (incremental step or Technology breakthrough)
9/22/2018

15. ? Industry in 5 Years Machines Open Closed (Collaborative)
Capability axe
Machines
Collaboration axe ?
Open
(Collaborative)
Closed
(Competitive)
Human & Machine

16. Industry in 5 Years – Open/Machine
Machines
New Hope
(free light saber on applications) ?
Open
(Collaborative)
Closed
(Competitive)
Human & Machine

17. Events that would Drive the Industry to the Open/Machine Quadrant
Pricing pressure from buyers are driving to a higher degree of automation
Transparency in collaborative environments supports benchmarking and thus competition
Standardization of measurements and quality levels provides comparability
Demand outpaces supply
Increased global competition of LSPs
Volume and price pressure forces LSPs to source globally, which is only possible using open standards
Buyers less concerned about competing with their peers.
9/22/2018

18. Characteristics of the Open/Machine Quadrant
Openness increases available resources
Cheaper per word than today
Cost reduction through a normalized and standardized pipeline
Shared TMs
Shared and standardized interfaces increase degree of automation
Standardized measurements are available to all
9/22/2018

19. Implications to the Translation Industry
Move away from per-word pricing to compensation for value-add activities
LSPs pick focus areas other than translating words.
9/22/2018

20. Characteristics Closed/Machines
The Dishwasher! ?
Open
(Collaborative)
Closed
(Competitive)
Human & Machine

21. Events that would Drive the Industry to the Closed/Machines Quadrant
If for any reason, open source fails
New, proprietary, much better private MT, patented, disruptive….
This is where industry momentum is headed
Content mix shifts
9/22/2018

22. Implications to the Translation Industry
Lost opportunity for market
Seller’s market – cost stays high
Less richness of languages/localization
Less global availability
Less innovation
9/22/2018

23. Characteristics Closed/Human-Machines?
Open
(Collaborative)
Closed
(Competitive)
Status Quo
Human & Machine

24. Events that would Drive the Industry to this Closed/Human Quadrant
Increased government regulation
Failure of MT to improve quality
Technology makes humans more efficient
Move to SAAS keeps control on IT costs
Sues Google and wins, locking content IT
Consolidation in the industry leads to stagnation
Increasing litigious society makes human checking essential
Maximizing shareholder value implies closed markets
9/22/2018

25. Key Characteristics of the Closed/Human Quadrant
Majority of “translation editing” is done with humans
Supply chain localisation stays with a few publishers
Only junk content gets MT’d
Crowd sourcing turns into -spam
9/22/2018

26. Implications to the Translation Industry
No disruptive changes
Breeds complacency
Someone else will invent it for us
Clever people go elsewhere
Cloud and community stay around
People pay for software
Only first world to translation services
9/22/2018

27. ? Open/Human-Machine Machines Open Closed (Collaborative)
(Competitive)
Cyborg Cloud
Human & Machine

28. Events that would Drive the Industry to the Open-Human/Machines Quadrant
Geo-political
Availability of social networking (for example, PRC)
Accessibility to the technology
Online democratization
Content value / quality target
Human = high value/high quality, MT = lower value / lower quality
Post edit versus raw
Technology plateau
Limits of performance and quality
Legal requirement for human translation and quality
Drive to multimedia
9/22/2018

29. Key Characteristics of the Open/Machine Quadrant
Economic conditions drive to Open/Human
For example, recession
Slower technology evolution
Need to translate between a greater number of languages (for example Swahili and Brazilian Portuguese)
9/22/2018

30. Implications to the Translation Industry
More focus on standards
Cloud providers and social providers will play a greatly role
Opportunity to develop new tools for the human / machine translation interface
Cyborg
Voice-to-text
9/22/2018

31. Industry Think Tank www.translationautomation.com in 5 Years
Open Translation Platforms
Language Business Innovation
Industry Collaboration
Translation Automation

32. Industry Data Resources
in 5 Years
Industry Data Resources
Billions of Words
Translation Matching
TM Cleaning
Matching Scores