{"id":1406,"date":"2020-01-08T03:43:37","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T03:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/?p=1406"},"modified":"2020-01-08T03:53:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T03:53:22","slug":"machine-translation-and-the-portuguese-language-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/2020\/01\/08\/machine-translation-and-the-portuguese-language-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Machine Translation and the Portuguese Language \u2013 Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Marsel de Sousa<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Read Part 1<\/span><\/i> here<\/span><\/i><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

For quite a while, machine translation was the laughing stock of translators, language teachers, linguists\u2026 and virtually everyone else. Things have changed quite a lot recently, and the laughs are now less frequent. You can use machine translation in a number of ways \u2013 to get the gist of a text in a language of which you have no knowledge \u2013 as the raw input for an actual translation that you post-edit, for example. You can also use it as one of the steps in your terminology search.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at how it works. In our example today, the first step will be to paste a short text about Rotary International on Google Translate:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The next step is to check whether the translations for the key terms (\u201cBoard of Directors,\u201d \u201cBoard of Trustees,\u201d and \u201cRotary Foundation\u201d) are consistent with the actual terminology used by Rotary International in Portuguese. In the Google search engine, (1) enter the key term between quotation marks, add one space, and (2) type \u201csite:\u201d (without quotation marks) followed by the URL for the website to which you want to restrict your search (make sure there are no spaces between \u201csite:\u201d and the website address). The search has yielded 54 hits for \u201cconselho director,\u201d and you should check some of them to compare with the context of the text that you are translating.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There are only seven hits for \u201cconselho curador,\u201d and the first hit is actually \u201cConselho de Curadores,\u201d so now you use this term to perform an additional search.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There are 151 hits for \u201cFunda\u00e7\u00e3o Rot\u00e1ria,\u201d and you don\u2019t need to check any of the hits as this is quite unambiguous.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Alternatively, you can use the fields \u201cthis exact word or phrase\u201d and \u201csite or domain\u201d on the<\/span> Google Advanced Search<\/span><\/a> page to perform the searches above.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the searches have yielded a very low number of hits, you have to keep in mind that this is restricted to the most authoritative website available. Doing a general search on the web would probably provide multiple, inconsistent results and, therefore, would not be very effective.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since Google Translate uses the web for its input, it certainly relied heavily on Rotary International\u2019s website, but it may not be entirely accurate at times \u2013 and this is why double-checking the terms on an authoritative source\u2019s webpage is so essential. In the three cases above, Google Translate was spot on in the case of \u201cBoard of Directors\u201d (54 hits on the Rotary website) and \u201cRotary Foundation\u201d (151 hits). The Portuguese term for \u201cBoard of Trustees\u201d appeared a mere seven times on the website, and this is probably the reason why Google Translate was not so accurate. However, it did point to the right direction anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Marsel N. de Souza<\/span><\/a> is a full-time interpreter and translator based in Brasilia, Brazil. He has a bachelor\u2019s degree in English>Portuguese translation from the University of Brasilia and a certificate in advanced French studies from Alliance Fran\u00e7aise. He is also an ATA-certified English>Portuguese translator. He works primarily with the diplomatic and international organization community in Brasilia, but his interpreting and translation assignments have taken him to various parts of the U.K., U.S., Brazil, France, and Africa. He is a member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Marsel de Sousa Read Part 1 here.\u00a0 For quite a while, machine translation was the laughing stock of translators, language teachers, linguists\u2026 and virtually everyone else. Things have changed quite a lot recently, and the laughs are now less frequent. You can use machine translation in a number of ways \u2013 to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-1406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-blog-posts","8":"tag-machine-translation","9":"tag-mt","10":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/image3.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1411,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1406\/revisions\/1411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/PLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}