Do translation memories affect translations? Final results of the TRACE project

ABSTRACT

Since their appearance in the translation field, computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools and, notably, translation memories (TMs) have drawn the attention of academia. Research evidence has, for instance, pointed towards an increase in translators’ productivity when using TMs, and some scholars have warned about possible implications of their use. The TRACE project, carried out by the Tradumàtica research group at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, set out to explore the possible effects of these tools on the translation product. This article focuses specifically on linguistic interference, a phenomenon that, it has been suggested, might be a translation universal. Through experimental research, using a multi-methodological approach and a combination of different data-gathering resources, translations were conducted, with and without TMs, by 90 subjects. The experiments provide interesting data on the distribution of interference according to the environment in which they are carried out, as well as on the differences between different translator profiles.

KEYWORDS:

• translation technologies
• computer-assisted translation
• translation memories
• linguistic interference
• laws of translation
• translation universals
• experimental research
• research methodology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Adrià Martín-Mor is a postdoctoral researcher at the Departament de Traducció i d’Interpretació i d’Estudis de l’Àsia Oriental (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain), where he teaches translation technologies and coordinates the Tradumàtica MA. He holds an MA and a PhD in translation studies and his research interests include automation of the translation process, minoritised languages and free software.

ORCID

Adrià Martín-Mor http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0842-3190

[The underlying research materials for this article can be accessed at http://tradumatica.uab.cat/trace.]

Notes

1 This article is based largely on Chapter 15 of the author’s doctoral thesis (see Martín-Mor, A. (2011). La interferència lingüística en entorns de Traducció Assistida per Ordinador: recerca empíricoexperimental [Linguistic interference in Computer Assisted Translation environments: experimental research] (PhD thesis). Bellaterra: Departament de Traducció i d’Interpretació, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Retrieved from: http://tdx.cat/bitstream/handle/10803/83987/amm1de1.pdf.

2 Traducción Asistida, Calidad y Evaluación (TRACE). Project HUM-04349-FILO, 2006–2010. See www.tradumatica.net.

3 The project includes another study on the phenomenon of explicitation.

4 An additional study on the acceptability of interference was carried out subsequently (Martín-Mor, 2011).

5 By selecting these three environments it was possible to analyse the eventual effects of the amount of visual information shown on the texts, even though this study will only focus on AS.

6 According to the Asociación de Centros Especializados en Traducción (2005, p. 71), professional translators translate on average 3,000 words per day, which represents approximately 500 words per hour.

7 In this study, these texts will be referred to as T1, T2 and T3.

8 In-house translators had been working full-time in translation agencies for two years. That is the main difference compared with novice translators.

9 The rationale for the use of two “complementary” categories can be found in Martín-Mor (2011, p. 131 and p. 134).

10 All data gathered have been anonymised and made available at http://tradumatica.uab.cat/trace.

11 The odd number of experts prevented the possibility of a tied vote. See Martín-Mor (2011, p. 115 and p. 394) for a description of the external evaluation phase.

12 For a description of the methodological changes introduced in the experiment after the pilot study, see Martín-Mor (2012, p. 86).

13 Analyses of all translations are included in the appendices at the end of Martín-Mor (2011).

14 Since the experiment was not designed to test such a hypothesis, a specific study would definitely be needed for this purpose.

15 Screencasts showing anonymised real translations of the indicators mentioned can be found at http://www.videos.tradumatica.net/as.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación Grant [HUM/2006-04349/FIL].

This work was supported by the Departament de Traducció i d’Interpretació i d’Estudis de l’Àsia Oriental of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.