Automated Translation Suppliers

Transcription

1 Automated Translation Suppliers Software Offerings of Machine Translation Software Developers By Donald A. DePalma and Robert J. Kuhns

2 By Donald A. DePalma and Robert J. Kuhns ISBN: Copyright 2006 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc., Lowell, Massachusetts, United States of America. Published by: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. 100 Merrimack Street Suite 301 Lowell, MA USA or No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Permission requests should be addressed to the Permissions Department, Common Sense Advisory, Inc., Suite 301, 100 Merrimack Street, Lowell, MA , , info@commonsenseadvisory.com. See for usage guidelines. Trademarks: Common Sense Advisory, Global DataSet, DataPoint, Globa Vista, Quick Take, and Technical Take are trademarks of Common Sense Advisory, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Information is based on the best available resources at the time of analysis. Opinions reflect the best judgment of Common Sense Advisory s analysts at the time, and are subject to change.

3 i Table of Contents Topic... 1 Product Information for Automated Translation Research... 1 Who Should Read This Report?... 1 IBM... 3 Corporate Background in Automated Translation... 3 How IBM Differentiates Its MT from Its Competitors... 3 MT Products and Services... 4 MT Type... 4 Language Pairs... 4 License Cost... 5 Time to Deployment... 5 Related Products... 5 Technical Details... 5 Operating Systems... 5 System Configuration... 6 Installation Requirements... 6 Application Programming Interfaces... 6 Enterprise Standards Compliance... 6 File Formats... 6 Basic Operations... 6 Globalization Standards Compliance... 6 Dictionary Support... 6 System Customization... 7 Post-Editing Environment... 7 System Throughput... 7 Advanced Operations... 7 Quality Control Metrics... 7 Authoring Support... 7 TMX Interface... 7 Batch Translation... 8 OCR Integration... 8 Spoken Text... 8 How IBM Plans to Evolve Its MT Product... 8 Development Plans for This Year... 8 Development Plans for Language Weaver... 9 Corporate Background in Automated Translation... 9 How Language Weaver Differentiates Its MT from Its Competitors... 9 MT Products and Services MT Type Language Pairs License Cost Time to Deployment Related Products Copyright 2006 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

4 ii Technical Details Operating Systems System Configuration Installation Requirements Application Programming Interfaces Enterprise Standards Compliance File Formats Basic Operations Globalization Standards Compliance Dictionary Support System Customization Post-Editing Environment System Throughput Advanced Operations Quality Control Metrics Authoring Support Environment Compliance Rules TMX Interface Batch Translation OCR Integration Spoken Text How Language Weaver Plans to Evolve Its MT Product Development Plans for Development Plans for LEC Corporate Background in Automated Translation How LEC Differentiates Its MT from Its Competitors MT Products and Services MT Type Language Pairs License Costs Time to Deployment Related Products Technical Details Operating Systems System Configuration Installation Requirements Application Programming Interfaces Enterprise Standards Compliance File Formats Basic Operations Globalization Standards Compliance Dictionary Support System Customization Post-Editing Environment System Throughput Advanced Operations Copyright 2006 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

5 iii Quality Control Metrics Authoring Support Environment Authoring Compliance Rules TMX Interface Batch Translation OCR Integration Spoken Text How LEC Plans to Evolve Its MT Product Development Plans for Development Plans for Meaningful Machines Corporate Background in Automated Translation How Meaningful Machines Differentiates Its MT from Its Competitors MT Products and Services MT Type Language Pairs License Costs Time to Deployment Related Products Technical Details Operating Systems System Configuration Installation Requirements Application Programming Interfaces Enterprise Standards Compliance File Formats Basic Operations Globalization Standards Compliance Dictionary Support System Customization Post-Editing Environment System Throughput Advanced Operations Quality Control Metrics Authoring Support Environment Authoring Compliance Rules TMX Interface Batch Translation OCR Integration Spoken Text How Meaningful Machines Plans to Evolve Its MT Product Development Plans for Development Plans for Microsoft Corporate Background in Automated Translation How Microsoft Differentiates Its MT from Its Competitors MT Products and Services Copyright 2006 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

6 iv MT Type Language Pairs License Costs Time to Deployment Related Products Technical Details Operating Systems System Configuration Installation Requirements Application Programming Interfaces Enterprise Standards Compliance File Formats Basic Operations Globalization Standards Compliance Dictionary Support System Customization Post-Editing Environment System Throughput Advanced Operations Quality Control Metrics Authoring Support Environment TMX Interface Batch Translation OCR Integration Spoken Text How Microsoft Plans to Evolve Its MT Product Development Plans for Development Plans for PROMT Corporate Background in Automated Translation How PROMT Differentiates Its MT from Its Competitors MT Products and Services MT Type Language Pairs License Costs Time to Deployment Related Products Technical Details Operating Systems System Configuration Installation Requirements System Requirements Application Programming Interfaces Enterprise Standards Compliance File Formats Basic Operations Copyright 2006 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

7 v Globalization Standards Compliance Dictionary Support System Customization Post-Editing Environment System Throughput Advanced Operations Quality Control Metrics Authoring Support Environment TMX Interface Batch Translation OCR Integration Installation Requirements Spoken Text How PROMT Plans to Evolve Its MT Product Development Plans for Development Plans for SDL Corporate Background in Automated Translation How SDL Differentiates Its MT from Its Competitors MT Products and Services MT Type Language Pairs License Costs Time to Deployment Related Products Technical Details Operating Systems System Configuration Installation Requirements Application Programming Interfaces Enterprise Standards Compliance File Formats Basic Operations Globalization Standards Compliance Dictionary Support System Customization Post-Editing Environment System Throughput Advanced Operations Quality Control Metrics Authoring Support Environment Authoring Compliance Rules TMX Interface Batch Translation OCR Integration Spoken Text How SDL Plans to Evolve Its MT Product Copyright 2006 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

8 vi Development Plans for 2006 and for SYSTRAN Corporate Background in Automated Translation How SYSTRAN Differentiates Its MT from Its Competitors MT Products and Services MT Type Language Pairs License Costs Time to Deployment Related Products Technical Details Operating Systems System Configuration Installation Requirements Application Programming Interfaces Enterprise Standards Compliance File Formats Basic Operations Globalization Standards Compliance Dictionary Support System Customization Post-Editing Environment System Throughput Advanced Operations How SYSTRAN Plans to Evolve Its MT Product Verbalis Corporate Background in Automated Translation How Verbalis Differentiates Its MT from Its Competitors MT Products and Services MT Type Language Pairs License Costs Time to Deployment Related Products Technical Details Operating Systems System Configuration Installation Requirements Application Programming Interfaces Enterprise Standards Compliance File Formats Basic Operations Globalization Standards Compliance Dictionary Support System Customization Post-Editing Environment System Throughput Copyright 2006 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

9 vii Advanced Operations Quality Control Metrics Authoring Support Environment Authoring Compliance Rules TMX Interface Batch Translation OCR Integration Spoken Text How Verbalis Plans to Evolve Its MT Product Development Plans for Development Plans for MT Timeline Contact Information About Common Sense Advisory Future Research Copyright 2006 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

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11 1 Topic Product Information for Automated Translation Research While doing our research for Automated Translation Technology (Nov06) and next year s Lessons in Automated Translation, we collected a huge quantity of information about the offerings of nine independent software vendors (ISV) in the United States and Europe. We normalized the data that we think is critical to choosing a machine translation solution and present it in the consistent format in this report. This report includes details about IBM, Language Engineering Company (LEC), Language Weaver, Meaningful Machines, Microsoft Research, PROMT, SDL International, SYSTRAN, and Verbalis. We will add other vendors as we continue our investigations into this topic. These suppliers represent a cross-section of the MT development community, including existing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, research projects, a service offering, and some products new-to-market, research offer a variety of online machine translation (OLMT), desktop, and server-based systems, differentiated by technology, language pairs, features, speed, and supporting tools. We chose to represent this information in a catalog format to capture details that we consider to be important and that will allow us to track innovations over time as we update this research. Who Should Read This Report? When used in conjunction with our Automated Translation Technology report, this document should be most useful to anyone evaluating the use of automated translation solutions. Typical evaluators include: Publishers and other information disseminators. Any organization that produces information for global consumption may find MT useful for filling in the gaps of human translation (HT) or increasing the effectiveness of their HT budgets. Such information may be for external use or for providing multilingual variants of intranet and other internal applications. Evaluators, decision makers, information technologists, and content management specialists need information from this document to determine the suitability of MT for their applications and the ability to integrate automated translation into their technology infrastructure. Copyright 2006 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

12 2 Language service providers. Some LSPs already use MT for pre-processing client jobs. Unlike information publishers, they post-process the output with human translators. Evaluators will be interested in information such as performance, language pairs, and programming interfaces for integration with other systems. Note: This report will not be useful to information consumers, the biggest user group of automated translation technology. Copyright 2006 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.