Lionbridge Machine Translation Tracker

As companies increasingly rely on Machine Translation (MT) as a standard practice, employees will need to prevent the dissemination of catastrophic errors.

Catastrophic errors are more problematic than standard MT errors, which pertain to error typology related to linguistic features, such as spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Catastrophic errors transcend linguistics and occur when engine output dangerously deviates from the intended message. Resulting misinformation or misunderstandings have the potential to cause companies reputational, financial, or legal problems and may lead to adverse public safety or health consequences. It is essential to find ways to identify these errors and stop them from compromising your communications.

Lionbridge administers specific automated quality checks in translated texts to detect critical errors while preserving MT speed and reducing the need for human intervention.

These automated methods detect:

• Opposite meanings between original and translated texts
• Offensive, profane, or highly sensitive words
• Incorrect translations of proper names of individuals and organizations that are also common words

Companies will be better protected from catastrophic errors when computer scientists improve existing MT technology to prevent these translation errors. Until such time, we can use automated technology to identify potential issues, revise problematic sentences, and promote accuracy during the translation process.

—Luis Javier Santiago, MT Group Leader, and Rafa Moral, Lionbridge Vice President, Innovation