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I've been reading the recent threads on translation with interest, and was
wondering if anyone has any suggestions for my problem:
My company has just taken on a new customer with operations in Norway, Denmark,
Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany. We don't have to translate much of our
material for these countries because all the staff using our product have to
speak English, and for the little that does have to be translated we have made
contact with what we are hoping will be an excellent translation company.
However, the billing software we produce will be linking to other, third party,
systems in each of these countries. Our development department has requested
information from the first of the system suppliers and has received masses of
information back - in Norwegian.
It has been suggested translation software could be used by the development
department as a filter before they pass the information that absolutely must be
translated by a native speaker to our translation company. Its a cost cutting
exercise - they (obviously) don't want to pay for the translation of a piece of
paper that doesn't give any working information.
I don't think the translation memory systems that have been discussed are right
in this instance - the programmers just want a quick and dirty estimation of the
contents of the document (I think someone in the archives refered to it as
'gisting')
A quick search of the web has revealed some software packages - WordTran and
Universal Translator 2000 spring to mind. Does anyone have any experience of
software at this low level?
Any help in this would be greatfully appreciated
Miriam
(Slightly off topic - our sales director is Norwegian. Has anyone asked him for
help? No. Will anyone ask him for help? No. )
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