Many factors are involved in determining whether translation memory (TM) should be a translator’s next business purchase. The survey conducted as part of my thesis for the master’s degree in German translation at the Monterey Institute of International Studies provides valuable insight into how respondents perceive translation memory and its role in the translation profession.

Survey and Results

The survey below was sent out over three Internet language forums—FLEFO (CompuServe’s Foreign Language Forum), LANTRA-L and Interlang—as well as to individuals whom I personally contacted. There were 37 respondents in total. Only one of my six personal contacts did not respond to the survey. Due to the fact that the survey was sent over electronic forums, it is not possible to determine the total number of people who actually received and read it.

The respondents varied by occupation: five were agencies, seven were in-house translators, twenty were freelancers, two were freelancers who also worked in-house at one time or another and three were freelance translators who also worked for agencies. Eleven of the freelancers used TM, although two of them only used it when it was supplied by an agency. Another freelancer who did not own TM was planning on buying a TM product in the near future. Four of the agencies and six of the in-house translators also used TM. Both freelancers who were also working as in-house translators used TM. The three respondents who considered themselves freelancers and agencies did not use TM. In fact, one of the translators in the last group of respondents had never heard of TM.

The majority (92%) of agencies and in-house translators performed at least half of their work in teams. The freelancers performed an average of about 86% of their work alone.

The majority of the respondents (70%) received at least half of their work in electronic format. Translation agencies handled about 84% of translations in this way, while in-house translators performed practically all of their translation work (99%) in electronic format. In contrast, the freelance translators averaged about 56% of their translation work in electronic format.

Virtually all of the respondents who had worked with TM reported that they were impressed with the ability to maintain consistency throughout texts and/or with the ability to increase the amount of text translated in a day. Productivity varied from a 10% to 60% increase, depending on text type and on the amount of repetition in updated or revised texts.

A few of the respondents noted that when a text was translated for the first time using TM, it actually took longer to translate. Two respondents mentioned that technical problems were encountered at some point during their use of TM. One respondent noted a change in work style to adapt to TM.

About 81% of the respondents translated technical or software manuals. Approximately 35% of the respondents reported a moderate to high rate in frequency of revisions and updates.

About 43% of respondents had a need to align prior work for integration into present and future work. One respondent noted that there was no longer any need to align prior work because the work had already been integrated into TM at an earlier time.

Only two respondents mentioned that they had been requested to use TM, and only two stated they were working on integrating machine translation into the translation process alongside TM.

Most of the respondents did not have to purchase any additional hardware or software as a result of their purchase of TM. At least two of the freelance translators mentioned that they did not personally own a TM package, but that they used the TM provided to them when working on projects for a specific client. Only two respondents mentioned having to update their operating systems; one mentioned upgrading system memory and another mentioned having to purchase a second dongle for the TM system; two mentioned purchasing scanners and OCR software, and one mentioned upgrading to new computers and purchasing technical support for the TM system. It is very likely that most of the respondents from translation agencies and companies with in-house translation departments were unaware of their companies’ extra purchases resulting from the integration of TM.

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1. What percentage of your work is done on an individual basis as opposed to as a team?
2. What percentage of your work is received in hardcopy vs. electronic format?
3. What type of texts do you usually translate (e.g., manuals, literature, etc.)? What is the frequency of word and phrase repetition in your texts?
4. What type of additional hardware/software have you had to purchase as a result of using TM (e.g., OCR software, scanner, the TM package and technical support, etc.)?
5. Have you experienced different rates of pay as a result of using TM (for example, have you noticed that the client/agency pays more or less when it is known that you are using TM)? It isn’t necessary to tell me how much you actually charge or the agency pays, just give a theoretical example.
6. What kind of effect does TM have on your translation process (estimate of time saved using TM vs. the conventional method; consider the learning curve and quality issues as well)?
7. Do you also use machine translation? How does this influence the translation process when combined with TM?
8. What percentage of your clients request TM? Request a hybrid of TM and MT usage? Also, if you have time, please tell me what you like or dislike about using TM vs. the conventional translation process.
9. Do you have a need to integrate prior work into TM so it will be available for future projects? If so, what percentage of prior work have you needed to integrate?
10. Do you ever need to translate multiple languages simultaneously? If so, how often?
11. How frequently do you have updates and/or revisions?
12. Please indicate whether you are a freelancer, translation agency, company with in-house translation, or client who requires translations.

Figure 1: The Survey Questions

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In terms of rates of pay, most of the freelance respondents had not encountered a situation in which they were paid less when using TM. One of them reported that he actually charged more for TM because he was the one who mentioned to his client that he could use it to improve consistency. Two freelance translators mentioned that when they use TM (supplied by an agency), they are paid by the hour instead of by the word. In a separate survey sent over the LANTRA-L Internet mailing list regarding this subject, most of the respondents were paid by the hour when they used TM. At least two of the respondents mentioned that they do not tell their clients or agencies that they use TM for fear of a decrease in their current rates. Here is what one freelance respondent had to say:

“The agencies pay less when they ask you to do the translation using TM. I don’t tell the agencies that I use TM when it isn’t part of the agreement (Subject 21).”

One project manager who responded to the survey works for a company providing TM software. He cited various theories on how agencies and freelancers view the rate situation:

1. Using TM adds consistency to the translation, therefore improving the quality of the translation. The customer should pay for the extra quality.
2. One should charge less per word/line/page, but base the rate on the word count of the entire project. Any repetition would be money in the translator’s/agency’s pocket.
3. Charge standard rates for the parts that require special attention. Full translation rates would apply to sections requiring translation. Full proofreading/editing rates would apply to pre-translated sections. Full layout work rates would apply for any desktop publishing, plus a flat overhead fee would be required for processing the job in TM.
4. The translator receives part of the pay from an agency for segments that are derived from fuzzy matching. This is predetermined, based on the idea that “if 70% is similar, we pay only 30%.”

At least two freelance respondents mentioned that they were paid by the hour when they used TM. In addition, the responses received from LANTRA subscribers revealed that most of them were paid by the hour when pretranslating text using TM.

When asked what they liked or disliked about using TM, responses varied:

“I don’t like that you basically have to stick to segments. In a Word document, a translator can rearrange a paragraph if it makes more sense in the target language. With [TM], it takes a considerable amount of time to merge the segments, and that defeats the purpose of the memory (Subject 1).”

Subject 1 does have a point. In certain cases, a translator may want to combine or break up sentences or text segments. The difficulty comes when combining more than one sentence or segment. Most translation memory tools allow access to one sentence or segment at a time. For example, when a translator wants to combine two sentences into one, he or she will most likely translate both sentences when presented with the first original sentence and will skip entering a translation when presented with the second sentence. This technique might not work the way the translator would like, since the current translation would appear correct, but the sentence pairs stored in the translation memory would not be correct. Instead of combining the two sentences into one translated sentence, the translator would be better off making the changes outside of the translation memory.

“[The] time saved is directly proportional to percentage of matches... Time spent learning the program is negligible compared to benefits attained (Subject 2).”

“The throughput on standard translations (highly redundant software manuals, help texts) increases from 3,000 to about 5,000 words per day if the text is completely new for us. If we can use memory databases built up during the translation of earlier versions or similar products, we can reach a rate of 8,000 words per day. However, a certain amount of preparation is necessary, i.e., about one day for processing, converting and adapting the source files, generating databases and glossaries from reference material supplied with the texts, etc.”

“A skilled translator will need about five work days to reach his full level of productivity using a TM tool... (Subject 8)”

“I must point out that the ‘search and replace’ function in a common word processor also can be used to speed things up. Before buying my TM program, I sometimes could process as much as 700-800 words an hour by making extensive use of previously translated material [and] search and replace. My ‘normal’ capacity would be 250 to 350 words an hour (Subject 18).

Subject 18 is correct in pointing out that a translator can use cut-and-paste and search-and-replace functions to mimic some of the tasks that translation memory can handle, but Subject 4 seems to have a better understanding of where translation memory pays off:

“I talked to the owner of a German translation bureau this morning on the question of whether his purchase of [TM] has paid off for him. He answered ‘yes’ and then went on to tell me that... his use of [TM] had enabled some of his translators to increase their throughput to up to 120 pages/day from their normal 10-12 pages/day. Granted, that must have been a highly repetitive project, but nevertheless imagine how long they would have been cutting and pasting had they not had [TM] available to them... (Subject 4)”

The general consensus is that translation memory is a must for translators who work almost exclusively with electronic documents and who work on projects for clients who give them large documents with a high rate of reuse. Translators who translate smaller documents from different industries/ customers, or who receive mainly hardcopy documents or documents containing very little reusable text will find that translation memory will not increase their productivity.

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Lynn E. Webb
Software Localization Engineer,
Lionbridge Technologies, Inc.
468 Van Buren St., Apt. 4,
Monterey, CA 93940 USA
Tel./Fax: +831-642-0296
E-mail: webbsnet@webbsnet.com