[Article en anglais] A New Approach to Software Localization with Lingoport and SYSTRAN

This is really a new start of taking our technology and our partner technology and rethinking how software internationalization and localization is performed says Adam Asnes, Founder & CEO of Lingoport.

En mars, Ken Behan, vice-président des ventes et du marketing chez SYSTRAN, a rejoint Adam Asnes, le fondateur et PDG de Lingoport, Olivier Libouban, responsable du développement des produits chez Lingoport, et Yuka Kurihara, consultante en globalisation, pour discuter du potentiel inconnu de l'internationalisation et de la localisation qu'ils ont récemment déployé grâce au partenariat entre SYSTRAN et Lingoport.

Localization Now & in the Future

People talk about continuous internationalization and localization when actually, it is never continuous. Even after undertaking an updated approach at Lingoport, a lot of external processes remain disjointed with software development. Amidst all the automation being done, developers still had to wait for localization teams to make appropriate adjustments and localization teams had to wait for development teams to institute those changes. Small changes led to large overheads, which were not ideal for getting information localized efficiently and cost-effectively.

Thus, Lingoport decided to rework their approach and go DevOps ? incorporating and automating procedural operations into software development so the entire process of internationalization and localization can happen efficiently.

To ensure localization development wouldn?t fall behind, the team at Lingoport used the available technologies to tie the process together, making it a part of the automated system.

It's actually integrated into the process so that every time there is a new feature or every time there is a new sprint, release, or instance, it?s always part of the action. It?s not a separate thing. And, we also wanted to help users get inputs from various countries. So that was our goal with this next release. And we had to think a bit differently to make that happen, said Adam.

Where We Will Take the Industry with Our New Solution

Generally, to make a process agile in a sprint or an increment of development, everything needs to be done in a typical waterfall model for a select number of features. From the backlog of features ready for implementation, a specific feature is chosen. Then, plans are made around the feature; the feature is designed, built, tested, reviewed, and finally launched.

This process takes nearly two weeks to complete and by the end of the two week period, there will be a product/feature ready for deployment. Though this process will result in a demonstrable system, the system typically will be done in the native language.

SYSTRAN products, however, allow localization to happen alongside product development, testing, and review. This means the final demonstrable product will be available simultaneously in other target locales.

How SYSTRAN + Lingoport Solution Ensure Complete Translation Automation

When a translation system is deployed with a Translation Management System (TMS), it creates a need for the repository to be analyzed for errors. Typically, a set of people are employed at this stage to manually test and design ad hoc solutions. Time-intensive work in this stage includes scriptwriting, manual steps, or emails. This also relies on a localization manager, for instance, Dev manager, to identify the faults in the repository that needs to be translated.

This process is time-consuming and painful as the people involved will have to push the faults into the right form, branch, and directory after validation. Furthermore, as the people involved shoulder many other responsibilities, this tends to delay the process and drags software engineering.

Nevertheless, with SYSTRAN + Lingoport's new tool, the Lingoport Resource Manager (LRM) is seamlessly integrated with TMS. As soon as the developer writes the source code, the property files, JS files, or .resx files that need to be translated, they are automatically analyzed by the LRM and passed onto SYSTRAN?s translation engine. SYSTRAN's MT translation engine sends the translated files back to the LRM where it is analyzed and verified another time. Finally, the files that need to be pushed into the repository are pushed in a way that the faults end up in the right repository, the right directory, and the right branch. So, instead of days and weeks, you can analyze results and send any faults to the TMS in minutes.

Improving the MT Engine

User Dictionaries/ Glossary Management

User dictionaries are used for everything from do-not-translate words to company names, and product names. The user dictionary can be customized to include industry-specific terms and words to make sure that a particular word is always translated the way you intend.

Specialization

Jusqu'à spécialisation de domaine, la mémoire de traduction est utilisée comme ressource de formation pour le moteur. Chaque fois que nous recevons de nouveaux projets, les clients choisissent des domaines spécifiques dans lesquels ils veulent entraîner leur moteur. Par exemple, un grand conglomérat a formé 84 moteurs au total, avec un domaine appelé le domaine « numérique » qui a été conçu uniquement à des fins de marketing comme la documentation et la présence sur le Web. Il s'agit d'une partie extrêmement puissante du processus d'amélioration et elle peut avoir un impact significatif sur le coût global de la localisation.

Neural Fuzzy Adaptation

The translation memory is used as part of the MT process where it takes both the 100 percent matches and the fuzzy matches to use them as part of the MT translation process. This leads to accurate results.

Advancement in Neural Machine Translation

SYSTRAN a apporté le premier moteurs NMT en décembre 2018, et nous avons également été les premiers du genre à lancer des moteurs NMT commercialement. À partir de ce moment, nous avons constaté une amélioration de la qualité des moteurs d'environ 15 points. De même, la vitesse est passée de 50 à 2000 caractères par seconde (CPS). Cela signifie que presque une page entière peut être traduite en une seule seconde. Et avec la prise en charge de plus de 150 langues, il n'y a pas un marché aujourd'hui où vous n'arriverez pas à rendre la vie de vos développeurs et traducteurs plus facile et votre cycle de développement infiniment plus efficace.