Les Kelloucq en voyage

Systran s' inspire by Google to improve its automatic translation The next version of its range of software will combine two approaches: translation by rules and statistical translation. Isabelle Boucq, 01net., 30/06/2008 with 10:35 If you clicked on the button “To translate” on Yahoo! , Free, AltaVista or, jusqu' with l' last year, Google, you used without the knowledge technology of automatic translation of Systran, an editor who took his first steps in full cold war to help the CIA and the FBI to translate Russian documents. And which s' prepare to radically modify its technologies for its professional customers. Aujourd' today, the company works especially with the large actors d' Internet and with multinationals. S' it s' acts in both cases of translation, the objectives and waitings are quite different. “Approximately 60 million pages Internet is translated every day. The goal is to include/understand a page in real-time and at cost zero”, explains Dimitris Sabatakakis, the chairman of Systran. The perfect reliability of the translation is impossible to reach, because the text misses context. L' objective is d' access to propose simple and free tools here. A translation roughly speaking made l' business. “For the large accounts, the translations must be published. Waitings in terms of quality are completely different, because c' is a tool of productivity”, continues Dimitris Sabatakakis. Thus Cisco it used the tools of Systran to translate its knowledge bases into Japanese, Chinese and Korean. “The translation made it possible to the Asian users less to call the customer support”, brings back the leader of Systran. Among its customers, l' European Union, EDF, PSA Peugeot Citroen or EADS. These users must “involve” the software to be translated in their very precise field while being based on existing texts. For the individual users and SME, Systran also has several products, of which Business Translator or Premium Translator. Google pushes with l' innovation Jusqu' with now, Systran used only one known method under the name of translation by rules. This approach consists in analyzing each sentence according to the rules of the language. Unfortunately, many ambiguities and the exceptions make the result imperfect. With l' opposed, Google recently launched its own tool for translation, which s' support only on the statistical method. It s' acts to collect texts translated on Internet. Thanks to complex calculations, the software of Google proposes the translation which seems most probable to him. In version 7 of the products of Systran, of which the exit is planned for 2009, the two approaches will be combined. “By adding the statistical layer, one is surer d' to have a correct and fluid translation, ensures Jean Senellart, directing research and development at Systran. There will be a qualitative jump for our customers corporate. But it n' there will not have revolution on the Web. ” Except if l' one takes into account l' opinion of the Net surfers, for example thanks to pop-up windows asking them to choose between several possible translations to improve l' tool. Systran s' also interest in this collaborative translation, version Web 2.0.