We are always keen to show that training machine translation engines is not as cumbersome and slow as in the past or as some MT outsiders or newcomer might think.
There is a new generation of MT developers, such as Pangeanic´s Statistical Machine Translation customized solution division, PangeaMT, making a real breakthrough in the industry. This is why PangeaMT was selected by TAUS to take part in a pilot, aimed at proving the concept of the MT Trainer & Evaluator — a web-based facility that TAUS Translation Association (TDA) envisages to offer to the members in need of having customized MT output quickly and efficiently. Elia Yuste, Pangeanic BDM, presented the pilot results at the TAUS Copenhagen Executive Forum (19th-21st May 2010).
Making use of data provided by a TDA member and the prospective buyer, eBay in this case, PangeaMT turned around a customized eBay EN-ES engine in a day. The challenges of speed and acceptable quality could be met without any problem.
We are proud to take part in such initiative, which shows that automation not only lies in the translation aspect itself (offering machine translated output) but also in workflow practices for MT customization, provided that the right (amount of) data and MT training expertise, also driven by open standards, are available.