Chapter 9: Computer-aided translation

Computers have changed the translator’s life like nothing before. In Chapter 8 we talked about how machine translation is sometimes used as part of a translation process in which computers and humans complement each other. Cooperation between people and machines is in fact common in today’s translation industry.

Although you cannot replace a human translator with a computer completely, the computer can help with some of the job. This is called computer-aided translation: the human translator is still in charge, but the software he or she uses (instead of a normal word processor) assists him or her offering suggestions or even pre-translating whole passages which the translator than corrects. This chapter will explain how, with computer-aided translation, translators can improve both the quantity and the quality of their work. This chapter is relevant to translators but also to people who work with translators, such as project managers or people who buy translation services.