Transcript XXX - Uppsala University

RASMAT 2004 – Uppsala
Business Needs
and Practices
Pierre-Yves Foucou
CTO - SYSTRAN
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Fast Facts
Market leading Machine Translation (MT) technology
developer – more than 500 person years of R&D
Sells desktop translation software products
Offers more scalable and open translation solutions
for large corporations
Founded in 1968 in San Diego, CA
• Located in Paris, France - San Diego, CA - Luxembourg
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
History
1968
Company founded, US Air Force contracts SYSTRAN to
develop a Russian into English system
1974
NASA uses SYSTRAN’s MT in the joint US-USSR Apollo-Soyuz
Mission
1975
European Commission hires SYSTRAN to develop several
language pairs
1996
SYSTRAN introduces Windows desktop product
1997
AltaVista and SYSTRAN launch Babelfish
2002
OracleMobile.com selects SYSTRAN for wireless portal
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Customers
Technology Licensing to Portals
• Google, AOL, AltaVista/Yahoo, Lycos, Apple, ...
Corporations
• Ford Motor Company, PMI, PwC, Michelin
Governments and Public Administrations
• US Intelligence Community, European Commission
OEM Integration
• Logitech, Electronic Arts
Channel for Desktop Products
• eDistributor (Digital River), VARs, Resellers
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
What is Machine Translation?
Process that utilizes computer software to translate
text from one natural language into another
Accounts for grammatical structure of each language
and uses rules and assumptions to transfer
these from the source language (original text)
into the target language (translated text)
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Why We Need MT
English is Not the Dominant Language
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Needs
Gisting
• Multilingual information scanning
• Produces rough draft translation
 For example: Web browsing
Publishing
• Documentation requires high-quality translation
 For example: technical support documents
 OEM, knowledge base applications
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Desktop Products
Easy to install, use, ...
Translate
• Documents
 DOC, RTF, PPT, XLS,
TXT, HTML, XML
• Email
 Outlook
• Web content
• Chat
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Desktop Products – version 5
 XML, extended control on MT process, automatic coding TM
 Introducing Swedish<>English
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
MS Word File Translation
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Web Page Translation
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Quality Assessment
http://rm.systransoft.com
(cf AMTA 2003)
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Quality Assessment
 Per language pair
 Per document
 Per sentence
 Review Manager (SLP)
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Maintenance or development
 Core engine, core dictionaries
 User specific resource tools
 GUI and APIs
 Additional language pairs
 More integration : CMS, CRM, ...
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Benefits of MT
Builds and manages knowledge assets
Proven savings in overall budgets
ROI – Reuse of texts already translated,
terminology management
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
Learning Points in Applying MT in
Real Business Context
Educate users and manage their expectations
Use rapid prototyping for a phased implementation
Set goals and metrics for final results
Narrow the gap between human translators and MT
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM
The SYSTRAN Advantage
36 language pairs, with more in development
Scalable, robust and open architecture
Accumulation of million entry knowledge-bases
Ability to customize linguistic resources
Over 7 million translations per day
Proven track record
www.systransoft.com
April 2004
TM