subject: Translation Database [print this page] Many content publishers, software perform updates on their product, manuals, website, and marketing literature on regular basis. They update their source language files and engage their localization vendor to update all the supported target languages.
When a top-down localization process is applied and a translation database is in use, the search engine looks for segment changes to the source. The following is the result:
No match or new text: Typically generates little match in the database and requires full translation.
Repeat or unchanged text: Generates a 100% match from the database, not requiring any changes.
Edited or modified text: Results in a fuzzy match. This is a match in the database that can be anywhere from 50-99% of the original. Anything under 50% is considered no match.
Deleted text: Produces no impact on the translation update effort, since the text no longer exists.
Translation databases store language pair segments or sentences. A search engine is run on the newly released source text that analyzes the text one segment at a time, comparing it against what is already in the database.
If a 100% match is found, then it is considered an exact match.
If the search engine finds a similar but not an exact match, it allocates a fuzzy match percentage to it, anywhere from 50% to 99%.
For instance, a sentence with ten words having just one word difference from a sentence stored in the database will result in a 90% fuzzy match. If it has only five words in common with another sentence, then the fuzzy match is 50%.
By calculating the fuzzy match of each sentence, one can approximate the effort of translation needed to perform the full update in any target language.
The analysis and calculations are done by the translation database/search engine software. These are based on algorithms built in the software that objectively approximate the new number of words to translate.
Applying an appropriate weight to each fuzzy match is a process that used to estimate not only the cost, but also the staffing and scheduling data.
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