The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2021 - 32

Is my clients' data
privacy assured when
I, as their translator,
use services like
Google Translate,
Microsoft Translator,
or DeepL?
in order for us to produce
the translation and offer
you our service. The
transfer of these texts is
necessary for us to carry
out the translation and
offer you our service.
We process your texts
and the translation for
a limited period of time
to train and improve
our neural networks and
translation algorithms. If
you make corrections to
our proposed translations,
these corrections are also
forwarded to our servers
to verify the accuracy of
the corrections and, if
necessary, to update the
translated text to reflect
your changes. We also
store your corrections for
a limited period of time
to train and improve our
translation algorithm. " 4
So far so good. Good? Yes,
I think this is good for us
because it differentiates
the casual user of MT from
those of us who use MT as
one of our resources during
professional translation.
Because what we (should!)
do is access MT from
those sources via their
application programming
interface (API-how
different programs
exchange information).
And if we access it within
a translation environment
(e.g., Trados, memoQ,
Memsource, etc.), that's
exactly what we're doing.
Here's what the different
systems say about that:
y Google: " Google does not
use any of your content
for any purpose except to
provide you with the Cloud
Translation API service. " 5
32 The ATA Chronicle | July/August 2021
y Microsoft: " Azure
Cognitive Services
Translator is a cloudbased
machine translation
service and is part of the
Azure Cognitive Services
family of cognitive APIs
for building intelligent
apps. Customer data
submitted for translation
to Azure Cognitive
Services Translator (both
standard and custom
models), Speech service,
the Microsoft Translator
Speech API, and the text
translation features in
Microsoft Office products
are not written to
persistent storage. There
will be no record of the
submitted text or voice,
or any portion thereof, in
any Microsoft data center.
The audio and text will
not be used for training
purposes either. " 6
y DeepL: " When using
DeepL Pro, the texts or
documents you submit
will not be permanently
stored and will only be
kept temporarily, to
the extent necessary
for the production
and transmission of
the translation. Once
you have received the
translation, all submitted
texts or documents and
their translations will be
deleted. When using DeepL
Pro, your texts will not
be used to improve the
quality of our services. " 7
It seems relatively clear
to me, but a) I'm not a
lawyer, and b) all too often
fellow translators or other
technology providers like
to throw shade on those
provisions by pointing
to other sections in the
legal thickets of those
companies that might read
like loopholes to those
conditions. If the skepticism
arises out of real doubt
about whether that data
might be treated differently
than outlined in the legal
statements above, it's not
only justified but laudable.
But in other cases, I seem
to notice a stubbornness
borne either of wanting to
sell a product or service that
in some way competes with
those generic MT offerings
(a sales pitch masquerading
as moral high ground), or
just a general rejection of
MT in all its forms (or any
combination of the two). I
think we have to be careful
about taking stands that
might be hard to defend,
especially when it comes to
the core of our business as
translators or translation
technology providers.
Plus, it has always seemed
kind of preposterous to
assume that professional
translators have so much to
add to the ongoing collection
of data that it would even
make a dent in the billions
of times non-API users
access the data and enter
text. (Remember, we're
only talking about source
data here, unless you would
be using a tool's interface
to make corrections to the
translation data.) Would
these companies really
embarrass themselves by not
keeping what clearly seems
to be a contractual promise?
Either way, I thought it
would be helpful to actually
reach out to some people
from these organizations
to see what they actually
know about their company's
www.atanet.org
http://www.atanet.org
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2021

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