The ATA Chronicle - November/December 2021 - 24

GEEKSPEAK By Jost Zetzche
Amazon, Apptek, Baidu,
CloudTranslation, DeepL,
Elia, Fujitsu, Globalese,
Google, GTCOM, IBM
Watson, iFLYTEK, Kakao
Developers, Kawamura
International, Kingsoft,
Lesan, LINDAT, LingvaNex,
Microsoft, ModernMT,
Naver, NTT Com, Pangeanic,
Process 9, Prompsit,
PROMT, Rozetta, RWS, SAP,
SYSTRAN, Tencent, Tilde,
XL8, Yandex, YarakuZen,
Youdao, or Zinrai. (I know. I
didn't know many of these
MT providers existed, either.)
Clearly not all of them will
Intento for Translators
What are the pros and cons of using a tool like Intento that allows you
simultaneous access to dozens of machine translation (MT) engines? (When
I say " a tool like, " I'm really not being particularly accurate because it's
actually the only tool that does what it does.) If you've used generic MT
engines like those from Google, Microsoft, or DeepL via your translation
environment, you know that it's rather tedious to create an application
programming interface (API) key on their respective websites and then
enter it into the application you're using. It might be okay if you just want
to use one or two MT engines, but if you would like to access 10 or 20,
this becomes a real headache (and honestly untenable-if only because
you don't even know many of these engines exist or how to jump the
language barriers of the many East Asian specimens to connect to them).
W
hy exactly
would you want
to have access
to so many engines? The
answer to that depends
on a number of variables.
For instance, if you work
in a language combination
that's not particularly well
supported by MT engines,
the performance between
different texts you translate
may differ widely. The same
might be true for languages
that are well supported,
particularly when it comes
to different kinds of text or
subject matter. You might
be well situated if you're
already using a customizable
24 The ATA Chronicle | November/December 2021
MT engine such as OPUS-MT
or ModernMT. (And, yes,
it's also fine if you don't use
MT at all.) But for others, it
might be rather attractive
to have only an API-based
agreement with one entity
(in this case, Intento) to
connect you to engines
such as AISA, Alibaba,
be relevant (Fujitsu's Zinrai
engine, for instance, supports
only English<>Japanese),
but there's a good chance
that some engines will be
relevant for your language
combination, and an even
greater likelihood that there'll
be more than you think.
So, how does one work
with Intento? First, you'll
need to work with either
Lingotek, memoQ, Trados,
Smartcat, Wordfast
Anywhere, Wordbee, or
XTM if you want to bring
MT suggestions via Intento
into your translation
environment. For each of
these tools, a free plugin
is provided (either readily
integrated or separately
installable) that enables you
to connect to Intento. Then
you'll need one of the plans
that Intento offers to access
its ready-made connectors
to its MT partners. The
newly unveiled plans that
are relevant to individual
translators include:
y Localization Starter for
$25/month: This will
provide access to all noncustomizable
engines,
www.atanet.org
http://www.atanet.org
The ATA Chronicle - November/December 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - November/December 2021
