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Japanese in MultiTerm - any insight, including workarounds, would be welcome.
Thread poster: CELC Inc
CELC Inc
CELC Inc
Local time: 17:47
Japanese to English
+ ...
Oct 21, 2006

As far as I know this applies to all versions of MT.

Term recognition for Japanese (and Chinese, too, in my limited experience) is abysmal. Not only does MT only rarely recognize compounds of registered terms, but it fails completely to recognize terms with mixed kana-kanji orthography and often those terms in Roman letters that are marked as Japanese (acronyms, etc.)

Example:

English: souvenir shop
土産屋 --> no problems
お土産屋さん ... See more
As far as I know this applies to all versions of MT.

Term recognition for Japanese (and Chinese, too, in my limited experience) is abysmal. Not only does MT only rarely recognize compounds of registered terms, but it fails completely to recognize terms with mixed kana-kanji orthography and often those terms in Roman letters that are marked as Japanese (acronyms, etc.)

Example:

English: souvenir shop
土産屋 --> no problems
お土産屋さん --> no recognition
The Japanese terms are equivalent even though the orthography is different, and as such I have both registered as "souvenir shop" in MT. Checking the termbase directly in MT verifies this, but I cannot get Term Recognition in WB to pick this term up.

Same problem with personal names:
八重樫 --> "Yaegashi" is recognized with no trouble
八重樫さん --> "Yaegashi-san" (which I have registered as both "Yaegashi" and "Mr. Yaegashi") doesn't even give me "Yaegashi"

Here's another example of the same phenomenon with a common noun.

English: souvenir
土産 --> no problem
お土産 --> no recognition
Same problem as above. Additionally:
お土産屋さん --> no recognition of registered part of compound word with fuzzy search as low as 60%

I doubt there is much that users can do about this, but I'd love to know if there is. I'm also curious about what criteria MT is using to determine word breaks in Japanese/Chinese. It clearly cannot be spaces, since there are none. Non-recognition of mixed orthography terms suggests that kana/kanji is one boundary, but if so this MUST be changed in the next release of MT. This would be a disaster, as anyone who knows anything about Japanese could tell you.

The most perplexing problem for me is that MT doesn't recognize with any consistency terms in Roman letters (alphabet) when marked as Japanese.

Example:
GW --> Japanese acronym for "Golden Week," a week in May with many national holidays. I have never been able to get MT to recognize this term.

Does anyone have any clue about the origins/nature of this problem?

Could someone at SDL/Trados hire me onto their Japanese development team so I can iron this out?

Seriously, this is a nagging issue I've been annoyed with since version 5.5, and I think it probably means that there's nobody on the Trados team that really understands anything about Japanese (Chinese, too?) despite the enormous demand for Japanese translation.

Any insight, including workarounds, would be welcome.

[Subject edited by staff or moderator 2006-10-22 11:59] ▲ Collapse
 
Minoru Kuwahara
Minoru Kuwahara
Japan
Local time: 17:47
English to Japanese
+ ...
online knowledge base Nov 1, 2006

Hi,

I guess you may not have prominent answers as to your questions about MultiTerm as apparently it seems to be quite technical and require specific knowledge/experience on the tool. Have you ever tried referring to SDL Online Support Center? Or alternatively, Yahoo!Group "tratool-jp"?... See more
Hi,

I guess you may not have prominent answers as to your questions about MultiTerm as apparently it seems to be quite technical and require specific knowledge/experience on the tool. Have you ever tried referring to SDL Online Support Center? Or alternatively, Yahoo!Group "tratool-jp"? I may guess


http://sdl.custhelp.com/cgi-in/sdl.cfg/php/enduser/home.php

http://groups.yahoo.co.jp/group/tratool-jp/?yguid=133342485

Good luck! ▲ Collapse
 


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Japanese in MultiTerm - any insight, including workarounds, would be welcome.






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