The MT developer/provider and the global corporation

EAMT 2005 Conference Proceedings 176 The MT developer/provider and the global corporation Terence Lewis1 & Rudolf M.Meier2 1 Hook & Hatton Ltd, 2 Siemens Nederland N.V. Terence.Lewis@language-engineer.co.uk, Rudolf.M.Meier@siemens.com Abstract. This paper describes the collaboration between MT developer/service provider, Terence Lewis (Hook & Hatton Ltd) and the Translation Office of Siemens Nederland N.V. (Siemens Netherlands). It involves the use of the developer’s Dutch-English MT software to translate technical documentation for divisions of the Siemens Group and for external customers. The use of this language technology has resulted in significant cost savings for Siemens Netherlands. The authors note the evolution of an ‘MT culture’ among their regu- lar users. 1. Introduction In 2002 Siemens Netherlands and Hook & Hat- ton Ltd signed an exclusive agreement on the marketing of Dutch-English MT services in the Netherlands. This agreement set the seal on an informal partnership that had evolved over the preceding six-seven years between Siemens and the Developer (Terence Lewis, trading through the private company Hook & Hatton Ltd). Un- der the contract, Siemens Netherlands under- takes to market the MT Services provided by the Developer to divisions within the Siemens Group and to prospective external customers. This arrangement has proved to be a win- win situation for both Siemens Netherlands and the Developer. It has given Siemens Nether- lands access to translation technology at a time when it has been involved in major cross-border infrastructure projects with consortium partners that need rapid access to usable English transla- tions of Dutch technical and legal documenta- tion (technical requirements, relevant legisla- tion and regulations etc.). Siemens is responsi- ble for the complete administration of the MT customers, and this set-up has provided the De- veloper with a stable stream of revenue ena- bling him to devote more time to further devel- opment of the software. This paper provides a mostly practical account of this relationship, first through the eyes of the Developer, and then from the perspective of the global corpora- tion. 2. The Developer’s perspective Under the current arrangement, the Developer (working from home in the United Kingdom) currently acts as the sole operator of an Auto- matic Translation Environment (Trasy), process- ing documents forwarded by e-mail by the Trans- lation Office of Siemens Netherlands in The Hague. Ideally, these documents are in MS Word or rtf format, but the Translation Office also re- ceives pdf files or OCR output files for automatic translation. After conversion to a machine-pro- cessable format, these files need to be cleaned up, otherwise the MT output will be markedly inferior to the agreed baseline. This clean-up is done by either party by arrangement. The documents are processed and returned on the basis of an agreed delivery date. Short documents are often returned within the hour. They are not post-edited or revised line by line, but the Developer does quickly scan each page to spot any gross errors or omissions. Sentences containing gross errors are usually sent back to the MT system after further preparation work. Broadly speaking, …

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