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TRANSLATION SOFTWARE - ACTUAL CUSTOMER TESTIMONIES

TESTIMONIAL BY:  James Mentele, Information Scientist with Dow Corning Corporation had these comments about Systran Software.

Accuracy - "Systran  is superior to other translation systems that we have examined."

Overall Productivity - "In our experience, Systran is superior to other translation software. It is excellent for assimilation and can be a great aid to a less-than-fluent multilingual person. We believe that we will have a distinct competitive advantage if we can enable workers to produce work-products as fast, safely and accurately as possible (usually in the person's native tongue). but tie that activity into global projects and workflow for greatest leverage of impact."

Completeness - "Systran excels compared to other software tools that we have investigated - both in breadth of specialized dictionaries, as well as features like proper nouns (name) extraction, .nfw (not found word) file to highlight potential problems, romanji transliteration of English and katakana/hiragana of Japanese."

Cost Savings - "The seconds of machine time per page with Systran is dramatically less than the hours per page of a human translator. It doesn't take many pages to recover the cost of the PC and the Systran Software."

Manpower Savings - A major strategy of a global company is to achieve improved results with fewer people-hours by being able to leverage specialized skills and knowledge worldwide. Such a goal is not realistic without the ability to translate work products. Translations of such volumes and subject are not realistic without large numbers of multilingual domain experts. Systrans's specialized dictionaries greatly reduce the need for such rare capabilities. Our studies have shown that the time spent by employees translating reports in 1993 was equivalent to salary and benefits of the $6 million in Japan alone."

Time Savings - "The biggest time savings occurs for employees who must translate their work products (monthly reports, project status reports, etc.) into another language (primarily English) for management."

TESTIMONIAL BY: The National Air Intelligence Center’s 28-Year Relationship with SYSTRAN Software, Inc. A Case Study

Agency Description - The National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the Air Force’s single all-source aerospace intelligence center. Its mission is to support the war fighter, the acquisition community and the national policy maker by acquiring, collecting, analyzing, producing and disseminating foreign aerospace intelligence to the U.S. Air Force, the unified commands, sister services, other members of the intelligence community and allies.

The NAIC was formed in 1993 by combining the Foreign Aerospace Science Technology Center, which focuses primarily on the production of scientific and technical intelligence, and the 480th Intelligence Group, which focuses on the preparation of cockpit-oriented target material and mission planning intelligence. In 1994 the 497th Intelligence Group Directorate of Assessments, which provides analysis support directly to the Air Staff and other intelligence organizations in the Washington, D.C. area, was integrated into NAIC. The consolidation of these three units resulted in a signification mission expansion enabling NAIC to provide fully integrated intelligence products tailored to customer requirements. The NAIC has a staff of approximately 1,700 people.

SYSTRAN’s Involvement with the NAIC In 1968 SYSTRAN Software Inc. was contracted to develop Russian-to-English machine translation for the U.S. Air Force through a predecessor agency of NAIC. In 1969 the first SYSTRAN system was tested at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Since 1970, the system has continued to provide translations for the USAF’s Foreign Technology Division. SYSTRAN was used by NASA during the joint US-USSR Apollo-Soyuz space project in 1974-75.

SYSTRAN translation software is used at more than 30 sites within the intelligence community. SYSTRAN’s Russian-into-English machine translation program now includes more than a half million words and operates at more than 90 percent accuracy on technical texts.

Translation Needs - The National Air Intelligence Center has extensive translation requirements in terms of languages and documentation, although a description of translation requirements is not available.

Currently NAIC translates technical texts, foreign language journal articles, and systems documentation from nine languages into English using SYSTRAN Software. As part of its current five-year contract with NAIC, SYSTRAN will create machine translation systems for several Eastern European languages, including the first-ever Serbo-Croatian-into-English machine translation software program.

Translation Strategy - SYSTRAN Software is used organization-wide for quick information. It is used by the Translation Services Department for edited and finished translations.

NAIC has a government-wide unclassified network called "NAIC Open Source Information Service (NAIC OSIS)." This network uses nine SYSTRAN systems to translate text for Internet Websites submitted by government users. This is now being migrated to a secret network and to a top secret network called Interlink. As a result, SYSTRAN software is accessible on three different networks from NAIC’s Home Page on the World Wide Web for use by the entire U.S. intelligence community.

Benefits of SYSTRAN Software - "The most heralded aspect of machine translation from user surveys over the past 15 years has been time savings." The agency also notes that "The most heralded aspect of machine translation from user surveys over the past 15 years has been time savings." The agency also notes that using SYSTRAN results in manpower savings, cost savings and an increase in overall productivity.

TESTIMONIAL BY:  Autodesk 

Autodesk Choosed Systran for Multilingual Customer Support

Autodesk's Evaluation Process: Autodesk conducted an informal but comprehensive evaluation of MT products before selecting SYSTRAN for its application. A test suite of representative technical articles was provided to potential MT providers, and the results were reviewed by Autodesk's linguists and technical support staff. The review focused on identifying translation results that were useful and understandable, despite the stylistic and grammatical errors that MT systems inevitably produce.

Autodesk followed a software-development approach to evaluating SYSTRAN. Errors were reported back to the SYSTRAN team. SYSTRAN then fixed the errors and submitted revised versions of the system to Autodesk for verification that the changes had been made. This process allowed Autodesk to observe both the responsiveness of the SYSTRAN team and the enhancement potential of the technology.

Autodesk cited three factors in the selection of SYSTRAN from a field of competitors. The first was that SYSTRAN's output quality reached the threshold of intelligibility that Autodesk felt was needed to make its deployment successful. The AltaVista deployment of SYSTRAN for multilingual Web page browsing gave Autodesk confidence in SYSTRAN's scalability. Less tangible, but equally important, was the impression that SYSTRAN understood Autodesk's needs better than other providers and could work with Autodesk to tune the system to its unique texts.

SYSTRAN CEO Dimitris Sabatakakis also believes SYSTRAN's ongoing extensive development work was an important factor. The system is undergoing a major revamping of its dictionary structure that will allow it to leverage its enormous lexical resources more quickly and efficiently.

Autodesk's Multilingual Customer Support Application

The Company: Autodesk is the developer of AutoCAD, a computer-assisted design (CAD) software platform. Most of the company's applications for specific design requirements, such as architectural and mechanical design, multimedia, manufacturing, construction, and geographic information systems, rest on the AutoCAD platform. Autodesk products are used by more than 4 million design professionals. Based in San Rafael, California, Autodesk has offices in 60 other locations worldwide. John Walker founded the company in 1982. The company will have revenue of approximately $1 billion in 2001.

Business Rationale: With more than 60% of its business conducted outside the United States, Autodesk is a case study for the challenges of information dissemination and management in a multilingual environment. One of Autodesk's most pressing challenges is supporting customers across many languages in a cost-efficient manner. Autodesk provides customer support through a database of more than 10,000 articles that are accessible from its Web site. The articles, which average 1,000 words in length, are written in English only, are highly technical, and are specific to design issues for various industries.

Unlike the highly dynamic content in chat, email, and message boards that has been the focus of previous Internet MT applications, Autodesk's content is relatively stable. Once posted, the text of articles rarely changes, and only a few hundred new articles are added each month. The database receives an average of 500,000 hits per business day.

Although the percentage of hits that require translation is unknown, the potential volume of translation is very large given the size of the database and the number of users and languages. Frequently requested articles will be pretranslated and cached to allow instant delivery to customers and to reduce the load on the translation servers.

Autodesk acknowledges that without MT it would not be able to deliver multilingual customer support comparable to what it provides to English-speaking customers. Mirko Plitt, process analyst in Autodesk's Worldwide Localization department, states that SYSTRAN's "innovative customization approach was the only answer to our international customers' need for a multilingual product support knowledge base: translations produced by general-purpose MT systems are of little use to our non-English-speaking clients, and a translation workflow involving human intervention was not a realistic option. The specific machine translation solution developed by SYSTRAN maximizes the benefit our customers get from the Product Support Web site and further increases the quality of service provided by Autodesk.

TESTIMONIAL BY: Fisher-Rosemount System, Inc.’s Experience With SYSTRAN Software, Inc.  A Case Study

Company Description - The Fisher-Rosemount family of companies is the world’s largest process management supplier. Fisher-Rosemount not only leads in many global market segments, but it also has the industry’s broadest process-automation offering, including process management systems, control valves, regulators, transmitters, analyzers and related services. Fisher-Rosemount, Inc., is a world-leading supplier of process management systems and services. The company, headquartered in Austin, Texas, maintains key manufacturing and technology centers in Burnsville, Minn.; La Habra, Calif.; Cambridge, Ontario (Canada); Leicester, England; and Singapore. Fisher-Rosemount Systems offers three process management systems, each of which reflects the company’s long heritage as a pacesetter in process automation. The company, which was established in 1956 as Rosemount Inc., now has approximately 1,000 employees.

Translation Needs - Fisher-Rosemount Systems, Inc. has extensive translation requirements in terms of languages and documentation. Materials that need translation are sent to SYSTRAN Software, Inc. via E-mail, translated into final, edited copy at SYSTRAN’s world headquarters in La Jolla, and returned electronically. Fisher-Rosemount requires translation of approximately 400 pages per year.

Translation Software Language Pairs: English German, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese. Types of Documentation: Customer manuals for both hardware and software product.

Translation Strategy - The Fisher-Rosemount family of companies is the world’s largest process management supplier. Fisher-Rosemount not only leads in many global market segments, but it also has the industry’s broadest process-automation offering, including process management systems, control valves, regulators, transmitters, analyzers and related services. Fisher-Rosemount, Inc., is a world-leading supplier of process management systems and services. The company, headquartered in Austin, Texas, maintains key manufacturing and technology centers in Burnsville, Minn.; La Habra, Calif.; Cambridge, Ontario (Canada); Leicester, England; and Singapore. Fisher-Rosemount Systems offers three process management systems, each of which reflects the company’s long heritage as a pacesetter in process automation. The company, which was established in 1956 as Rosemount Inc., now has approximately 1,000 employees. Translation Strategy Previously, translation was handled in various foreign countries on an as-needed basis. In 1992 Fisher-Rosemount began relying on SYSTRAN for translations of technical manuals. The relationship has been effective because of SYSTRAN Software’s "speed and cost."

Benefits of SYSTRAN Software Translation Services - "Having one source for translation regardless of the language is a great convenience.

SYSTRAN Software, Inc. is very strong in machine translation. The people we work with at SYSTRAN are very knowledgeable of computer-aided translation and the Interleaf program.

  It’s a great time-saver to receive the translated files electronically in the proper format. We receive excellent phone, fax and E-mail response to questions and problems. We are working with SYSTRAN to develop a methodology to minimize the costs of revisions within the translated documents. A weakness in the process is the absence of translation support for on-line help systems in Windows NT."

TESTIMONIAL BY: Gaumont Newsreel Archives 

SYSTRAN Chosen to Translate its French Online Newsreel Catalogue for the Global Marketplace

When Stuart McKay, a freelance film archive researcher, was looking for historical footage of the First World War for a new British TV series, he naturally turned to the Web for information about relevant holdings in French film archives. France, the birthplace of cinema, has a vast range of holdings of early film in its military and government archives. But what made Stuart’s search particularly fruitful was the availability of a remarkable online database listing the complete historical footage held in the Cinématique Gaumont newsreel archives. And above all, the ability to search this database in the universal language of professional media searchers – English.

The Cinématique Gaumont is a French film library offering the largest range of French language newsreel and other film holdings of its kind. Information about the archive is accessible via the Internet, offering film researchers an unparalleled database for searching cultural and historical material on celluloid, viewing excerpts and then ordering them. To render this facility as universally accessible as possible to researchers like Stuart McKay, Gaumont contracted SYSTRAN to provide an ondemand translation solution that would enable researchers to retrieve the database and read its film descriptions in English. Gaumont has been able to substantially grow its market for newsreel film archive users by combining the ease of access afforded by an online database with the communicative effectiveness of SYSTRAN’s  Machine Translation technology.

Use and Cost Savings: Based on the success of an initial deployment in Spain, other countries were added one at a time by customizing the system for each new language and adding authenticated access for the users in that country. PwC paid for the service under a global agreement, with individual countries paying for the cost of local customization (that is, adding PwC-specific and department specific vocabulary to the generic translation dictionaries). List price for a machine translation desktop software license is approximately $1,000, whereas a corporate service, including setup costs, ranges from $13,500 per annum for 100 users with five language pairs to $77,200 per annum for unlimited users and five language pairs.

Results: As with most deployments of machine translation, PwC found the main benefit for users to be understanding the gist of documents in a language they do not speak well. The following uses have been identified to date. 

• A major use is translating the results of Web searches of internal or external sites. Finding the relevant content and Web pages prior to translation is a separate and ongoing issue. PwC's selected search engine does not yet support cross-lingual search (as is the case with most major search engines), and smaller vendors with good cross-lingual search were difficult to scale for global needs.

• Management personnel use the system to get the main ideas from text that they don’t understand (for example, internal documents, meeting minutes, client documents, e-mail from overseas clients) to decide whether to have human translation. Frequently, opportunities can be identified by homing in on document types where a significant amount of human translation is already performed, but where understanding the gist is enough for some portion of the documentation (for example, in a time-critical application such as an investment opportunity, where the time delays in professionally translating all relevant documentation would cause missed deadlines).

• Use of the system has allowed specialists to be assigned to project teams where they may not be skilled in the team's language. The machine translation system is used to translate agendas, minutes and project documentation. What helps make this application workable is knowing the context of the documentation (that is, understanding what the project is about, knowing the subject matter and knowing the nature of the document).

• Non-English speakers may use the system to create a document in English, if they do not know the relevant terminology. This is used only for internally targeted documents that are not worth translating professionally. Users become familiar with how to tailor their original text to help the system work better (for example, by using simple, unambiguous language and sentence constructions). In PwC's case, members of the translation department do not use the machine translation system, because they prefer to use traditional translation tools. The system is not appropriate for legal documents (for example, judgments or statutes) or text that may have legal ramifications. It works well with highly technical documents, but not where the language is abstract or philosophical. Longer term, PwC aims to integrate machine translation with its e-mail system so that users can see the two languages side by side.

Critical Success Factors/Lessons Learned: Factors that helped this project become successful included: 

• Gaining buy-in from the professional translators to help evaluate and customize the system, even if they are not the target users

• Making the business case that this is a knowledge management tool targeted at individual productivity, rather than for quantifiable cost savings

• Setting realistic expectations as to the constraints of the technology; the logon screen has a "health" warning telling users what the system can do

• Creating a user interface that allows users to access translation functionality from any application or intranet site without leaving their documents

• Establishing a global license that makes it straight forward to add new country sites

• Making the system customizable for each country (and even individual, if desired). If more budget were available, PwC would have performed more customization to specific businesses, as this makes a big difference in the quality of the translation.

Bottom Line: Enterprises with global operations should examine how machine translation can improve access to internal documentation and international Web and intranet sites, as well as enhancing collaboration between employees in different countries. The technology is not ready for creating documents for external consumption and is not necessarily a benefit for professional translators.
Copyright 2002, CS-17-9077, 26 September 2002 

See full version of this case study -  click here

TESTIMONIAL BY:   DaimlerChrysler

The Company: The 1998 merger of Daimler-Benz AG with the Chrysler Corporation formed one of the world’s largest automotive companies. The new entity, DaimlerChrysler (DC) employs more than 372,500 people in 37 countries. The company’s brands include Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Freightliner, Setra, Smart and Sterling. The DaimlerChrysler Services division is a leading provider of financial services. The company’s total revenues were $136.1 billion in 2001.

Communication Challenges:  With its large multinational workforce, the newly formed DaimlerChrysler faced substantial communication challenges in integrating its operations centers in Germany and the United States. Although the company has two official languages - German and English - the level of language skills varies considerably among DaimlerChrysler employees. While most German speaking DC employees can speak some English, not all are able to do so with the ease and accuracy that is needed for effective working relationships. Among the English-speaking staff, very few have any knowledge of German at all. For both groups, understanding corporate documentation written in a different language may be difficult or impossible.

Many of DaimlerChrysler’s company-internal documents, such as human resources materials, are professionally translated and published for employees. But the merger increased the number of informal day-to-day communications among employees in the United States and Germany.

These interactions, which include email messages, internal Web pages containing message boards or corporate documentation, and other unpublished company texts, were difficult for employees with limited language skills. Traditional human translation was not a viable solution because of the volume, transience and immediate delivery requirements of informal communications. In addition, human translation would be prohibitively costly.

Evaluating MT Solutions:  As U.S. and German interactions increased following the merger, DaimlerChrysler’s Language Services Department began to receive numerous requests for automated translation support. With the popular success of machine translation applications such as AltaVista, many DC employees had witnessed firsthand the benefits, as well as the potential pitfalls of machine translation software. In response to the many inquiries, Edith Kroupa, DC’s manager of language technology implementation, organized an evaluation of machine translation solutions and their ability to meet DaimlerChrysler’s unique requirements. Four commercial MT systems participated in the evaluation. The evaluation entailed building a profile of DaimlerChrysler’s requirements, identifying the features of the MT systems, and comparing the fit between the two. 

The chief considerations for DaimlerChrysler were: 

! German-English bidirectional language pairs 
! No installation of client software
! Seamless integration with DC’s IT environment
! Low performance costs
! No maintenance requirements
! Ease of use and access

With thousands of employees, DaimlerChrysler recognized that installation of client software would create enormous maintenance burdens for IT staff. As a result, a centralized server installation, and integration with DC’s IT environment was essential. Low performance costs were also important to achieving a return on investment because the potential volume of translation was very large. Since very few DaimlerChrysler employees were familiar with translation technology, ease of use was also an important consideration. The company also evaluated the quality of translation among the four systems using a combination of published studies and internal testing of DC documents. Of the four systems, SYSTRAN met best DaimlerChrysler’s requirements for ease of integration, low performance costs, language pairs and translation quality.

The current production system is used by 25,000 DaimlerChrysler employees for the translation of Web pages, emails and corporate documents. Users access SYSTRAN using a browser-based interface that interacts with a central SYSTRAN intranet server located within DaimlerChrysler. The terminology dictionaries used by SYSTRAN are maintained by Language Services to ensure consistent terminology usage and complete coverage of DaimlerChrysler vocabulary. Language Services also operates a help desk for SYSTRAN users. SYSTRAN’s staff has worked closely with the Language Services group to provide technical support and customization during the implementation phase.

Results and Future Plans:  DaimlerChrysler has seen an increase in the productivity and effectiveness of informal business communications through the use of SYSTRAN. The production system currently processes more than 4,000 translation requests each week. DaimlerChrysler conducted user acceptance studies during the implementation process. The results showed that although users recognized the limitations of non-customized machine translation, they still found it to be a useful tool for translating informal communications. Based on the success of the implementation, Daimler Chrysler is preparing to launch SYSTRAN machine translation capabilities on the company’s employee portal. This will extend the reach of the technology to a broader range of users, and a wider variety of document types. Additional language pairs will be deployed based on the needs of users.

The Daimler Chrysler MT story is unique because the initiative to deploy machine translation originated with employees, not company management. Historically, management-driven imperatives to deploy MT within corporations have met with limited acceptance, especially within corporate translation departments. The initiative of DC employees in the choice to use MT has been instrumental to its success. It also illustrates the powerful impact that Internet MT applications have had for individuals, who in turn can evangelize the benefits of MT technology within their companies. This grassroots motive for MT deployment may be a bellwether for corporate implementations of the future.

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