Computer-aided translation tools are now used extensively bytechnical translators. They help translators manage their materialand make it easier to find and use translations of sentences and Now, however, when I use compu!:er-aidedwords that have already been translated (irrespective of currentcontext), eliminating some of the monotonous work of technical '- I '- .'- I d f '- h '- '- I' d '- b '-I ' , .., , l:rans a1:lon 1:00 s an or 1: a. .00 s a1:a ase .0trans anon. Databases contaInIng translatIons together wIth theIr ,

equivalent in the source language are being built while the trans- ..lator is translating, so that identical sentences and phrases do not be useful In !:ransla!:lon of !:ha!: !:ex!:, !:he

have to be typed in over and over again. The program can thensearch for and find identical sentences-whereby sentence means !:ransla!:ion has !:0 follow !:he English syn!:ax, andreplicas of text (identified by sameness of spelling) from oneperiod to the next-and by the help of so-called fuzzy searches should preferably be divided up in!:o a !:ex!: wi!:hfind "similar" sentences in the database, presumably faster than atranslator can think. .

!:hree perlods-!:hree declara!:ive main clauses-

Economic Bu!: No!: linguis!:ic Sensejus!: like !:he source !:ex!:. The resul!:ing !:ransla!:ion

It makes perfect sense (perhaps in economic terms), to reuse trans-lation~ in this way in technical translation, because as it happens appears oversimplified, wha!: !:he Danish linguis!:technIcal texts contain an enormous amount of repetition. Whena new model of a product is introduced, it is usually very similar. '1 .to its predecessor, with only a few new changed or added features, Professor Klrs!:en Rask calls machlne-gun

and the new accompanying manual is often not a rewrite, butmerely a modification (or version, edition, etc.) of the old one, plus sen!:ences" and !:erms "yellow language."

inclusion of the new features. Furthermore, it seems that ma-chinery is "updated" and "modified" at a faster and faster pace inthis day and age, which means that new versions of manuals have d ' f h 'I bil . f I ., "

b I d "' d "' a VIse us 0 t e avaI a Ity 0 parts at your ear lest convenIence,to e trans ate at a laster an laster rate. , .

would not be allowed because here advIse means Inform, Orwell'sThe rather constrained environment of the computer-aided trans- philologist says it clearly in his explanation:tation tools, which as a rule work with linguistic elements between " Of h ., h b d d.

, , , course t e great wastage IS In t e ver S an a lIec-

perIods (the program registers the words from one perIod to the . b h h d ds f h b .d., , .tlves, ut t ere are un re 0 nouns t at can e got rInext as a UnIt or separate entity), has led to an engIneerIng or con- f II I .,

nl h h al h' , , 0 as we. t Isn t 0 y t e synonyms; t ere are so t etrolling of language, and not just Improvement of the technology Afi all h ' .ti ., h "' dk antonyms. ter , w at jUstl Icanon IS t ere lor a WOfto ma e the programs work better, or to make them do what you h' h .. I h ' f h d ., AId t th d w IC IS simp y t e Opposite 0 some ot er WOf s!'wou wan em to 0. d ' , , ., If T k ' d' "' ,wor contaIns ItS OpposIte In Itse ..la e goo lor In-Ever since the notion of an "ideal language" was developed, the stance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is thereconcept of"controlled language" never lagged far behind. The idea for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well-of controlled English emerged in the 1930s. There have been nu- better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other ismerous attempts to design a universal language that would unite not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,'humanity and further communication in the world. But this was what sense is there in having a whole string of vague use-different from a number ofother attempts such as Esperanto, Ido, less words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest ofVolapiik, etc., in that it was English, and not a completely artificial them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplus-language or a hybrid language constructed from several differoot good' if you want something stronger still. Of course weexisting natural languages. use those forms already but in the final version of ourThis language was called Basic English and was in essence a sim- Newspeak there will be nothing else. In the end theplified English. One of the ideas behind it was "to cut the language whole, notion of ~oodn~ss and badness will be c?vered byto the bone." In other words, it was deemed possible, in fact, to re- °hnlyb SIX wor~;In r~allty, o~y one word. Don t you seestrict the vocabulary to 850 words as well as simplify the grammar, t e eauty 0 t at, WInston?

and still talk and write about important issues of the world, insteadof having to use or know some 75,000 English words that a fluent Does !:he linguis!: Con!:roland well-educated speaker of English might otherwise command.!: h e Too I, 0 r V i c e Ve r s a ?As Orwell's philologist said, "his thin dark face had become ani- In other words language is now being changed to fit the tools in-mated, his eyes had lost their mockillg expression and grown stead of the other way around. When you translate in a transla~ionalmost dreamy. 'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."' program, you do have some control over the tool. It normally

Simplified, or controlled language as it is now called, produced a allows you to expand a segment to include the next segment, thatmuch better result with machine translation and machine-aided is, the text between the next two periods, making you free to com-translation tools than our ordinary, ambiguous, and varied lan- bine the two segments into one complete sentence withguage. And the point is almost self-evidently true. The less appropriate subordinate clauses if you so choose. But you are re-ambiguous the meaning and syntax, the easier it is to engineer a stricted to expand with one additional segment, and aside from thesystem or program that has to deal with exactly those problems. fact that you are syntactically constrained, my experience is that"One word, one meaning" is its basic principle. In practice it technical translators, myself included, tend to use the tools the waymeans that the verb to advise, for example, can only be used in the they were designed to be used, most often producing texts with ameaning to give advice, so to use it in a sentence such as "Please syntax close to that of the source text.

www.language-in~erna~ional,com 29 Language In~erna~ional Oc~ober 2000

Controlled language has invaded the corporate world; companies telling the user what to do in order to accomplish this or that. Thiscreate their own standards for language use. The motivation, we are style is quickly being replaced by short commands in the impera-told, is that controlled language counters the tendency of technical tive verb form without the explanatory connections that flowingwriters to use jargon and unusual styles and grammatical con- text provides.structions or inconsistent language. AECMA Simplified English, S dl II d I ' d bill'

d, , .uppose y, contro e anguage Improves rea a ty an compre-for example, was developed to facilitate the use of mamtenance h .bil . b d ' I ' al d al I '

( h' , ." ensl Ity y re ucmg eXIc an structur comp eXIty suc asmanuals by non-native speakers of English. It litnlts the length of b .. ) d "fy" da d f I Th ,., , am 19u1ty an specl mg stan r s a Sty e. at econotnlzesmstructiOnal sentences to 20 words (as do Mlcrosoft's grammar" , , , ,

h k b h ) d " h . al ' mamtenance, smce a text that IS easier to read and understand ISc ec ers, y t e way, an requires t at sequent! steps m an ac- , , ., , b d ' also easier to update. It makes the computatiOnal process easier due

tiV1ty e expresse m separate sentences. , ...to the reduction of leXIcal and structural complexity (agam, such

This has been adopted by an entire business sector, the aerospace as ambiguity, etc,) and prescription of stylistic rules. In short, itindustry. Aerospace manufacturers are required to write aircraft makes machine translation feasible.maintenance documentation in such simplified English. Anothercontrolled language, PACE, has been developed by the British Se a r c h i n g f o rcompany Perkins Engines. (PACE stands for Perkins Approved Quanl:il:al:ive MeasuresClear English.) The American company Caterpillar has its CFE (anacronym for Caterpillar Fundamental English). A method of measuring quantitatively a text's ease of readability,

the so-called LIX index, was invented by the Swedish linguistC I: II d L C.H. Bj0rnsson. LIX is the acronym for liisbarhedsindex which in

on ro e anguage: , ,O I: II: M d I: 7 English hterally means readability index. It delineates the deg ree of

u grown s an a eo ,compression the language of a text has, thereby indicating how

Now, however, it is no longer used only for its original purpose, difficult it is to read and understand (to some presumed averagenamely to make manuals easier to read by people whose nativ-e reader). Bj0rnsson let various groups of people read 340 differentlanguage is not English, but also for the benefit of the translation texts and found, not surprisingly, that what makes a text difficultindustry, making it supposedly easier for a text to be translated. to read and understand is a large number of words between pe-And one difference now is that it no longer concerns just the Eng- riods and, also, aiarge number of long words. And he establishedlish language, but via translation it applies to the rest of the world's an equation for quantifying a text's degree of readability (how hardlanguages as well. it is to read, as many would put it), namely the number of words perAlthough the Danes to a certain extent embraced artificial lan- period + the percentage of long words = LIX,

guages such as Volapiik and Esperanto (the well-known Danish But dividing or cutting up a text into short declarative sentenceslinguist Otto ]espersen even created one called Novial) there have also removes the connectives between them, and when connectionnot, as far as I know, been any attempts to create a simplified or disappears, content disappears as well. The text, in fact, maybasic Danish language. But by using computer-assisted translation become more difficult to read and comprehend.A typical exampletools, as they are configured at the present time, a simplified of a technical text might be the following:Danish is emerging. Danish technical manuals have traditionally Th h ' ,

1 d h h h h h d' , , , e seawater t at IS clrcu ate t roug t e eat exc anger anbeen wrItten m an Impersonal style with complete sentences, th ,I' ' , ,I' h 1 ,a; h .fi 11 , e amount OJ operating time oJ t e vesse a.llects t e o oWing

items:

.Cleanliness of the tubes of the heat exchanger.

There have no1:, as far as I know, been any. Effectiveness of the heat exchanger system,

Because of the bulleted format, which actually means that thisal:l:empl:s 1:0 creal:e a simplified or basic Danish short text is divided up into three separate paragraphs, and in a

translation program into three separate segments, the translationI B 1: b . 1: o 1: d will typically be done in the same format, i.e., in three distinct ( un-

anguageo u y using compu er-assls e

d)connecte segments.

I:ranslal:ion l:ools a simplified Danish is emerging. However, a natural rendering in Danish of the same information, would have been given in a principal clause with an embedded

o o o o clause, followed by two subordinate clauses that are connectedDanish I:echnlcal manuals have I:radll:lonally been with a causal connective, such as "consequently" or "therefore." In

effect, you get less information in the bulleted text as the syntax ofwril:l:en in an impersonal sl:yle wil:h complel:e the sentence also contains or yields information and affects com-

prehension. Bear in mind: "Don't you see that the whole aim of1: Th o 1: I .. kl b . I d b Newspeak is to narrow the range of thou ght? In the end we shall

sen ences. IS s ye IS qulc y elng rep ace ymake thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be nowords in which to express it," says Syme, Orwell's philologist.

shorl: commands in I:he imperal:ive verb form

Quesl:ioning I:he Basic Assumpl:ionwil:houl: I:he explanal:ory connecl:ions I:hal:

The contention is that consistency in the use of terms will help to..improve the overall consistency and qu;11ity of the text being trans-

flowing I:exl: provIdes. lated" Mter all, one of the simplest and most direct benefits of

computer-assisted translation tools in technical translation is thatgiven terms are always translated consistently because they are

Language International October 2000 30 www.language-international.com

I!: is, !:hus, a misunders!:anding !:ha!: shor!:

sen!:ences necessarily are easier !:0 read !:han

longer sen!:ences, because !:here is a lower limi!:

!:0 brevi!:y and conciseness {which is mis!:aken

for simplici!:y). If sen!:ences are !:00 shor!:, we

inhibi!: !:he reading process, le!: alone !:he

comprehension process, because we hinder !:he

flow of informa!:ion, !:hus diminishing !:he

fluency of comprehension. The reader

loses !:he sense of con!:ex!:.

taken to be bilingual synonyms in the electronic dictionary. We getconsistency. As the Orwellian philologist maintained:

"Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressedby exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly definedand all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from thatpoint. But the process will still be continuing long afteryou and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words,and the range of consciousness always a little smaller."

And this prediction or omen seems to be the rule or imperativefor Rask's yellow language, a term derived from yellow journalism -

the news industry of daily papers that, in an intrusive fashion,"covers" peoples' private lives, ephemeral events in momentousterms-in other words, sheer sensationalist writing. The designatoryellow stands for hyperbolic, one-sided, superficial, intentionallysimplified use of language.

But as Professor Rask points out, a sentence is not always equal towhat is between two periods. The definition of a sentence is a verbwith attendant qualifiers, and it continues until no more is associ-ated with that verb, no matter how many periods it takes.You needa complete sentence to express a complete meaning, and that maybe one or more principal clauses or a principal clause and anynumber of subordinate clauses. A long sentence is difficult to readwhen it has numerous dependent clauses before the main verb,whereas a long sentence may be easy to read even with many de-pendent clauses following after the main verb.

It is, thus, a misunderstanding that short sentences necessarily areeasier to read than longer sentences, because there is a lower limitto brevity and conciseness (which is mistaken for simplicity). Ifsentences are too short, we inhibit the reading process, let alonethe comprehension process, because we hinder the flow of infor-mation, thus diminishing the fluency of comprehension. Thereader loses the sense of context. The staccato effect of oversimpli-fied sentences inhibits the reading process and the sense ofsequence, although they seemingly present clear facts.

www.language-i n~erna!:ional.com 3 I Language International October 2000

Putting the Tools in Context

Computer-aided translation tools are here to stay (if not in their

derstanding that short present infantile forms), and they are interesting and challenging

to work with, but we have to realize that by using them we con-

o tribute to changing the target language syntactically as well asyare easier to read than limiting the range of vocabulary within the area we are working.

We want consistency and readability in both source and target lan-ause there is a lower limit guages of technical documentation. but is it desirable to "cut the

language to the bone" to obtain this?

;eness {which is mistaken Designers of translation tools need to make room for cross-lin-

guistic differences in order for us to hold on to not only semantics

1tences are too short, we and syntax, but also the overall grammatical characteristics of the

target language. Ye/low language has invaded newspapers and pulp

, process let alone the fiction as well as advertising and other commercial texts in Den-, mark, and currendy we, the translators, aid and abet the process

b h o d th because the tools we use make it too easy to ignore the syntactical55 ecause we In er e di Lr b h 1 d h 1' u.erences etween t e source anguage an t e target anguage.

We have to look at the languages as well as the tools so as not ton, thus diminishing the end up with languages cut to the bone.

ehensiono The reader Else Mogensen, is a native of Denmark and holds a Ph.D. in classical

philolog~ She is an in-house senior translator and editor at Eriksen

f t t 7ranslations in Brooklyn, New York.!n5e o con ex o