Searchable TMs/Linear B

Mago at Life in Translation links to another multilingual website, Linear B.

The original idea came via James D. Reed of SpanishLegalTranslation.

Here you can choose your language pair and search translation memories (aligned texts).

The results are much better than those of the two multilingual sites recently mentioned here, for instance Linguee.

Here are my results for Rechtsbehelf:

appeal – [ 6 sentences matched , 3 shown ]
… lesung vorrangig drehten , im kompromisspaket niederschlag gefunden haben . es geht um den rechtsbehelf -lrb- artikel 4 -rrb- , den transparenzmechanismus -lrb- artikel 6 der rahmenrichtlinie -rrb- , …
… that dominated discussion between the council and parliament during second reading : right of appeal -lrb- article 4 -rrb- , the transparency mechanism -lrb- article 6 of the framework …

unser ziel ist es zudem , den asylbewerbern das recht zu sichern , auf dem gebiet des mitgliedstaats zu verbleiben , bis über ihren rechtsbehelf entschieden worden ist .
we aim to secure for asylum seekers the right to remain on the territory of a member state until their appeal has been decided .

… antrags nun auf unserem hoheitsgebiet verbleiben kann , bis die endgültige entscheidung über seinen rechtsbehelf gefallen ist .
… applicant could then remain on our territory while awaiting a final ruling on his appeal .
[ View more matching sentences ]

legal remedy – [ 2 sentences matched ]
zweitens wollen wir das recht des asyl suchenden auf einen wirksamen rechtsbehelf nach artikel 38 stärken .
secondly , we want to reinforce the asylum seeker ’ s right to an effective legal remedy in accordance with article 38 .

… bestrafung ohne ein ordnungsgemäßes gerichtsverfahren , die meinungsfreiheit , das recht auf einen wirksamen rechtsbehelf und das recht auf freiheit , sicherheit und ein faires verfahren verankert .
… no punishment without law , freedom of expression , the right to an effective legal remedy and the right to liberty , security and a fair trial .

question – [ 1 sentence matched ]
für den fall , dass der rechtsbehelf keine grundsätzlich aufschiebende wirkung hat , müssen die mitgliedstaaten überdies laut richtlinie festlegen , wann ein asylbewerber eine aufschiebende wirkung beantragen kann .
if , moreover , there is no question of a standard suspensive effect of an appeal , then the directive requires that …

recourse – [ 1 sentence matched ]
weitere mit china behandelte fragen sind die unterdrückung der politisch andersdenkenden , die willkürlichen inhaftierungen , der rechtsbehelf gegen die todesstrafe und die unterdrückung der ethnischen minderheiten .
… the repression of political dissent , the arbitrary conditions of detention , the frequent recourse to the death penalty and the repression of ethnic minorities .

right – [ 1 sentence matched ]
zum rechtsbehelf wird im kompromisspaket den ansichten des parlaments gefolgt , wonach die mitgliedstaaten aufgefordert werden sicherzustellen , dass jeder fall aufgrund des vorliegenden tatbestands beurteilt wird .
on right of appeal , the compromise package takes parliament ‘s line by requiring member states to ensure that the merits of the case are duly taken into account .

The ‘Rechtsbehelf gegen die Todesstrafe’ seems to have gone a bit off course, and the ‘conditions of detention’ in the same example, but I think it was a native speaker of English messing that one up.

The site is mysterious but I found a PDF file with more details, including an address and inter alia a table showing a number of German words and phrases and the automatically extracted translations, followed by the ideal translation. Details: Searchable Translation Memories
Chris Callison-Burch, Colin Bannard & Josh Schroeder
Linear B Ltd.
39 B Cumberland Street
Edinburgh EH3 6RA
{chris,colin,josh}@linearb.co.uk

10 thoughts on “Searchable TMs/Linear B

  1. Another great find. Thanks for sharing!
    A lot of great tools have been recently created or discovered. It’s getting harder and harder to concentrate on translating with so many of them to choose from and to consult.
    :-)

  2. I tried with one of my “favourite” elastic concepts:
    “Bestand”.

    It offers 12 solutions for “bestand” as a verb, but none at all for “Bestand” as a noun.

    For all its failings, Linguee at least did better on this word.

    • I see your point, Victor. It’s also odd that they use no capital letters at all in their German texts.

      I wonder how it is into German? It may be that the reason it struck me as useful was because (I assume) the German is the original and the English translation is by British native speakers.

  3. According to the PDF file you quote, the company that created it is actually a commercial MT software company. The authors claim “Existing translation memories only allow the reuse of previous work when whole sentences are matched in the database”, which is patently not true. I retrieve smaller units (phrases etc.) all the time in DVX, and I believe MemoQ has a similar function, and there may be similar possibilities in the other TM programs.

    At least at its present state of development, Linear B does not compare favourably with either TM programs or MT programs. In a trial on the current sentence in my current job, Linear B found nothing for Abfindungsguthaben, ausgesch

    • @Victor (#3): From the point of view of a German translator, you are no doubt right, but for those of us who work in other languages supported in Linear B there is no contest.

      Also, I find the comparison to TMs kind of spurious; although I see that the authors drew that comparison and worked with that in mind, it seeems misplaced. To me, Linear B works rather as a searchable bilingual corpus, and I see it from that point of view: another reference, to add to the list of glossary and dictionary websites I use, not competition for my personal TM in any way.

      • @Mago: Yes, given the 72 language pairs, it is quite logical that some have better coverage than others.
        And for me (working in German-English) it may be worthwhile coming back in a few weeks to see if the German-English corpus is more complete.

        It would perhaps be helpful if the makers of Linear B actually explained what sources the corpus material comes from and what subject areas they have covered in each language pair.

    • @Victor: Yes, I would definitely like to know where they got their TM from. The first question that arises with creating parallel corpora is copyright. But I wonder if they aren’t using something referred to in their PDF paper: [url=http://www.statmt.org/europarl/]Europarl[/url]. That is available in several language combinations. It needs to be downloaded to be tried out, otherwise I would check whether the results are the same as yours. (I think some people use a program called XBench to search TMs, but I have forgotten the details).

      As for searching for phrases, I remember that Trados does that too – I had to use it for a job once.

  4. I tried some German-English translations. They seem to use Europarl exclusively, which means that for this language pair there is nothing in Linear B that isn’t in Linguee. In my tests Linguee was generally superior, but there might be some instances where Linguee’s result ranking or the automatic phrase highlighting isn’t optimal.

    • joerilla: Yes, interesting. Both sites have automatic bolding, I realized eventually, and neither is perfect.
      I retract my praise of LinearB.
      I have just done a search on Rechtsbehelf at Linguee and the results are comparable and broader. However, nearly all of them are from the acquis communautaire.

      So if both of these sites are full of European parliament and Eur-Lex materials, and in neither case can I see that at a glance (have to click through on Linguee, and at LinearB, even worse, the sources aren’t visible at all) I will be happier doing my own searches.

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