Internet: although not designed as a translation aid,
the Internet provides unparalleled opportunities for document and terminology
searches.
Translation memories: systems that automatically search
for text segments that have been translated before and stored in the memory.
These translated segments are then inserted in the new translation and the
translator can decide whether to keep, amend or discard them. This is
particularly useful for repetitive or highly standardised documents.
Terminology banks: IATE (InterActive Terminology for Europe) is
one example of an online terminology database. It contains around 9 million
entries and was built up by the terminologists working in all the European
institutions. Since 2007 it has been freely available on the Internet.
Machine translation: provides 'raw' translations of
documents for certain language pairs, based on a system of bilingual
dictionaries and linguistic analysis. It can help to save time, but requires
great care; the output usually has to be corrected ('post-edited') and should
always be carefully checked.
Dictionaries are still used by translators as language and
terminology aids. Increasingly, the printed versions are being replaced by
CD-ROMs or online dictionaries.
extract and picture from Translation and interpreting: Languages in action (2009) European Commission; page 15
