Greater than 5 minutes, my friend!
Too Many Tools Spoil the Translation
I made an interesting discovery recently when I was translating a fairly long Japanese utility model into English. Usually, when I am translating the text of Japanese patent applications, I automatically download a version of the machine translation of the Japanese text either from the Japan Patent Office, or from the European Patent Office website to use as an expanded dictionary, although with many caveats, of course. Machine translations into many languages, including into English, are available for all relatively recent Japanese patent applications going back more than 20 years. But they are not available for older patents and utility models, which belong to a lower category, inventively speaking.
Even in a case like that, I can simply convert a PDF file to MS Word and create machine translation manually, for example with GoogleTranslate or with Microsoft Translator. If there are just a few very slight imperfections in the printed copy, the conversion to a digital file will result in a text that is often completely nonsensical. But even if I have a perfectly legible PDF copy, as was the case with this utility model, the conversion from PDF to a digital file creates too many obstacles for a machine translation program because the spacing between Japanese kanji, hiragana and katakana characters, even though they might have perfectly regular spacing, throws off the algorithms of the machine translation program because there are no spaces between Japanese words.
It is not even clear what a word is in Japanese, so the Japanese text may look like this: itisnotevenclearwhatawordisinJapanese, or like this: i t i s n o t e v e n c l e a r w h a t a w o r d i s i n J a p a n e s e. When the wrong characters are connected together, the result is obviously completely wrong. For some reason, machine translation programs can handle the first alternative for Japanese texts relatively well, but not the second alternative.
Here is an example of what happens when a perfectly legible PDF file in Japanese is converted to digital form and then put through GoogleTranslate:
“In Tsu by the and the child that same map di-work for the person E students that Ki out and this you promote the blood circulation of the head part. Placed by the comb-shaped heat scratch preventing portion to the peripheral edge evenly of the head portion, order to carry out the heat scratch prevention treatment of all rectangular position to the head part, be sampled rate de la Lee ya when you for the use and to or cormorant child to the skin to the heat scratch ∎ you can in prevention to. Because the thermal scratch-resistant full-time (Note1) are placed at the site had close to ground clip on the head part, it is sampled Les To de la Lee ∎ You can ya di one hand in the prevention and this bovine or by the heat scratch.”
Even this kind of “machine translation” may still be somewhat useful to me because some of the words are translated correctly, such as “rectangular position”, (actually, now I remember that I did not use these words in my translation, so this must have been wrong too). But then again, because not too many words are useful, this kind of machine translation is completely useless to a non-translator.Based on the machine translation above, do you have any idea what this new utility model about a minor invention is about? Hint: it is not about “a cormorant child”. Sadly, there were no “cormorant children” in the Japanese text at all.
Incidentally, this is also one reason why I don’t bother using any CAT tools, although the main one is that I simply don’t need them, don’t like them, and despise the way predatory translation agencies are trying to use them to extort illegal discounts for “full and fuzzy matches” from hapless translators.
The discovery I made while translating without having access to a machine translation was the realization that when I don’t have to look at the words in a machine translation because there is none, I experience an exhilarating, almost forgotten feeling of freedom: freedom for me to translate the text the way I understand it, without having to pay attention to what an algorithm thinks the text means.
In the prehistoric times before machine translation was available to me and my clients (20 or 30 years ago), I would usually have three dictionaries on my desk – one to look up characters that I did not know, or used to know but somehow forgot, one standard Japanese dictionary, and one technical dictionary (often more than one).
But then machine translation came along, and instead of looking up characters, words and technical terms in paper dictionaries, I do all of that faster online now.
It speeds up the translating process if I translate a very complicated text in a field that I don’t know all that well, such as biotechnology. But if I have to look at a machine translation when I translate a reasonably simple text in a field that I know quite well, for example a patent about electric design, it slows me down when I have to look at a machine translation as an additional source of information.
And it is definitely advisable to at least take a look at an official machine translation obtained from the Japan Patent Office or the European Patent Office website because I have to assume that my client has this translation and possibly expects me to use the technical terms contained in it. If I don’t used them, I need to have a good reason for not using them, namely because I know that they are wrong.
I really like the feeling of freedom that I experience when I can simply ignore stupid algorithms.
It’s like the old times. I put on some weird music, increase the volume during an easy passage when everything is pretty clear, turn it off for a while if I come across something that for the moment I don’t understand because I have to figure it out first and the music is distracting, and then turn the music back on, but usually at a lower volume.
This, to me, is the natural rhythm of translation, or the natural rhythm of the way I translate. I think that too many tools – CAT tools, machine translation, dictation and transcription software, and God knows what other tools highly entrepreneurial tool merchants with many bills to pay and a limited number of potential customers may come up with – somehow disrupt the natural order of things in the Universe, which tends to send celestial bodies a few degrees off their usual trajectories, thus creating dissonance in the soothing and restful music of spheres that I need to hear in my head when I am on a roll as the mystery of the meaning hidden in a foreign language suddenly becomes clear to me.
Too much of everything spoils the fun for me. J. R. Tolkien wrote the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in his spare time, usually at night while sitting on his bed in an attic by pecking on a typewriter with only two fingers. No other tools were needed.
Tools are a good thing only if we can use them if we want to use them because we find them useful. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and too many tools spoil the translation, that’s what I think.
And when we are asked to use certain tools for our work, we have to make sure that the tools that we are told to use (or else!) will not turn us into …. tools.
Ronnie J Rigdon 
Anastasia Giagopoulou 
Nixie Adams 
Let me post a counter-view. I’m not negating your specific example, however. I’m just saying that in the great big universe of translation from one ideographic language to English, using Google Translate can be helpful to some extent.
A few months ago I was lurking on Upwork.com, where sometimes the jobs have a sample of what they want translated. There was one Japanese optics paper that I downloaded to play with. I don’t speak Japanese more than a few conversational phrases like “Domo arigato gozai mash’ta.”
So in this particular case, Google Translate was my friend. My standard method of working with Google Translate is to make a MS Word file that has a 2-column table, with the source language on the left and Google’s translation on the right.
Many times I ‘spoon-feed’ the source language sentence-by-sentence or paragraph-by-paragraph to get a less nonsensical result.
This was just a practice for me, so I did not try to translate the whole paper (which would have taken me forever). I just did the first page and all the figure captions into English.
To make the long story short, without you having to read any more than this, you can get English from Japanese via Google Translate. It’s a lot of work and for someone like you, who knows Japanese, it’s not worth the time spent.
But for someone like me, who does NOT know Japanese, it is do-able.
Below is what I came up with, and with full disclosure I should tell you that I had some of the paper in English already, because they always put the title and the abstract in English even when the text is Japanese. And to help me even more, I looked up the authors on the Internet and was able to find some similar papers and similar topics, in English, to help me with terminology..
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ホログラフィック光学素子によるマックスウェル視
を用いたシースルーディスプレイ
A See-through Display using the Maxwellian View with Holographic Optical
Elements
安東孝久†*,松本敏昭††,正会貝志水英二†,† †
Takahisa Ando •õ*, Toshiaki Matsumoto •õ•õ and Eiji Shimizu
—
1. まえがき
近年,映像の世界は,静止画像から動画像,白黒画像
からカラー画像へと変革を遂げ,次世代映像として高精
細映像,立体映像などが期待されている.立体映像では,
これまで各種の立体表示方式1)が提案され,実用化,商
品化された3次元ディスプレイも登場してきた.現在商
品化されている立体ディスプレイは,左右の眼に視差画
像を呈示する2眼式立体表示方式が主流であるが,この
方式では,焦点調節と輻輳の不一致2)いう生理的問題が
あり,現在,自然な立体視を実現する手法が各種提案さ
れている3).
― 方
,VR(Virtual Reality)の世界では,現実世界
に仮想映像を重畳表示して人間の情報処理能力を増強さ
せようとするAR(Augmented reality)4)においてシー
スルーHMD(Head Mounted Display)が多用されてい
る.しかし,シースルーHMDで現実世界と仮想映像を
同時に観察しようとすると,現実世界を観察する時の焦
点調節はダイナミックに変化するにも関わらず仮想世界
を見る時の焦点調節は固定されているので,2眼式立体
表示と同様に焦点調節と輻較が一致しないことになる.
筆者らは,焦点調節と輻輳の不一致が発生しないシー
スルーHMDの実現を目指して,ホログラフィック光学
素子(HOE:Holographic Optical Element)5)を用いた
シースルーディスプレイを提案する.本ディスプレイで
は,観察者の眼球内に光を入れる方法としてマックス
ウェル視6)を使っているので焦点深度が非常に深い映像
が呈示できる.したがって,焦点調節と輻輳の不一致と
いう従来の2眼式立体表示方式が持つ基本的問題を克
服できる可能性がある.また,ARにおいて,近点から
無限遠まで外界をダイナミックに観察する場合でも,仮
想映像が常に鮮明に見えるという利点が期待できる.そ
こで,筆者らは,マックスウェル視を特徴とする光学特
性を有するだけでなく,外界と仮想映像が同時に観察で
きるシースルー機能も有するHOEを考案した7).さら
に,このHOEを使って電子的な動画像が表示できる空
間光変調素子(SLM:Spatial Light Modulator)を使っ
たシースルーディスプレイを試作した.
本論文では,HOEとSLMを使ってマックスウェル
視を与えるシースルーディスプレイの実現を目的として
実施した試作システムについて報告する.まず,2章で
マックスウェル視の原理と特性を概観し,3章では考案
==========
Header: “Article”
Footer: 1466 (104) ITE Journal [Inst. of Transportation Engineers] Vol. 54, No.10, pp .1466-1473 (2000)
A See-Through Display Using the Maxwellian View with
Holographic Optical Elements
Authors:
Takahisa Ando†*
Toshiaki Matsumoto††
Eiji Shimizu†,††
† Image Information Science and Technology Laboratories, (WTC Bldg. 18F, 1-14-16, Nanko-kita, Suminoe-ku, Osaka 565-0083, Japan)
†† Faculty of Engineering, Osaka City University (3-3-138, Sugimoto, Sumiyoshi-Ku, Osaka 558-8585, Japan) TEL: 06-6605-2678
* Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., R&D Headquarters, Hypermedia Research Center
Abstract: We are developing a see-through display that uses holographic optical elements (HOEs) for the purpose of realizing a see-through head mounted display (HMD). Our display uses the Maxwellian view, which eliminates the need for focusing with a crystalline lens (ocular accommodation) because its depth of field is extremely deep. We previously estimated the optical efficiency of a HOE that has both Maxwellian optics and a see-through function by using still images. In this report, we describe a prototype of a see-through display that provides electrical dynamic images by using a digital micro-mirror device (DMD) as an electrical spatial light modulator .
Keywords: Holographic Optical Element, Maxwellian view, focusing, spatial light modulator
1. Introduction
In recent years, the world of images has undergone a transformation from still to moving pictures, from black-and-white to color, with increasingly higher resolution. The next-generation image technology is expected to have a stereoscopic display system [1] Various methods of stereoscopic display have been proposed, and some commercial three-dimensional displays have been released.
In the present-day commercially available three-dimensional displays, a binocular stereoscopic system presents left and right parallax images to the left and right eyes. Although the binocular display predominates for presenting 3D images, this method has inconsistencies in focusing accommodation and image convergence, [2] which can cause some physiological discomfort. This has led to other more natural methods of stereoscopic display being proposed. [3]
The question is how, in the world of VR (Virtual Reality), to enhance human information processing capacity when superimposing a display of virtual images in AR (augmented reality) [4] on the real world, via the see-through HMD (Head Mounted Display) that is frequently used.
If you try to simultaneously observe both the real world and a virtual image in the see-through HMD, there is a mismatch in focusing because your focal point is dynamically changing when you look at the real world , while your focus on the 2D stereoscopic display is fixed.
With the aim of preventing focusing and image convergence problems while using a see-through HMD, the authors propose a see-through display that uses holographic optical elements (HOE). [5] In this type of display the observer’s focus has a very deep depth of field because the Maxwellian view is used. [6] Thus, there is a possibility that the basic problem of a mismatch of focusing accommodation and convergence found in conventional binocular stereoscopic display systems can be solved. In addition, when seeing in AR, no matter if you are observing the outside world dynamically from close-up to infinity, you will have the advantage that the virtual image always looks clear.
The authors have devised an HOE that has the optical characteristics characterized by the Maxwellian view, where the see-through feature allows observing virtual images at the same time as the outside world. [7] Furthermore, the authors have developed a display where a moving image can be placed on the HOE by means of a spatial light modulator (SLM).
In this paper the first section describes the prototype system we built for the purpose of realizing a see-through display that uses the Maxwellian view with an HOE and an SLM. Section 2 gives an overview of the principles and characteristics of the Maxwellian view. Section 3 describes the optical properties of the HOE. Section 4 explains the configuration of a see-through display with an HOE and SLM, and in Section 5 we present our experimental results.
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