by Wm. Auckerman

There remains a lot of confusion about the level of capability and usefulness of machine translation (MT) software. Some media reports, cobbled together from manufacturers' promotional press releases, sanguinely promise that a magical black box capable of near-perfect translation is imminent. Other articles shallowly but smugly assert that human language is so inherently complex and dependent on culture as to render the concept of machine translation both impossible and ridiculous.

What are the standards?

The truth (as it usually does, in any issue) lies somewhere in the middle. To fairly evaluate the quality of MT output, it's essential to clarify the judgment criteria: Is it being compared with the work of a competent human translator, or against the output of similar programs on the market?

For translation between languages as dissimilar as Japanese and English, the former comparison is untenable. Despite some recent improvements, there is still no -- I repeat, no -- PC-based Japanese-to-English (J/E) or English-to-Japanese (E/J) machine translation program extant that can produce final text anywhere near the level of a mediocre human translator. Proper handling of context, syntax, idioms, and other linguistic strictures remain beyond the reach of today's J/E and E/J translation packages. The best that one can expect of MT output is a raw but more-or-less understandable elucidation of the meaning of the original text, something that can then (if necessary) be rewritten and molded into coherent, readable form by a human editor.

Think of the issue as a tradeoff. What machine translation lacks in quality is more than compensated for in terms of speed, instant availability, and cost-effectiveness. Machine translated Japanese-to-English text may not be suitable as a finished document, but software can translate a page of rough text in a minute or two, whereas a human translator might spend a half-hour or more. And once you've made the initial investment to buy the program, you can translate one page or hundreds of pages per day at no additional cost.

The only valid comparison for any program review must be against other programs that accomplish a similar task. And in that regard, both Fujitsu's TransLinGO! and NeocorTech's Typhoon MT are first rate. The two don't compete head-to-head, because Typhoon is a general purpose translation tool while TransLinGO! is a Web browser (specifically, an Internet Explorer) add-on.

Why have I evaluated these two particular programs as best in their class? The judgment is based, in part, on the needs of the typical Computing Japan reader. That is, both TransLinGO! and Typhoon MT operate on English-language Windows PCs "as is." There are lots of J/E MT programs on the market today, but the majority of them require that the user be running a Japanese-language operating system. Of the small handful that will run on English-language Windows, only Typhoon MT and TransLinGO! do not require additional support software such as Pacific Software Publishing's KanjiKit or TwinBridge's Japanese Partner to run. And, most of all, both of these programs are as good as if not better than any other J/E machine translation program I've tried to date.

See screen capture of a Webpage frame in Internet Explorer 4.0 without TranslinGO!

See screen capture of a Webpage frame in Internet Explorer 4.0 with TranslinGO!

TransLinGO! 1.0

In terms of actual translation quality, TransLinGO! is not quite up to Typhoon's standards (at least when customization capability is considered; more on this later). But when it comes to translating webpages, TransLinGO! gets the nod because it is versatile and easy to use. Even if you can't read Japanese, the TransLinGO!/Internet Explorer combination will allow you to access the vast and growing body of Japanese-language websites and grasp a basic overview of their content.

TransLinGO! can be installed on any Windows 95 computer with 486 or better CPU, CD-ROM drive, 35MB of free disk space, and 16MB of RAM. After installation (and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 with Japanese-language support is on the CD-ROM drive, just in case you don't already have it installed on your hard disk), just click on the TransLinGO! icon or start menu entry, load Internet Explorer (you can have TransLinGO! do this automatically), and you can begin reading translations of any Japanese website you access.

See screen capture of a TranslinGO! translation ("translation and original" view)

See screen capture of a Typhoon translation (for comparison)

TransLinGO! offers three translation modes: full page (the entire webpage), outline (just headings, lists, and links), or clipboard (selected portions). There are also two translation views: both translation and original (see figures 1 and 3) or translation only (see figure 6). The translation process is automatic and fast, though you'll find it does add to download times. As a test for this review, I selected portions of three Japanese webpages (shown in the accompanying figures). Remember that this text was in no way "pre-edited," and was not chosen for either simplicity or complexity of content. I think the examples in these figures show, much better than I could describe, just what you can expect if you use TransLinGO!

If your intent is to view Japanese webpages translated into English, and you're willing to use Internet Explorer as your browser, TransLinGO is my under-$100 option of choice.

See screen capture of a portion of Japanese text from Internet Explorer 4.0without TranslinGO!

See screen capture of same text runningwith TranslinGO!

See screen capture of a Typhoon translation using the same text (for comparison)

Typhoon MT 6.0

If your translation needs extend beyond merely viewing webpages, then give Typhoon MT from NeocorTech a try. More than just a J/E translation program, Typhoon MT 6.0 offers a readable TrueType kanji font for display, a kanji reading tool, a text editor for direct input of Japanese text (by the usual method: typed romaji is automatically converted to kana, and pressing the space key cycles through the selection of kanji), an augmentable FEP (front-end-processor) that can map hiragana or katakana to specific kanji, and Japanese e-mail sending (though not receiving) capability. The dynamic main dictionary contains over 135,000 words, and user dictionaries can be configured with additional words or phrases. (For those working on biological or physical sciences text, optional dictionaries are available.)

As I mentioned earlier, one big advantage of Typhoon MT 6.0 is that it runs on English-language Windows 95 or NT without requiring additional support software. If you have Japanese text to be translated, just open the file in your favorite word processor (even though the text appears as mojibake), copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into the Japanese window of Typhoon (where the mojibake will magically turn into kanji). Then click on either "translate all" or "translate selected sentences." (Under settings, you can preset the translation mode to minimized, continuous, or interactive, and the prioritization to speed, normal, or precision.)

For reading webpages, Typhoon isn't as convenient as TransLinGO! since you have to copy and paste, and the page formatting isn't retained. Typhoon "out of the box" may or may not produce a markedly better translation than TransLinGO! (compare figures 4 and 7 against figures 3 and 6, respectively), but unlike TransLinGO! it offer customization capability. You can add additional words and phrases to the user dictionaries as you encounter them (e.g., ƒeƒŒƒRƒ€ = telecom, or ƒEƒBƒ"ƒhƒEƒY = windows), and your translations will gradually become more refined. And for further customization, the settings section offers a choice of numerous technical topics (such as biology, computers, architecture, or humanities) that give the selected priority to terms that may have multiple meanings.

Typhoon MT 6.0 runs on an English-language Windows 95/NT system with a 486 or higher CPU, 8MB of RAM, and 25MB of hard disk space. Its underlying translation technology was developed by Kamejima Co., Ltd., a company with 15 years of machine translation experience whose products hold a 70% share of the translation market in Japan.

All-in-all, I can recommend Typhoon MT 6.0 for J/E translation. It may not match the smoothness of a human translator, and the intended meaning may be less than crystal clear at times, but its output conveys more meaning, faster, than I am able to comprehend by struggling through the original Japanese text. And based on that, I can choose which text is worth giving to a human translator.

If you simply want to browse the Japanese Web in English, Fujitsu's TransLinGO! will meet your needs for under $100. But if you need a versatile, customizable J/E translation option, spend the $900 for Typhoon MT 6.0; if you need extensive translation, you'll quickly find the time-savings and convenience worth the price.

Better yet, buy both. Time is money, and having the right tools for the job can save you both.

Contact information on TranslinGO! and Typhoon MT

If you try to copy and paste Japanese text from Internet Explorer 4.0 into Typhoon MT 6.0, you'll find that it doesn't work as you might expect. Copy the displayed kanji from IE4 into Typhoon, and the text transforms into a series of question marks (and translates as the same). But, if you force a "Western font" display in IE4 so that the Japanese text shows up therein as mojibake, then copy and paste that into Typhoon, the kanji appears normally and can then be translated. Workable, but a real nuisance.

Why does this happen?

According to a NeocorTech spokesman, "Unlike Internet Explorer 3, which just did Japanese text display, Internet Explorer 4 seems to be doing something else when it copies the text to the clipboard. We're working on tracking down why that happens, and [to develop] a workaround or a code solution."

I haven't encountered a similar problem in Typhoon with any program but Internet Explorer 4, so it's clearly another episode of the long-running series "Microsoft Knows Best."

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