Studio 2017 and new MT feature – What about conjugation?

Question

Hi everybody,

I am looking for ways of improving my MT results, so I am very curious about the new features of Studio 2017.
There is one thing bugging me when translating in French: MT engines always provide results in the formal way of address ("vouvoiement") whereas I usually want to use the informal way of address ("tutoiement"). I often get full translated sentences that would work quite well but I can't use directly because of this pesky detail.
So I was wondering if Studio 2017 would enable somehow alternate forms of address. In other terms, can the new MT engines be taught to use another pronoun in translation AND conjugate verbs accordingly?

Paul · Answer

Hi Jean, 
 
I asked one of our R&D guys about this and he responded as follows. 
 
"AdaptiveMT can learn new translations for specific phrases, but cannot generalize to lingustic concepts such as formal versus informal mode of address. To put it another way, an adaptive engine can only learn the informal form of verbs/pronouns for which it has seen postedits. " 
 
Regards 
 
Paul

Paul · Answer

Hi Jean, 
 
Here's a nice answer I got from our scientists... I like your questions as they help me understand this better too! 
 
"Here's one way to think about this. 
Before the postedit, the engine has some opinion about how to translate the respective phrase. 
When the postedit comes in, the adaptive technology will learn the new translation. 
When the same phrase comes up again, there is a competition between the engine's original translation and the newly learned translation. Who wins that competition depends on various statistical factors; it's not always the new translation. 
However, if the old translation wins, and the posteditor produces the new translation again, the adaptive technology will learn it again; thus, the third time around, the new translation has a much bigger chance of winning over the old one." 
 
Make sense? 
 
Regards 
 
Paul

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Studio 2017 and new MT feature – What about conjugation?