Safaba's Innovative Machine Translation Transforms Global Corporate Communications

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Safaba Translation Solutions, LLC, a spinoff company from Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute, has launched a new technology-enabled service that enables global enterprises to automate language translation for anything from brand collateral dissemination to online customer care and multi-lingual intra-corporate communications.

Machine Translation is a sub-field of computational linguistics that uses software to translate digital text from one natural language to another. Until now Machine Translation has not delivered on its promise. There are those who view Machine Translation as an on-the-fly translation tool that would never produce more than 'good-enough,' consumer-grade results. Others view Machine Translation as almost completely useless when it comes to corporate collateral translation, claiming that computers could never replace human cognitive and language skills.

The first school of thought recognized the value of velocity in communications but assumes that this speed would always adhere to a lower standard of quality. The second simply believes that translation is a form of art, and assumes that no value can be derived from multi-lingual communications that do not measure up to that standard.

Alon Lavie, Research Professor at CMU's Language Technologies Institute and the president and CEO of Safaba, believes that these notions have long held back the broad commercial adoption of Machine Translation technology by the language services industry and the global corporate market and have stifled innovation.  He has taken a new approach to Machine Translation, developing systems that combine enhanced statistical methods and rich linguistic knowledge to quickly deliver high translation quality and accuracy.

Safaba's Machine Translation solution has already proven to accelerate language translation of corporate collateral such as technical documentation and website content by using artificial intelligence in conjunction with expert (human) linguists review.  The systems deployed for each company are customized to learn and communicate in a unique corporate language, enhanced by Safaba's state-of-the-art Language Optimization Technology. For global corporations, this translates to reaching more customers faster while delivering a better customer experience in the process.

"Safaba is delivering on the promise of velocity in translation," said Wayne Bourland, Director of Global Localization at Dell. "The innovations and improvements in translation quality delivered by Safaba's technology are providing concrete evidence that Enterprise Machine Translation can and should play a broader role in global corporate communications."

At Safaba we believe the promise of Machine Translation is to expand well beyond the realm of traditional translation for technical support content. Machine Translation seems to be carving a new market for itself – one that neither conflicts nor matches with traditional translation processes.

"The real-time nature of Machine Translation (MT) enhanced with Safaba's next generation optimization technologies and customized to translate a unique corporate language, can be leveraged by the same global enterprises to introduce real-time multi-lingual communications across their business operations," said Lavie. "This allows Machine Translation to address key business pain points that traditional translation could not address before due to their real-time nature and the sheer volumes involved."

Some applications of MT-enabled multi-lingual communications include:

• Customer care using MT-enabled  communication channels allows for low-cost corporate centers to effectively communicate in real time with global customers using online channels such as chat and social media
• Internal multi-lingual communications via intranet, email communications, and knowledge bases, are capable of dramatically enhancing collaboration across global offices and business partners and help boost overall business productivity
• The immediate availability of multi-lingual sales and technical pre-sales collateral, reduces efforts in bid response processes

"There is clearly a place and value for traditional translation, automated translation and a combination of the two under one umbrella of corporate multi-lingual communications," says Bourland. "By addressing specific challenges, common to most global enterprises, Machine Translation has the power to expand the reach of the language services industry and to substantially change the economies of translation."

CONTACT: Udi Hershkovich, +1-412-478-2408

SOURCE Safaba Translation Solutions