Engineer is a very flexible job title!
Even outside the translation industry, this title raises many questions. To define the position more precisely, EVS Translations also uses the title ‘CAT tool specialist for translations’. But the department offers far more than just the – admittedly essential – technical support for the CAT tools used by employees.
It is no coincidence that EVS Translations has teams of in-house translation engineers in all of its international offices, which together form the Translation Technology department.
Skills profile – technology and languages background
Translation engineers analyse texts and convert them into a file format that is compatible with the relevant translation software. Translation memories, which are updated and maintained by translation engineers, contain expressions that are to be used in line with the customer’s wishes and the corporate language guidelines. Translation engineers are responsible for the layout and formatting of translated texts before they are delivered to the customer, and also handle translation projects in desktop publishing programs such as Adobe InDesign, FrameMaker and QuarkXpress. They hold internal, cross-departmental training sessions to highlight technical pitfalls or innovations and advise their colleagues in sales on individual language projects, such as voiceover and multilingual subtitling of promotional or training videos or website translation. In their work, translation engineers draw on their affinity for software and their aptitude for languages.
Neural machine translation, gisting and post-editing – a career in digital change
Of course, the work of a translation engineer is also shaped by digitalisation over time. The translation memories we mentioned above have not always been around as a form of digital memory aid, just as machine translation (MT) has not. EVS Translations has taken advantage of these developments in recent years and, where appropriate, has integrated MT into its translation strategy – for example, for very large or urgent translation projects.
Our translation engineers ensure that the ‘engines’ (translation machines), which can be either general, customer-specific or subject-specific, are trained with high-quality human translations, which enables us to deliver the highest possible translation quality. They also prepare the documents to be translated in a way that makes them easy for a machine to understand. This can involve shortening sentences, optimising segmentation or standardising language.
There are also two special techniques that we use to shorten translation processes and optimise results.
‘Gisting’ (from ‘gist’, i.e. the essential information or core statement) involves scanning thousands of pages of internal documents or lengthy correspondence (for example) in advance and checking for the essential components that the customer is looking for. Once the relevant text passages have been found, they can be exported and translated by a specialist translator with tried-and-trusted care.
Post-editing pure machine translations entails having the translated texts checked for correct spelling, punctuation, grammar and meaning by a human translator. The translation engineers and post-editors at EVS Translations work in accordance with ISO standard 18587 – ‘Post-editing of machine translation output’.
Last but not least, our MT specialists develop creative customer-specific translation solutions that build communication bridges across national borders. One such solution enables people on different continents to write in their native language, press the ‘Translate with EVS Translations’ button and the corresponding employee receives the message in their native language. Our Translation Technology department works in a closed system that processes data securely.
Are you interested in working as a translation engineer or CAT tool specialist at EVS Translations? On our careers page you will find an updated list of our job openings. We look forward to receiving your application via our online application portal!
Do you have advance questions about specific job vacancies or would you like to know more about what it’s like to work at EVS Translations? Then drop us an e-mail!
Your EVS Translations HR team
