Although the language services industry trades in clear communication, we are guilty of churning out quite a bit of jargon. Here at FairLoc, we may not exactly be helping that situation, either. Sorry, not sorry! (We’re only human! That’s our excuse!)
To help keep things crystal clear, here is a handy glossary of terms:
When we refer to artificial intelligence in the language services industry, we mean the use of AI bots and tools such as ChatGPT to create translations. These use predictive models and datasets to create translations modelled on real speech patterns, although they may struggle with figurative language and they are prone to hallucinating (another jargonistic term which means making things up!).
A FairLoc Ambassador is anybody who signs up to support FairLoc by paying a monthly subscription fee. Generally*, FairLoc Ambassadors can issue stamps to their clients, and they have certain responsibilities in regards to overseeing the scheme and making sure that their clients stick to their commitments.
*Ambassadors who choose the Supporter tier cannot issue stamps.
A FairLoc Company is a business or enterprise that buys and publishes or circulates translations as part of their normal operations (an end client in industry jargon), and which has committed to use human translation for their prominent customer-facing content.
This is the legal agreement signed by all three parties – FairLoc, the Ambassador and the FairLoc Company. It sets out what is allowed and what isn’t and is legally binding, so it protects the integrity of the scheme.
Anybody who provides translations and other language services to clients, typically an agency.
A programme which produces translations automatically. These translations are often referred to as pre-translations because their quality is not generally considered good enough to stand on its own. Different types of MT programmes exist, and machine-learning means they are getting better all the time, however they still lack the nuanced understanding of human linguists.
This is a common practice in the translation industry nowadays where, instead of translating from scratch, linguists check and edit translations that are produced automatically by machines. It is a restrictive process, but quicker than full translation.
This is a translation produced by an MT or AI tool before it is then reviewed by a human post-editor.
This is what we call the content churned out by AI and MT tools. Boring, soulless, sometimes non-sensical text that plunders the back catalogues of genuine creativity and cobbles it together into something boring, hollow and just about functional.
