环球•译事 | 欧盟翻译中心如何做到每年翻译75万页海量材料？
作为智库型研究与资讯平台，译世界【官方微信号译•世界（YEEWORLD）】现推出“环球•译事”栏目，聚焦全球语言服务行业，以专业的视角、前沿的眼光，通过双语译介、原创策划等多种形式，评述行业现象、观察业态发展，欢迎关注！
本期为第九期，带您了解欧盟翻译中心如何利用庞大的外包资源，每年翻译出75万页资料，以及欧盟翻译中心的内部是如何运作的。
Barely a month into the new year, the Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union (Translation Centre) has already published two calls for tenders: one in the legal field valued at EUR 5.6m (USD 6.5m) and another one in finance and banking worth EUR 2.4m (USD 2.9m).
在距离新年仅剩一个月之际，欧盟翻译中心又公开了两项招标：一个是法律领域的项目，价值560万欧元（约合人民币4400万元）；另一个是金融银行业项目，价值240万欧元（约合人民币1884万元）。
This early, the pipeline of translation work looks robust for the linguistic shared service provider for the EU agencies and bodies, which deliver over 750,000 pages of translations on average every year to its clients.
对于欧盟组织机构的语言共享服务提供商来说，翻译渠道一向运行稳健，平均每年向客户提交逾75万页的翻译量。
Thierry Fontenelle, Head of the Translation Department of the Translation Centre, told Slator in an email interview that the Centre translates “a wide range of material for its 65 clients, including activity reports, guidelines (e.g. in the financial supervision field), work programs, websites, leaflets, brochures, press releases, scientific opinions and, since 2015, subtitles on videos.”
欧盟翻译中心翻译部负责人蒂埃里·丰特内勒在Slator的电子邮件访谈中表示，翻译中心为其65个客户翻译了“大量不同的材料，包括活动报告、指导原则（如金融监管领域）、工作计划、网站、传单、宣传册、新闻稿、科学见解，以及从2015年开始的视频字幕翻译”。
▲欧盟翻译中心翻译部负责人蒂埃里·丰特内勒（Thierry Fontenelle）
“We cover many subject fields, including drugs and medicines, maritime security, chemicals, education, railways, food safety, and intellectual property,” he says.
他说：“我们涉及许多学科领域，包括医药、海上安全、化学品、教育、铁路、食品安全和知识产权等。”
The Centre’s biggest client, so far, according to Fontenelle, is the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), located in Alicante, Spain, which deals with the registration of EU trade marks and designs.
据丰特内勒介绍，目前翻译中心最大的客户是位于西班牙阿里坎特的欧盟知识产权局，负责欧盟商标和外观设计的注册。
持续性需求，商业模式不断拓展
While the Centre’s Translation Department chief sees a significant increase in demand from EU agencies clients in 2017, he emphasized that “based on experience, the estimated revenue for the next few years is subject to change, depending on clients’ actual needs and their available budgets.”
虽然这位翻译中心翻译部负责人认为，2017年欧盟机构客户的需求大幅增加，但他强调，“从以往的经验来看，根据客户的实际需要和现有预算，未来几年的营业收入预计会有所变化。”
“Nevertheless, there continues to be a strong need for EU agencies to communicate with citizens in their own languages in order to facilitate a better understanding of the EU,” he explains.
他解释说：“尽管如此，欧盟机构仍然需要用自己的语言与公民进行交流，以便让人们更好地了解欧盟。”
In September 2017, Slator reported that the Translation Centre’s budget for 2018 is projected to reach EUR 47.7m (USD 58.5M) and it expects to translate 763,212 pages, up 0.3% from 2017.
2017年9月，据Slator报道，欧盟翻译中心的2018年预算预计达到4770万欧元（约合人民币3.7亿元），将翻译材料763212页，较2017年增长0.3%。
These documents, according to Fontenelle, are predominantly in English. Other top source languages are German, Spanish, French and Italian. Most clients request to translate into English, followed by French, German, Italian, Spanish and the various other EU official languages.
据丰特内勒介绍，这些文件主要是英文的。其他主要源语言有德语、西班牙语、法语和意大利语。大部分客户要求翻译成英语，其次是法语、德语、意大利语、西班牙语和其他欧盟官方语言。
The Centre also translates from and into non-EU languages such as Norwegian, Icelandic, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese. He adds, “Following the engagement of the EUIPO with its international partners, we will also provide translations for newly created terms entering the EUIPO’s Harmonised Database (covering new classes of goods and services as well as new product indications for designs) into non-EU languages such as Bosnian, Serbian and Macedonian initially, as well as possibly into Georgian, Icelandic, and Norwegian.
该中心还译入和译出挪威语、冰岛语、土耳其语、俄语、阿拉伯语和汉语等非欧盟语言。他还说，“在欧盟知识产权局与其国际伙伴加强联系后，我们还将为欧盟知识产权局协调数据库（包括新的商品和服务类别以及新的产品设计说明）新录入的术语提供翻译，译成波斯尼亚语、塞尔维亚语和马其顿语等非欧盟语言，还有可能译成格鲁吉亚语、冰岛语和挪威语。
大量外包
The Translation Centre has over 110 in-house translators covering the 24 official languages of the European Union, but the majority of translations are outsourced to external contractors.
翻译中心有110余名内部译员，涉及欧盟的24种官方语言，但大部分翻译任务都被外包到外部承包商。
“Our in-house translators then assess and revise the outsourced translations. Our business model is based upon extensive outsourcing followed by an in-house quality assurance process since we do not have the capacity to translate all documents internally,” he explains.
丰特内勒解释道：“我们的内部译员会对外包译文进行评估和修改。我们的业务模式以大量外包为基础，质保环节由内部负责，因为我们的人力不足以翻译所有内部文件。”
The contracts are awarded to language service providers (LSPs) based on the criteria set out in the tender specifications.
根据投标规定中所列标准，翻译合同由语言服务供应商取得。
“The outsourced translations are assessed and revised internally by our in-house translators prior to delivery to our clients,” he reveals. “The revision process also allows us to dynamically re-rank our external contractors to make sure that the best ones appear at the top of our lists of framework contracts and are given priority when we outsource our translations.”
丰特内勒披露：“外包译文在经过我们内部译员的内部评估和校对后才会发给客户，这样的修改程序还可以让我们对外包商进行动态再排名，确保最出色的外包商出现在我们框架合同名单的前列，在外包翻译任务时予以优先考虑。”
技术与翻译质量
To deliver three-quarters of a million translations per year, the Translation Centre obviously needs technology.
每年翻译中心承担百万页的翻译量，将其中四分之三的任务发布出去，为此显然需要技术支持。
“Our translators use an off-the-shelf computer-assisted translation tool, which we have procured via an EU inter-institutional call for tenders (SDL Trados Studio). Our IT Department has developed a customized in-house workflow management tool, eCdT. We integrated SDL WorldServer into our workflow tool to manage translation memories and automate a number of pre-processing tasks,” Fontenelle explains.
丰特内勒解释道：“我们的译员采用现成的计算机辅助翻译工具，工具来源于欧盟跨机构招标（SDL Trados工作室）。我们的信息技术部开发了一套定制化内部工作流程管理工具——eCdT，将SDL WorldServer整合到我们的工作流程管理工具中，用于管理翻译记忆、自动完成一些预处理任务。”
In-house translators are also involved in creating client glossaries, which are fed into IATE InterActive Terminology for Europe (IATE), the joint terminology database for all the EU institutions. In 2018, the Centre will deploy an updated version of the database.
内部译员还会参与创建客户术语表，并录入供欧盟各机构使用的联合术语数据库——欧洲交互词汇。2018年，翻译中心将部署该数据库的更新版。
“Since terminology is frequently mentioned as an issue in discussions around the linguistic quality of translations, it is crucial to ensure that the specialized terms included in the documents to be translated are properly recognized during the translation process,” says the Translation Department chief.
翻译部负责人丰特内勒表示：“术语问题在译文语义质量的相关讨论中经常被提及，因此在翻译过程中确保正确识别待译文件的专业术语至关重要。”
While the Centre does not yet use machine translation, he says they contribute to the development of the MT system developed by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation — MT@EC, a statistical system, and eTranslation, which uses neural-based translation engines.
他说虽然翻译中心尚未使用机器翻译，但他们在欧盟委员会翻译总司主导的机翻系统“MT@EC”（统计系统）和“eTranslation”（基于神经的翻译引擎）研发过程中也贡献了力量。
“The Centre is working towards integrating these systems into our workflow so that proposals suggested by these MT systems will be made available to our in-house translators when our translation memories do not yield useful matches,” he says, adding that since the quality of the MT output cannot be guaranteed, it is clear for now that the “MT output will still require a thorough revision and post-editing of the translation.”
他提到：“翻译中心正在努力将这些系统融入我们的工作流程，如此一来，当我们的翻译记忆无法给出有用的匹配结果时，这些机翻系统就会向内部译员提出实用建议。”他还补充道，由于机翻结果的质量无法保障，当下显然需要对输出内容进行彻底修订和译后编辑。
字幕翻译：需求增大
Fontenelle reveals that an increasing number of EU agencies are interested in publishing videos about their activities on YouTube, Facebook, and other social media. Hence, the volume of subtitling work at the Centre has gone up since it introduced the service in 2015.
丰特内勒表示，越来越多的欧盟机构喜欢将活动的视频上传到油管、脸书以及其他社交媒体。因此，翻译中心自2015年引入字幕翻译服务以来，工作量有所增加。
“For 2017, almost 2,500 minutes of subtitling were produced for nine clients, so the evolution is very clear. Considering the cost of producing certain videos, it is important to ensure that they are widely distributed and easily accessible by citizens in the various EU languages,” he says.
他说：“2017年，翻译中心为9个客户提供了近2500分钟的字幕翻译，工作量的变化是显而易见的。考虑到某些视频的制作成本，一定要保证视频的广泛传播以及让使用不同欧盟语言的市民轻松访问。”
He adds that EU agencies also use subtitling to reach a larger target audience and for accessibility purposes.
他补充说，欧盟机构还通过字幕将视频传播至更广泛的受众群体，提高视频的访问量。
“A video in English with English subtitles has the following advantages: the hearing-impaired can access it, non-native speakers are more likely to understand all the content, and there is no need to turn on the sound to watch it which can be useful in certain circumstances,” he explains further.
“带英文字幕的英文视频有以下优点：听力受损者可以访问该视频，非母语人士更容易理解所有内容，还有就是，不需要打开声音就能观看——在某些情况下可能很有用。”丰特内勒进一步解释。
机器翻译不是威胁
Industry watchers are one in saying that the language services world continues to consolidate and with the continued advance in machine translation technology, some translators see narrower options ahead.
业界观察人士说，语言服务世界持续加强，随着机器翻译技术的不断发展，一些译员认为未来的选择将变得更狭窄。
Fontenelle, an accomplished translator and interpreter himself, who has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Liège and has worked for the European Commission, NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency (NAMSA), and Microsoft, has this to say: “Rather than a threat, I would see it (MT) as an opportunity. Due to the advent of MT, the profile of translators is changing since they must spend more time on revising and post-editing pre-processed, pre-translated documents.”
丰特内勒是一位出色的译者和口译员，拥有列日大学语言学博士学位。他曾在欧盟委员会、北约保障供给局（NAMSA）和微软公司工作过。他认为：“相比于威胁说，我更倾向将机器翻译看作机会。因为机器翻译技术的出现，译者的工作内容正在发生变化——他们必须花更多的时间对预处理、预翻译过的文件进行修订和译后编辑。”
He emphasized that it is also important for translators today to know the potential of the technology they use, its usefulness and also its constraints and limitations.
他强调，对于如今的译员来说，了解他们所用技术的潜力非常重要，还有技术的实用性以及局限性。
“The documents we receive are more and more specialized (linguistically speaking), and also more and more complex (technically speaking) – e.g. PDF files with infographics, embedded files, images, and tables, which require a lot of technical manipulations before the real translation work can even start. All this means that our translators and translation support staff need to acquire more and more technical skills and need to keep abreast of technological developments to make the best use of the sophisticated tools made available to them,” he explains.
丰特内勒解释道：“我们收到的文件越来越专业（从语言学上讲），也越来越复杂（从技术上讲）——例如带有信息图形、嵌入式文件、图像和表格的PDF文件，这些文件需要经过大量的技术操作后，才能开展真正的翻译。这就意味着，我们的译员和翻译支持人员需要获得越来越多的技术技能，并且需要跟上技术发展的步伐，以便充分利用他们能获取到的先进工具。”
英文来源：Slator
编译：Yee君
注意啦，好消息！在公众号对话框回复“号内搜”，获取链接，可以快捷搜索“译·世界”号内任意信息~
推荐阅读