Q: Does the world really need another machine translator?
A: There’s no doubt about it. It needs one which functions properly, at least in the English-Spanish language pair. The world badly needs one which yields quality results and is a useful tool for translators.

How did this English-Spanish machine-translator project come about?
The idea wasn’t ours. It came from a professional translator and linguist with more than 20 years experience who saw the need for a product like this in her daily work. Automatic translation is still not completely resolved, especially in the English-Spanish language pair.

Machine translation is a vast field. What sections of that field does VICTOR Translator address?
For starters we’ll be focusing on companies or institutions with large numbers of documents based on specialized themes. This is necessary because we have to create a personalized dictionary of terms and expressions for each customer, which means that it would only be profitable if they translate a large number of documents. These documents do not include literary texts, general periodical articles, chats, forums, etc.

If your company is dedicating time and resources to this ambitious project you must have something new to offer. What is it exactly?
The project is revolutionary insofar as, until now, machine translators have had an underlying problem in their design and their development has been blocked for several years. Only a fresh start, with an entirely new focus, would provide the possibility to obtain notably better results.

As far as novelties in the product are concerned, it’s difficult to enumerate them in a few words. To sum it up briefly, the linguistic analysis for our new system was designed by someone who was well versed in the errors of previous machine translators and centered her work on the unsolved problems.

What would the profile of a typical customer for your automatic translator look like? Or is there more than one? How many are there?
As I mentioned before, the typical client is a company or institution which needs to translate large numbers of documents related to a their central theme. As we go incrementing the number of glossaries in our system we can admit clients with lower volumes of documents.

There is another large group of potential customers for VICTOR Translator: professional translators and translating companies who will be able to use our program to create a draft version of texts, which their human translators can quickly revise.

How do you plan to market the product?
At least initially VICTOR will be offered as a service, not a product.
The customer sends us their texts in English and we return them translated into Spanish.
It’s not a shrink-wrapped program which the customer installs in their computer. We must keep in mind that we have to create a personalized dictionary for each customer and that the databases involved are large. For those reasons it’s not so simple to install VICTOR as just another program in your computer.

Nevertheless, we look forward to the possibility of installing the program on customers’ sites if there is a large enough number of documents to translate.

Will this service be sold only in Spain and the Hispanic world, or also in English-speaking countries?
It is our intention to market it in all countries with a market for it. We must keep in mind that we have potential clients among both Spanish and English-speaking companies and institutions. Our Spanish client needs to translate English text into Spanish in order to understand and use documentation written in English. On the other hand, English customers need it to convert their English-language documentation into Spanish for the Spanish-speaking market.

Is VICTOR now available in the Spanish market?
Yes, if on a limited basis. We’re still finishing the fine tuning, so our first clients, who are also collaborators, enjoy special treatment, especially in the creation of their thematic glossaries. This means that they can contract the service, but always keeping in mind that the rhythm of translation will be slower in the early stages, until the glossary is fully adapted to their texts.

Can we talk about versions and prices?
There won’t be “versions” in the usual sense of the word. Yes, we will be adapting the program for each different client, but only as far as their dictionaries are concerned, not the program.

As far as prices are concerned, we must make an important stipulation: there will be two prices for two very different results. The first one is a totally automatic translation at high speed and for a very modest price, after the first phase of the creation of the glossary for each client.

The second case is a translation revised manually by a professional translator. In this case the time required to complete the translation will be longer, and the price significantly higher, though still well below the usual price, thanks to the use of the previous automatic translation which reduces the work of the translator to a brief revision of the final text.

Will there be versions of VICTOR Translator for other language pairs?
Not in the medium term. One of the keys to the success of VICTOR is its specialized adaptation to these two languages. To create a version in another language pair would be a whole new project, and very time consuming. Nevertheless, we don’t rule it out for the future.