MersenneTranslate, the new automatic translation tool, makes it possible to automatically translate scientific articles into your native language for better understanding.
This tool has been developed with the support of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, and in partnership with the Académie des Sciences.
This tool enables volunteer contributors to start translating published scientific articles into the language of their choice, using a machine translation tool to generate translations of published articles, using machine translation post-editing.
Promoting the multilingual dissemination of scientific articles
This tool has been developed so that each author can write an article in his/her native language, without this being an obstacle to its international distribution, as it can be easily translated.
Whatever its original language, an article can be translated into a wide variety of languages (for the moment, only languages based on the Latin alphabet).
Moreover, an article written in a quality language generates a quality translation.
How does it work?
To translate an article, a contributor follows the steps below:
1- Select the article to be translated and the target language.
2- Start the pre-translation of the article using MateCat (computer-assisted translation tool).
3- Post-edit the pre-translation, generated by a generative translation solution (checks, corrects and improves).
He/she translates the metadata if the translation has not been provided by the author.
4- Submit the translation to the editorial team of the journal from which the original article was published.
5- If the translation is accepted, it will be published under a CC BY 4.0 licence, in HTML and PDF versions, on the journal’s website. The name of the contributor(s) will be displayed as the author(s).
The tools we use
The MersenneTranslate solution is based on MateCat, a free computer-assisted translation (CAT) software package. It offers automatic translations via the ModernMT translation engine, which draws on various online translation tools (Deepl, Google Translate, etc.) to generate a contextualised translation, i.e. one that takes account of the entire text of the article.
An improved version 2 in the pipeline
A version 2 of the MersenneTranslate solution is in preparation. Currently, the translation tool only applies to articles published in the Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des sciences, which have full text, i.e. Geoscience, Chemistry and Biology:
- Improvements to the display of translations with more indications
- Addition of a collaborative dimension, in particular to allow the author of the original text to contribute.
- Generalization to all Mersenne journals
- Support for new translation languages
Differences/Benefits with web browser solutions
It’s a fact that every web browser today has its own page translation tool, and therefore its own HTML translation tool. The result is produced quickly and is quite convincing most of the time.
The MersenneTranslate project is based on these machine translations, but involves the intervention of a contributor, who is always a scientist, to improve the text. This is an essential dimension, adding value, quality and above all accuracy to the content.
Project background
See Project presentation.