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The UNICORN Community
October 9, 2024
We invite you to be an early adopter!
While UNICORN A-M-P started out as an Advanced Management Platform (A-M-P) software solution for the language industry, the current platform will work for many companies outside of the language industry.
We are currently inviting early adoptors to purchase our software at a discounted rate.
Did you know UNICORN A-M-P or UNICORN is deeply integrated with memoQ, PayPal, ProZ, and other software? UNICORN is the result of over twenty-five years of development, including over six years and eight thousand lines of code for just the memoQ API alone. Continual improvements occur on a regular basis, with over forty-five enhancements in 2023, adding more automation and functionality to make this tool an all-inclusive and one-of-a-kind BMS (Business Management System). Truly, a UNICORN. What makes UNICORN Unique? The extent of the integration UNICORN has with memoQ is unrivaled to date. With UNICORN, projects can be created on either platform and synced to reflect the project data and status accordingly. The ability to have bi-directional integration with memoQ is a capability that other platforms do not offer. Secondly, UNICORN has customizable configuration and workflows that do not rely on templates but are dynamic as they are based on the job parameters. This freedom from templates is not available in any other tool, as all other BMS and TBMS solutions rely on templates, which necessitates the use of a template for every possible request scenario. In addition, UNICORN has the flexibility to accommodate large, complex clients with multiple sites and contacts within those sites. This accommodates various workflows, invoicing, and document formats designated for each site or client. Value-added automation has been strategically implemented throughout the workflow to populate Client and Translator statistics, TMs, TBs, and QA settings. Automation has also streamlined the QA workflow during the QC checks. In addition, automation has vastly improved project archiving to auto-update master TMs with working TMs, move project files and related email to an archive location, and move the memoQ project to the Recycle Bin. Unarchiving the job automatically restores it to an active status, along with the relevant email folders. Additionally, UNICORN offers business components such as a Knowledge Base (KB) to manage knowledge articles and documents, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) component, ISO management, and an Asset Inventory module for hardware and software. In summary, with the unique integration, flexible customization, and advanced automation, PMs can focus their time on more value-added tasks and spend less time on administrative effort. This promotes efficiency and a focus on quality throughout the project, resulting in better customer service, consistent customer satisfaction, and an increased ROI. Ultimately, the “magic” of UNICORN with its unique memoQ API affirms UNICORN as the BMS tool of choice for Language Service Companies (LSCs).
For the language service industry, if used appropriately, Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers some benefits for language translation but it's important to note that it also comes with certain vulnerabilities. It is particularly important to assess the content to be translated when determining the best use of AI. If the content is more technical and/or there are safety implications, the accuracy of the translation is critical. Accuracy is also very important relative to the reputation of your company. Therefore, to mitigate risks, it is recommended to only rely on AI as a supporting tool and to utilize human interaction primarily. With that said, due to the importance of providing critical-accuracy translations, the approach GLTaC takes is to utilize AI for QA (Quality Assurance) support only, as all the translation work is done by native-speaking SME (Subject Matter Expert) linguists. GLTaC recognizes and carefully evaluates the benefits and vulnerabilities of AI to ensure the best use for the language industry as identified below. Benefits of AI for Language Translation: 1. Content and Accessibility: The extensive content and availability of AI is helpful as a QA support tool. 2. Speed: AI systems typically provide quick response times. 3. Cost-effectiveness: For non-critical translation projects, AI systems can translate for less cost. 4. Multilingual support: For non-critical translation projects, AI may be helpful when limited bilingual resources are available. Vulnerabilities and Challenges of AI for Language Translation: 1. Accuracy: While AI can perform well in general language translation, it may struggle in highly specialized domains (e.g., technical or scientific fields) where specific subject matter expertise is required. 2. Bias and ethical concerns: AI models can perpetuate biases present in their training data, potentially producing biased, offensive, or discriminatory translations. 3. Contextual Understanding and Ambiguity: AI may struggle with nuances, idioms, or cultural context in languages, leading to inaccuracies or inappropriate translations. Also, languages often have ambiguous words or phrases that require contextual understanding, which AI may misinterpret without proper context. 4. Complexity of Languages: Some languages are more complex syntactically or semantically, making accurate translation challenging for AI systems. 5. Privacy and Security: Using AI translation services may involve sharing sensitive information with third-party providers, raising concerns about data privacy and security. 6. Quality Control: Ensuring the accuracy and quality of AI-generated translations requires ongoing supervision and human oversight to correct errors and improve performance. 7. Dependency and Reliability: Over-reliance on AI translation without human verification can lead to errors going unnoticed, potentially causing misunderstandings, miscommunications, and even safety concerns. 8. Updated Content: AI models can become outdated. They need to be continually updated and retrained to maintain accuracy and adapt to language evolution, which can be resource-intensive and challenging. In summary, while AI-driven language translation offers some benefits in terms of accessibility, efficiency, speed, and cost-effectiveness, it is crucial to acknowledge its numerous vulnerabilities related to accuracy, biases, contextual understanding, reliability, and privacy. Therefore, Human Translation (HT) is still essential to mitigate these vulnerabilities, ensuring more reliable and accurate translations for diverse linguistic needs.
