o process over 25
million words between 1980 and 1998. Staff translators and free-lance
translators post-edit the raw output to produce high-quality
translations with a 30-50% gain in productivity. The software is
available in the LAN (Local Area Network) of PAHO Headquarters, and is
regularly used by the staff of technical and administrative units. The
software is also available in a number of PAHO field offices, and has
been licensed to public and non-profit institutions in the U.S., Latin
America, and Spain. The software was later renamed PAHOMTS, and has
included new language pairs with Portuguese.

= Comments

# Comments from ZDNN

In "Web Embraces Language Translation", an article published in ZDNN
(ZDNetwork News) on 21 July 1998, Martha Stone explained: "Among the
new products in the $10 billion language translation business are
instant translators for websites, chat rooms, email and corporate
intranets. The leading translation firms are mobilizing to seize the
opportunities. Such as:

*SYSTRAN has partnered with AltaVista and reports between 500,000 and
600,000 visitors a day on babelfish.altavista.digital.com, and about 1
million translations per day -- ranging from recipes to complete
webpages. About 15,000 sites link to babelfish, which can translate to
and from French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese. The site
plans to add Japanese soon. 'The popularity is simple. With the
internet, now there is a way to use U.S. content. All of these
contribute to this increasing demand,' said Dimitros Sabatakakis, group
CEO of SYSTRAN, speaking from his Paris home.

*Alis technology powers the Los Angeles Times' soon-to-be launched
language translation feature on its site. Translations will be
available in Spanish and French, and eventually, Japanese. At the click
of a mouse, an entire webpage can be translated into the desired
language.

*Globalink offers a variety of software and web translation
possibilities, including a free email service and software to enable
text in chat rooms to be translated.

But while these so-called 'machine' translations are gaining worldwide
popularity, company execs admit they're not for every situation.
Representatives from Globalink, Alis and SYSTRAN use such phrases as
'not perfect' and 'approximate' when describing the quality of
translations, with the caveat that sentences submitted for translation
should be simple, grammatically accurate and idiom-free. 'The progre