PKU Transcripts
- General MedicalPaidPortfolioQuality ControlTranscribing
Table of Contents
Intro
Recently, I started working with a company that produces transcripts, both intralanguage and interlanguage (for those not familiar, “within the same language” and “between languages”). I was brought in as quality control to help assess a new translator hire to see if :
1. They were accurate, and
2. They were keeping to the style guide.
For the most part, they absolutely were, with there only being a few questions of nuance—which really is the name of the game.
Anyone who has worked with a proofreader before will recognise and dread the edits based on “nuance”, and I personally strive to explain my edits where I can, not only to better my working relationship with translators who have to face my criticism but also to outline where I’m making a suggestion, otherwise it looks like I’m silently filling a document full of red marker for my own sick amusement.
I think it’s also imperative to defer to the translator’s expertise—they might use a verb I find “weird” but if it’s correct…who cares? (A proofreader going over marketing copy, perhaps—such is not the case here).
PKU
This particular job was presented to me as “general medical” (with no small amount of panic upon hearing “medical” as a translator who does not specialise in medicine—there are some horrible cases of mistranslations in specialised medical texts leading to deaths—but after being reassured that it was nothing so dire, I agreed to take it on).
The task at hand was a set of interviews about a hereditary condition called Phenylketonuria, called PKU for short (Pah-Kau-Oo with German pronunciation).
They were conducted mostly in High German but the speakers were from Switzerland, so there was some Swiss-German in there too, which, like Austrian German, can be quite different to “standard” German. (A large part of the Swiss German was left untranslated, as per agreed with the client).
PKU is a hereditary disorder (meaning your DNA hates you, good luck) which is often diagnosed as an infant and requires you to be on a controlled diet and medication your entire life.
In short, someone with PKU cannot produce the enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase, which breaks down phenylalanine, an amino acid found typically in protein and some artificial sweeteners. Key word here is “acid”—with no enzyme in the body to break it down, it can build up in the blood.
Once it steps over one’s individual tolerance level, it can start damaging the nervous system and the brain. In children, it can lead to behavioural development issues if not then brain damage.
(Add that to the list of reasons why the world is terrifying).
Interview Transcripts
These German interviews were then to be translated into English transcripts. This falls under audiovisual translation, similar to creating subtitles with some different restrictions: in this case, a word document with time-stamps, formatted in accordance with certain rules to reflect human speech.
There are two different ways to take down a transcript: intelligent verbatim and specific verbatim. This job required the former: proper sentences, backtracking and filler words were removed, and it was able to be read as a stand-alone text without the audio present.
Strict verbatim on the other hand includes every utterance, and is useful for analysing speech patterns or is necessary with court records, for example.
Quality Control
I advocate that QC is different to proofreading (although part and parcel of proofreading as a whole). It specifically pertains to translation and focusses a large part on accuracy as well as style or, at the very least, legibility. Has anything been missed, has anything been added? Are terms used consistently, is the document formatted in the desired way, does it read as actual English? Of course, you also look at spelling and grammar, but on the priority list, they are closer to the bottom. It is the translation process and not the copywriting process that is at the top.
My particular process looks like this:
- No context review. A monolingual, basic read through. I may or may not be familiar with the style guide yet, but I’m looking at the readability of the English and marking spots I feel are worded strangely or use particular terms, which I will then look up if needed.
- Gaining context review. Next is a bilingual review. In this case, I listened to the interview while going through the transcribed translation. Is it accurate? Has anything been added or omitted? Have terms been translated properly (or added/omitted)? What about the spots I noted before? At this stage, I’m starting to think about the style guide as well. Are the time stamps correct? How are pauses and unintelligible sections handled? Is the text reflecting intelligent verbatim transcription?
- Context review. And now we’re back for another monolingual review. I’m checking again for anything style guide related—punctuation, line and paragraph spacing, font, etc. I’m also touching up my edits and comments so that the QCd document is deliverable to the translator who will the go over the tracked changes, accepting or denying them as required, and querying me if there are any issues or confusion.
- Touch-up. Although this wasn’t required here, the QCr is often handed back the document once again to see if any changes were denied that were, well, necessary. Normally, this is a final look through before the document goes to the client. Ideally, no other changes are necessary, but if there is an issue between a translator and QCr not agreeing, then the project lead typically has final say.
Throughout this process, communication is key. I will always support asking and explaining why, so everyone can work towards a goal rather than just complete their individual tasks. It also saves a bunch of time.
Finally, I will note that it is of paramount importance that no edits happen without the translator’s knowledge. It is disrespectful and not conducive to a proper working relationship.
Thought Experiment: MT
As in a lot of translation or copywriting spheres, the company that passed me this job strongly market their services as human rather than machine output. Being consistent with the style guide was heavily stressed upon so that no one receives a transcript and thinks “a computer would have been more consistent” while forgetting that a human is more likely to be accurate when it comes to language and, specifically, human speech.
You ever tried machine generated subtitles? *shudder*
So this got me thinking about what the translation and transcription process would look like if it was using a machine-first approach.
The main issue is finding the right tools.
Taking this job as an example, you need a tool or multiple tools to do several things: assess the audio, format the output, and translate the speech.
Detour: Japanese Innkeepers
I’ve used interpreting devices before that work like a microphone which then processes and interprets the inputted speech for you into another language.
This was actually forced on me by a Japanese innkeeper who very enthusiastically pressured me to speak English by refusing to respond to my Japanese. At all.
So I would speak English, the device would spit out Japanese, and then he would talk to the device in Japanese, shush me before I could respond, and then let the device spit out some English.
Although it wasn’t perfect, devices like this can be great for getting past language barriers. However, just speaking Japanese would have been much faster (and I was hungry T.T).
Everyone else found my rising irritation to be of great amusement—in hindsight, it was quite funny. At the time, though, I was almost shouting I got so frustrated with the whole thing, all while the man just grinned at me…
So, what if…?
One issue here however is that you’re not processing fresh speech, you’re processing pre-recorded material.
Depending on the audio file, that might be easier said than done. The machine also needs to be familiar with High German, Swiss German, and the dialects of each—and, one would hope, other languages too for other projects.
Then, this programme (or another application) needs to be able to translate those parsed recordings into intelligent verbatim and it (or another application) needs to translate it into English…
How does this differ then to the human process?
Compared to written language, human speech can be pretty irrational. It relies on a lot of other factors, too, including tone and body language (in this case, there were video files alongside the audio ones).
A human, by their nature, is going to be able to understand or work out that mess of communication; a machine is only ever going to be trained to guess. It may be an incredibly complicated and sophisticated guess based on analysing a massive amount of corpora and creating weighted statistical strings linking numerous factors together. It is, however, still a guess.
And if it gets it wrong? Well, that’s when machine “hallucinations” happen. (That’s another bag of worms).
All in all, the tools required to take over the human element of this project would be:
1. Very unlikely to be ideal unless you had it made yourself,
2. Time-consuming to both post-edit and quality control, and
3. Expensive.
The only way I can see machine tools making an appreciable difference were if quantity and speed were of paramount importance, and accuracy was to be left at the way-side.
Conclusion
I’m not saying that there might not be tools that could assist the human translator.
Accurate transcription software that automatically timestamps and formats itself which you can then touch up before plugging into a CAT tool that itself is attached to certain dictionaries and term bases could speed up the process and help ensure consistency if you were trained on their best use and had a good volume to work with.
But in this case, a human listening to High and Swiss German while typing out English is just so…simple in comparison?
I suppose my point is that the human brain is a pretty darned good machine already…except of course when the body supporting it decides that acid building up in your blood when you eat the wrong thing is a great survival strategy.
(Bless you, my celiac, PKU, and allergy-riddled friends).
Have any quality control needs? Interested in transcript and/or general medical translation? Head over to my contact page and give me a shout!
Image credit: me (if you’ll allow a building with scaffolding to be an appropriate metaphor for dealing with hereditary ailments)
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