Make the best use of machine translation and post-editing

Max Morkovkin 00:08
And our speaker Yan is joining us right now. Let me introduce Yan. Yan e un ng CEO at ACC digital. Er has over 24 years of information technology, business process, reengineering, consulting and risk management experiences, and took on senior management roles in a wide range of industries. He founded a consulting and training firm in 2009, during global financial crisis, and since then, has advised many private companies and public sectors across 1000s Dasia. Now he's the CEO at ACC digital, Asa develops a localization technology solution focusing on Southeast Asian languages and for the digital markets. Yana with us? Yes, no, no, no. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Well, yeah. Always good. Always. Good. Thank you. We have more and more attendees joining us. I hope you guys are enjoying the conference. How are you doing?

Ian Ng 01:15
Okay, doing good. Live secured a bit crazy now. With you know, we call the you know, here we call it circuit breaker period, while you also known as, you know, lockdown period, but okay, doing well.

Max Morkovkin 01:32
So at least I see that you have adjusted well, right. So working from home. Great. So we are going to start the presentation just in a moment, guys, reminding you about q&a tab that you have on the bottom of your zoom window. Feel free to add your questions and to go through them after the presentation. Join our Slack workspace. And yeah, let's get started. Yeah, and I'm giving the virtual virtual mic to you.

Ian Ng 02:06
Okay. Right. Okay. Please allow me to share screen like this, just to make sure that you're able to see my screen. Okay. Okay, sorry about that. Are you able to see my screen? Yes.

Max Morkovkin 02:29
Yes, I am. And we also see messages from attendees. Yes.

Ian Ng 02:34
So I can't see the chat. At this moment. Well, okay. Right, I guess, let's get started. A different thought. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, SmartCAT. Thank you, Max, for facilitating this. I think it's really my honor to be here today. I mean, to see so many, you know, speakers that actually doing this fun? Uh, well, I would just say a bit more positivity at this moment, in the midst of the COVID-19. Yeah. Basically, based in Singapore, so very much that the same as other country, we are having, you know, crazy time now. You know, we have this COVID situation right now. So, well, the main topic of my presentation today will be, you know, how we can actually make the best use of the machine translation, and the post editing. I think when I mentioned this, I think more very much in the context of Southeast Asia. That's where I'm based. I've been working a bit of quick introductions, you know, about myself and companies that I'm leading right now. We have, over the last two years, we have been working very much into the Southeast Asia languages, focusing into some of the AI technology localizations technology, and to find, you know, to develop the solutions to help the, you know, the localization community in Southeast Asia. So, I guess I have to break in all the my presentation today into the tuning session. The first thing we're going to talk about, we are in the midst of the COVID-19 I will share with you You know how in Singapore, how we cope with the COVID-19 and how the localization industries are being impacted by this situation. And to understand that I will share with you what are the initiatives that we have seen in the last two months in Singapore primary is driven by our government. So, and then we talk about you know, what are the you know, we have Since the use of AI technology, they're actually to push out some of the communications. Right. So I'm going to share a bit more about that the first part during the COVID-19. The second part of my presentation, you know, we have to look, move forward, look into the future. What actually the future holds for the localization industry players like us, whether we are RSP, the tech solution provider at the post COVID-19, what are the opportunities in Southeast Asia? Right. So we'll just get started to move ahead. Well, just to let you know, in our house, the situation in Singapore, yeah. Initially, we are doing well. But I think we are falling, we are very much falling behind in terms of how are we able to cope with the COVID 19. We have seen increased number of cases in the last few days. Well, we're very much into a very tough situation right now. Essentially, that, you know, the business in Singapore S Sorry, comes to the standstill. Well, to better illustrate the situation, we'll be looking at the left side, you know, the, you know, this is a very famous the causeway that connecting Malaysia to Singapore. Now, every day, there are approximately about 300,000 workers coming from Malaysia to Singapore to work at the end of the day, they go back to the home. Now, you could imagine 300 1000s travels every day, it costs way. Now, what you see probably the first time in the history since this pathway was built in 1920. For the first time we have seen that is actually empty, right, because of the lockdown cross border situation we have. Now that's really the situations in Singapore right now. Most of the businesses in the business community have shut down. Apart from some essential service provider like hospital clinic. Some essential services like supermarket grocery shops, who are still open during this period, I think more or less a lot of food beverages, they got affected, most of them have shut down, some of the FMB still running up and running will heavily depend on some of these delivery guys to deliver the foods that we order online, they brought food to home. Now, the killing it to become a nom whenever that we go. Even if we go to Vice Kasuri and we have to remain social system 60 They said one meter away from one another. So this is a really tough situation right now. Of course on the lighter notes we have seen during this COVID-19 Well, everyone is supposed to stay home with face masks, whenever you need to go up to buy some essential groceries, you know, there's very much that we need to everyone need to keep in mind. Now. We you know, right now, we are also told that you know one of the framework drinks property is no longer able to run the business that was a few days ago. And then we have to you know, come up with our own way to make our ourselves the bubble tea. Right. That's the some of the joke that we've seen that you know, that's how you can as if pretend yourself will be draining your property right. Now on the right side, you can see well, this probably we'll see in a few weeks time these are very common phrases we have seen we'll see in Singapore for the guys because we it was just announced a few days ago the hairdresser's salon saloon the barbershop had to shut down for one month until the end of May. So I think everyone will look like these guys will long hairs.

Max Morkovkin 09:05
Yeah, and I'm sorry for interrupting you. We just receiving messages from chat telling that there is a loud whistle every kind of five seconds. Can you please check if you can do something with it?

Ian Ng 09:19
Yep, it doesn't know whistle.

Max Morkovkin 09:21
It is just right now it is better. No, no, we still hear this How about now? Okay, now it seems like a disappeared. Please go.

Ian Ng 09:40
Okay. Right. Okay, allow me to give a quick introduction about Southeast Asia. So it might be unfamiliar for some of you. Some of you might have visited Southeast Asia. I just give a quick overview about it. Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia, in short, so we call it you know, ASEAN comprises 10 countries, we speak generally 12 languages, plus some other the variations of dialects. In terms of populations, we have total approximately about 630 Millions, it's about half of the China population. We speak different languages. And we have a different culture we have come from really different backgrounds, culturally and the languages that dialectic is B. Right. So, the way we are, Singapore is really right, located at the center of the Southeast Asia ASEAN, as you can see, just a quick introduction about Singapore, where we have Singapore with Multicharts, culturals, and the multi language lingual and we have four main languages English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, right? You can see these are the demographics become a child, you know, our ascenders basically, they are migrants from China, from India, as well. So we these are the main races that that actually that make up to the populations of Singapore. Now you can see we speak different languages, different, you know, different ways. But I think, in generally almost everyone speaks English, especially the business community, English is the best way to communicate to transact. In our business activities like that, I think majority of us, we can speak English comfortably. Right. So this is Singapore. Now, I think what happened in this COVID-19, we actually seen that some problems that we, especially the government, you know, faced when they started to communicate the push down or communication down to individuals, especially the elderly group. Now, as I mentioned, we speak four major languages with some variations or dialects, or at least more than 10 dialects. Now, it's has become a problem, how government communicates to push some informations down to the individual, like elderly grow up, for example, you know, just a simple message about stay at home, it's not easy to reach out to every single one and this, you know, crazy period that we need everyone's cooperation to stay at home, you know, not to mingle around with invaders to minimize the infection rate. We have seen that is the language, the communication gaps that we need to face during this COVID-19? Now, he has come to the point that, you know, what our government is trying to do is, he actually think of the other way, creative way to communicate some of these messages. That includes, you know, this guy, some of you might know him, some might not, he actually is the Education Minister of Singapore, he actually invented a short rap in differ in two dialects to actually do very across the simple message to the elderly group that stay at home, right. So he appeared this variety show who speak in the dialect, the first time in history has seen the minister communicate in different dialects, try to bring across the message. So, I think the next thing we are actually we have seen in the last two months is that I need to talk about, you know, how actually the Singapore government actually have done in the last two months to, to help fight against the COVID-19. We have the Gulf technology, which is the the Singapore government's that technology development agency, who had to develop this new concept of cough tech, the Craftex. He actually is a part of the initiative of our smart nations develop initiative to digitize, you know, the government services in the, you know, in the future, to use the technology to connect so individuals, to the businesses in Singapore, even across some other countries as well. So I think we have seen that, you know, they're really step up, putting a lot of resources across agency to develop some of these single function applications to actually to Share the messages to update what's happening, you know, the COVID-19 in Singapore. Now, these are all the applications, you can find it in one single platform goway.gob.sg, the main purpose is to try to communicate with the everyone's in Singapore, including the business community. Now to sum up the all the application and services, for those who need to go out, they might need to, you know, tap for some of their services to look out for some information, where they can go to how they remain safe distance from one another. If you stay at home, what are the things you need to know? What's the updates about the COVID-19 situations as same as the other countries, the government has actually launched a lot of stimulus packages, financial helps to individuals or businesses that can assess all these informations via the apps via the website. Okay, so because of the press of time, I'll just bring up some of the examples. And the main purpose of some of the apps that are how actually the government's communicates, collect some data and share information with every single one example, during this period. Okay. This is the apps that the government has tried to share some big data, the movement of the people in Singapore, this is the whole map of Singapore, it actually helps you know, every single one individual like, we might need to plan a trip up to Dubai groceries to engage them essential services, you can actually come here to look at, you know, whether that's a clowder, whether Shall I go out to this place to acquire the services, while it resuming look at a particular location, for example, in this case, if if you want to plan to go out to the shop for groceries, it can share the density informations about which they you know, what time, you may choose the less crowded time to actually do your shopping. Okay, so we can say this. A lot of sharing this information by government to help every individual to remain social distancing. Amanda, Amanda community. And for those who who might be still looking for some recreations activities during this COVID-19 joggers, also share some data about the density of the people in the park, which aren't as open for, you know, assessed by individuals, which has closed, your sort of Greg's piece of information to share as we plan to have some, you know, the breeder outside? Well, I think at this point in time, we still very much that's being locked down at this moment. So you can really go out to engage some essential services. Okay, I'm pumped on this, we have actually seen, the government has actually shared a lot of information about the funding support, who is eligible for this? Services, a lot of informations are being shared via this applications, in usual, you know, need to tap on some of these funds, they can actually browse to find out whether they're eligible, they can actually apply for some of the fundings online, you know, in a number of in a few days time, they might be able to actually receive the money in the bank account. Okay. So this is what we've seen that, you know, how, you know, individuals are being engaged to, to communicate, you know, to doing this COVID-19 using some of the technologies that we can assess. Okay. Even that sort of apps that for those who are a job seekers who have lost their job, this COVID-19 situations, that is this link to the portal, the job portal, for those who, you know, might be interested to look away at the job opportunity during this period, you know, how to get able to find the next job, you know, during this period, so, this is some of the initiatives that are being pushed out set so that we are very much being engaged at this point in time through the apps remotely, to find out what can we do at this point in time? Okay, I need to focus more about the what actually, you know, the, you know, in terms of communication, from the governments, to the businesses, communities, and as far as the individual Now, the problem is the first time that we have seen the government's or leverage on the social messaging apps to actually provide COVID-19 updates in not only in English and the four languages well, I think this is important actually to put some of the message to the individuals. Now how they're able to do it in the four languages, I will share with you the next slide, how to actually use the AI technology, AI translation technology to speed up some of these localization process. These are the examples that I actually receive. Every day I subscribed to three languages. The other angry languages are not sure that Tamil I can speak I can understand three languages but not Tamil. ever actually, on a daily basis, we receive about five to 10 messages through the WhatsApp to our smartphone to share with us what's happening. Abdullah COVID-19 in Singapore and what are the measures things that we need to take on a daily basis? Right? So a lot you can see a lot of datas information are being generated during this COVID-19 driven by the government. Now how they're able to actually you know, within such a short time they able to translate some of this. Yeah, before we jump into that. We also seen the white use of the multilingual infographics, infographics is good for the IG. Some of the social services like social messaging, apps, WhatsApp, Telegram to share some information that we need to know about the government funding support some of the things as well. So you probably can see right now that actually there's an increase opportunities for the desktop publishing, okay, at this point in time, okay, as well as some of the translation. Okay, so these are some of the examples I shared that, you know, how, you know, we focus a lot in your communication to disappear. Now, let me share with you, you know, this is articles to actually tell us how the government, you know, tackle the translation within such a short time. They started using the WhatsApp and telegram to update everyone Ebola COVID-19, I think one of the main purpose of doing it is false news, or in other words, fake news, okay, they're trying to close the communication gaps of COVID-19, you know, across or between social messaging apps, and the social media platform like Facebook, IG now that's to leave no rooms for some fake news, or some will share some inaccurate information about situations that might have seen in one or two incidents, they have cost in all people hoarding for food, toilet papers, toilet roll, as well, you know, at some point, so, this is how the tried to tackle some of these fake news, you know, shared across the social media platform. Okay, alas, actually need to share with you that, you know, this article in mentioned, the government actually, you know, use heavily on the AI, translation, in short recall machine translation, to translate the English information to the other languages, okay. And they also engage some of the civil servants who are able to understand different languages to do the veteran services. We in this industry usually call they post it to translate all the social media updates and infographics. So we have seen this COVID-19 We seen it as, you know, a new initiative, the new ways of, you know, the government is trying to use the AI transition to push up this information in different languages within a short time to be in line with some of the press release. You know, social media. Okay. So I really, thank you.

Max Morkovkin 23:55
I'm very sorry for interrupting you. We just have four minutes left for the presentation. Yeah, we also have to go need to go through the questions at the end. Just to remind you, the attendees, you have this q&a tab to leave your questions. Okay. Thank you.

Ian Ng 24:11
Right. Now, let's bring, come to the other questions. What are the opportunities for localization industrial player like us whether we are moving focusing on tech and focus on the like the services? Now, I will see, first of all, well, this COVID-19 I mean, it's crazy. Everyone's get affected. A lot of negativity. I think we should have enough. But I think not everything is doom and gloom. They always look forward to the future. I believe, you know, at the post COVID-19 There will be a lot of opportunities or no doubt they might be some businesses will be perpetually gone. But we also see there's a lot of new opportunities in for everyone, including those who are in the localization industry, in mobile. What with? Okay? Now what I can see that there's immediate opportunities that, you know, at this post COVID-19 are doing this COVID-19 to help government to translate the localized some of these web apps to content. A few days ago, I've gone into some of the, you know, the, the, the website, the portal. Primary a lot informations I do I do, you know, in English, I think we'll see there's a need to need a future to translate most of this information in the different languages. So I believe that, yeah, that's a lot opportunities for our RSP. Like, you know, some of us actually to continue on to work with the government to localize some of this information? Well, we will, we'll see the increased technology used to shutter the time or push out this information, communication data, there will be for those who might be doing a software development, they have a lot more open API services that could connect to the government to integrate some information together. Okay, so I think, in logging in the longer term of Southeast Asia, just to share with you submit a potential, what digital markets, the internet economy, we will see, there will be, you know, a big growth potential, Southeast Asia, in Southeast Asia, these are the GDP of the economy will expect it to grow tremendously. You know, from in by 2025, we are experts about 240 billion from 72 billion in 2018. Now, some of the services you might need to take humanity to focus on some localization needs as well is definitely will be dominated by the E commerce, I think some of you have seen that. Ecommerce is really picking up. You know, in Southeast Asia having Aliexpress Alibaba, in Tencent kingdom, we have a Lazada different is really fundamental market, we have seen, we see the huge needs for localizations. Well, we we all see, in other words, the use of the empty post editing services, we see that perhaps that's a way to go in localized some of these services are nice services that we've seen. We've seen, you know, there will be big demand on online entertainment, the gaming, the subtitling, we have Netflix in us, we have iflix in Southeast Asia, a lot of you know, some of these need to be localized. Because we have a right here three apps like go jack, and Greg in Southeast Asia. So all this will have a lot of needs for the localization. So these are the potential the markets, the Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand. These are the potential, though, you know, in terms of the domestic market, all of this will require some time localization. Okay, now, let me just share with you the last few slides about you know, what I know what we've been doing, working on the last in the last two years, as we zooming into examining the use of the MT in some of the Southeast Asia languages, that's primarily our core, what we are doing right now, let us share with us some of the pros and cons of the use of the Mt. I believe they might be that people are skeptical about using some of this technology are some in our group might be more ready to tap on some of these services use an empty binding, by and large that we I felt that there's a need to educate, you know, the user empty at this point in time. So that, too, we are able to actually make best use of the empty. Now some of these points, I don't think it's, it's, it's new to some of you, just to reiterate, you know, what's the pros and con, the user empty know that high speed speeds? Really is? Is the you know, is the key thing about the empty. It's good for those who have a budget constraint limited budgets to do localizations. That's probably the most cost effective options, the use of empty to translate some content. Okay, the most suitable contents as we done a lot of it evaluation right now, I think, the use of empty, used to go for some combination data, like emails, translating emails, and WhatsApp, the web chat and some of the new social media content as well. Well, they're also good for some of the user generated content, UGC and some of the internal documents for references as well. Well, the flip sides of you know, use an empty inconsistence of the empty outputs in terms of quantity, it's really much depends on the project complexity, the nature of contents that, that we'll be using. And I think we look at it will be shy to use the empty to translate some of the brand messages. Well, that's not the way to use the best use of empty, probably that you need to consider the other options right now, definitely the user empty alone is definitely not going to be same as professional transition quality. Right. So these are, you know, that's how we understand you know, some of the empty how we can best use empty, internal suppose editing Bobbili options is better from the empty alone, if you're looking for more accurate, more frequencies and clarity in terms of translation quality, you need to translate, you know, some contents are more culturally sensitive mtpe will be the better option, higher productivity as compared to human translation. Well, it's more cost efficient than the human translation as a charge that we have done some study that general average cost of, you know, humans translation, as you know, it's a higher than, then the post editing rate. So,

Max Morkovkin 31:25
yeah, I'm very sorry for interrupting you again. Yeah, we have to wrap up just maybe the last 30 seconds. Yes. To share some takeaways.

Ian Ng 31:34
Yep. Okay. Thank you. Right. Yeah, this is the, what you see the end, the flip side will be. Yeah, of course, they're more costlier than machine translation alone. Wow, he made it close by not something that we are able to get close to the human transaction quality in moving forward. So just to show it to the last two slides about, you know, what gaps, we seen the needs and challenges in terms of technology, we are still very much into the infancy stage, in terms of the technology in Southeast Asia. Still, a lot of work needs to be done. Not technology is needed. But obviously, there's a great potential as we move into, we see the potential growth of the digital markets. Now, it's what post editing, we have done a lot of work in terms of understanding the post editing, in moving forward. Still, a lot of work needs to be done to fine tuning, improving some of the post editing criteria, we need to collaborate with some of the university education institution, improving our evaluation framework, try to understand that the more linguistic challenge of some of the Southeast Asia languages, well, as I say, we're very much into at the beginning, is still a long way to reach you know, what we expect to move into, like as a mature like in the European market? Yeah, so this is the work that we have done. So I think to summarize, there's a lot of opportunities, there's no doubt that we are struggling, deal with the COVID-19. But less look forward to the post COVID-19 Maybe the you know, the empty the MTP, probably one or the alternate, or some of the processes the LSP should consider, as we see the businesses cutting down in terms of the localization budgets, probably there's some things that we'll consider to how we actually were able to shape you know, the localized heating industrial in South Asia. Right. So I didn't come to the end, in Omex, about my presentations.

Max Morkovkin 33:54
Thank you. And thank you very much. It was very interesting presentation. And, as we say, per Aspera, Adastra, we wish you success with you know, promoting your services to the audience to the global audience. Unfortunately, we don't have much time to go through the questions. So we will share the questions with you so you can answer and then we will reply back to our attendees. And this is a message for our attendees, guys. Don't think that we reject your questions, all of them will be answered. We just technically cannot answer all of them. The time is limited. Right? So don't worry, you will get your answers. Just you need to wait for a bit of time. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Ian Ng 34:40
All right. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks. Yeah, it

Max Morkovkin 34:43
was a pleasure for us to