[Machine Translation] Disable automatic translation possibility for translators?
Hello guys,
we've started implementing machine-translation in our workflows since a couple of months to facilitate post-editing workflows. We use multiple APIs for this, one is the Google Translate API.
However, to my surprise, I noticed in the Translate API environment in Google Cloud under our translate quota that even on days in which we hadn't started post-editing tasks, the Google API showed use of its services (aka characters were still being translated). Nowadays, this figure varies between 300-600 characters per day, but about two months ago, it could be as high as 35.000 characters per day.
After a long e-mailing back and forth with Google, I suspect that translators are using the "Machine translation" function within the editor (under "Translation Finder" in the old editor) to pre-translate segments. While in these current numbers it is not a problem, it will become a problem if numbers go up again, both because we will have to pay Google for characters which shouldn't have been translated, but also because we do not wish, in terms of translation quality, for translators to auto-translate large chunks of text. Is it possible to restrict the automatic translation function in the Editor?
I haven't shared our API key with anyone (I'm the only one who knows it in the office).
With kind regards,
Ben.
-
I am bumping this thread, as I would love to hear if someone has any idea about this :I contacted Google but they are not allowed due to privacy reasons to give us the data (text segments) sent to their API, even though that was done through ouw own API key...(!)
On the 5th of January, we saw another spike of a whopping 134.000 characters being sent to Google for translation. This represents a text of around 28.000 - 30.000 words. I find it completely perplexing that I can't trace anywhere what data is being sent to the API.
I can (and have since) changed the API key, but if the problem is users illegally using the machine-translate service from Wordnee to machine-translate non-post-editing texts (or if we're being hacked, neither of which I can confirm now), than changing the key won't help a bit.All the best,-Ben.0 -
Dear Wordbee,
Since posting the above message, I have now used the "Submit a Request" feature to privately discuss this: it is very important we get some sort of an insight into what data is being sent, as we'd otherwise be paying for texts we're not processing ourselves.
0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
2 comments