The effect of translation memory databases on productivity

Although research suggests the use of a TM (translation memory) can lead to an increase of 10% to 70%, any actual productivity increase must depends on the TM content. If the target renditions included in the TM database exhibit more free characteristics, this may adversely affect the translator’s productivity. This paper examines how productivity is affected by different kinds of TM databases. A pilot experiment was undertaken to investigate the impact of two different versions of a TM database – free vs. literal TMs. All participants translated the same source text but used different TMs. The results show that in the higher fuzzy-match categories, translators using the less literal TM did not gain as much speed as was the case when using a more literal TM.