A New Beta Program Introduces Machine Translation of Connect Content
Accessing the great articles content on Symantec Connect in the language of your choice is now just a click away. As a beta program, we’ve introduced machine translation of article content that is available in five languages: French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese.
With real-time translations of Connect articles content, you can now experience both user interface and content in your native language. An easy-to-maneuver toggle lets you flip between source English content and the machine-translated language content for easy comparison. And a feedback survey on every page lets you rate the translation quality and let us know how we’re doing!
To access machine translated content:
Visit any article on Connect.
- From the ‘Translations’ drop-down menu, click on the language of your choice under ‘Machine Translations’
- Read the machine translation disclaimer – it’s important to note, especially with technical content, that there may be subtleties in the source language that don’t come across exactly. Note that you can always toggle between source language and your translation.
- Once you’ve read the article, please provide feedback on the quality of the machine translation. We’ll use this feedback to continue to refine and improve our machine translation capabilities.
- Close your translation once you’re done, and you’re back to the main Connect article page.
To view your Connect interface in another language:
- From the top menu bar on Connect, click ‘English’.
- Choose the language of your choice from the languages. Your interface experience automatically switches to that language.
- To switch back, click on the language tab again, and choose English.
Any suggestions? We’d love to hear them.
FAQs
Q. What is machine translation, and how does it differ from other kinds of translations?
A. Unlike human translation, which uses a person to decode phrases, context and relevance, machine translation uses software exclusively to translate text from one natural language to another, providing more ‘literal’ translations without the contextual understanding.
While Machine Translation has come a long way it doesn’t, nor do we believe that it will ever provide perfect translation quality. We aim for comprehensibility with machine translation and we believe that our translation tool gets there most of the time. When it doesn’t we hope our customers will tell us that, so that over time, we can continue to improve the quality of the machine translated output.
Q. Can I access machine translations for other content types besides articles?
A. Currently, no. The beta program is limited to We do have plans to provide machine translations capabilities for other Connect content types in the future.
Q. What languages are supported?
A. We support French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese for both machine translations and translated user interface experience. Depending on demand, we will consider expanding these in future.
Q. What happens when I provide feedback?
A. Our translation team reviews all feedback, and will examine in detail issues with translated content that receives negative feedback to see if there are enhancements needed to improve the translation.