Ben Swales

In theory, yes. Post-edited machine translations are one of the possibilities that are being talked about by translation professionals and academics. It would be most useful for translating technical texts such as user manuals, where the content is pretty prescriptive and therefore more conducive to successful machine translation. The trouble is that with a lot of text types such as interviews, to use a topical example, where a lot of the content is spoken word and therefore often colloquial or un-conventional, the post editing can often take as long as the translation process itself. I prefer to translate everything myself, not just for that reason, it also allows me to constantly update my translation memory and, over time, reduce my workload. There are a lot of other reasons but I won't get into it in too much detail here so as not to clog up the thread - you're welcome to talk more about it by PM, it's quite an interesting debate, but for now I'm going to concentrate on translating that interview so you don't have to wait too long

Yeah, Google does offer translation as one of its many tools. The trouble is that it and other machine translation tools like it are not always very reliable - the sentences aren't structured properly, words are translated using homonyms that don't mean the same thing etc. - and you often end up with a sub-standard or nonsensical target text (translation), especially in texts with specialised terminology (like trials articles, for example), which Google just hasn't picked up yet*. This means that when you read a piece of text that has been machine translated it often sounds like a load of rubbish. There are some examples of machine or poorly translated trials articles out there, and you can tell that they havent been translated properly. We often get people coming to us at work (I work as a project manager/translator for a translation agency 9-5, Tribal Zine etc. is more of a 'hobby') with texts that they have translated using a machine translation tool and, in one case where they'd translated their entire website into several languages as they had expanded their operation to selling in the countries where those languages were spoken, were losing business rather than gaining new business, asking us to retranslate it properly. As a qualified and experienced translator I would NEVER use a machine translation tool to translate a piece of work for submission, especially if it was for publication somewhere. I take the translation of Tribal Zine articles just as seriously as I would any other piece of work for a paying client and so I translate them properly. I do use translation memory software which picks up on repetition etc. and saves every sentence I translate to a database so that in theory I only have to translate each sentence once in my life and can then use the software to automatically extract it from the database when it appears in a new translation. This is particularly handy for technical texts, such as bike specs, where there is a lot of repetition/duplicate 'sentences' that are used in every example of those texts, but unfortunately not that useful for things like interviews where the text is someone's own words and doesn't feature any repetition. The interview is on the Tribal Zine homepage, so feel free to use Google Chrome on it if you cant wait til this evening/tomorrow, although I would ask you not to post the resulting translation anywhere until I have posted up our official translation Im sure youll understand. Wow! Sorry for the tirade, didn't mean to write quite that much :$ To sum up, machine translation: bad, Ben Swales: good. Or something like that. *Having said that, it is getting better… When I was studying translation we covered machine translation in half of one hour-long seminar and were told that there was no way it would ever replace human translators. Now a friend of mine is studying the same MA course and theres a whole module dedicated to machine translation and its implications for the translation industry and there is planty of debate among the academics about whether it could end up replacing human translators and why/why not. Personally speaking, as a professional translator and as a translation enthusiast outside of work, I hope it never, ever does. In reality, it probably never will fully language is so loaded with nuance and subtlety of meaning that Id like to think no machine could ever successfully replace the need for a human translator. Its more likely that the industry will change to accommodate it rather than disappear completely. At least I hope so…..

There's a long and interesting interview with Kenny Belaey up on the site (in French only at the moment). I'm currently working on the translation but it's a big job and may take me a couple of days as I have to fit it around my actual job Keep an eye on the site!

Congratulations Shaun! Glad to see it on the market at last! Greg has the bash ring now - look out for a test on Tribal Zine soon!

NIce vid nathan! I liked the moody black and white - went well with the song! Looking good on the Sky too - how are you getting on with it? It's Roads by Portishead - from their album Dummy

Cool! Greg has his fitted and is riding with it now - keep you eyes out for the full test, coming soon Abel Mustieles after Mont Sainte - An exclusive interview with young Spanish rider Abel Mustieles, who finished in second position in Elite 20" and fourth in Elite 26" in Mont Sainte-Anne. Nathan Marks, Tribal Rider - Nathan's latest video, training on his Koxx Grey Sky.

Kenny's World Champ Party - It's party-time in the Belaey household following Kenny's ninth world title… Here are a few words form the new World Champion and some photos from his "World Champ Party" on Saturday night ! Abel Mustieles in Mont Sainte-Anne - More photos from the World Championships in Mont Sainte-Anne. This time the focus is on Spanish prodigy Abel Mustieles García, who finished in fourth place in the Elite 26" Final !

Tyke Trial/Bike Trial Federation would be more than happy to provide results, reports and photos from our events - I'm sure I could find the time to interview a few riders as well These would most likely be Tykes/National comp riders, from the top Elite riders down to up-and-coming younger riders such as the Rolls boys and Adam Morewood for example but I'm sure I could provide interviews with some of the top Euro riders from time to time as well. As discussed already, Tribal Zine are also well and truly behind the idea and would be happy to provide some reports, news etc. Keep us posted on how things are going!

As far as I'm aware, there are no stipulations as to the number of riders in the video. Last year the CostaEste Crew (Spanish group of riders) came second, and there were loads of them in that, so I guess you can feature as few or as many riders as you like

Which wording in particular? I'll see if I can make it a bit clearer

Not quite.... The winner can choose between a FREE Ozonys XR20 frame OR any Ozonys bike at half price. So if you choose the frame you give them nothing. If you choose the second option you will admittedly be buying a bike and therefore giving Trial-Bikes.com the money, BUT it's a brand new top-of-the-range bike at half price, which isn't bad!

Spanish trials forum Trials-Riders.es are organising their second Best Video of the Year Contest and this time it's open to international entries! There are some great prizes for the best three entries courtesy of [snip] as well! Dealine for entries is 31 December 2010. Thought you guys might like to know so you can start getting your entries filmed and edited! More information in the Tribal Zine article International Video Contest 2010 and in the Contest thread on Trials-Riders.es. Last year's winning entry by Guillem Mauri: Vimeo Video -> Original Video The event's official poster.

Kenny Belaey in Mont Sainte-Anne Benito Ros in Mont Sainte-Anne Marc Caisso in Mont Sainte-Anne - Three photo galleries dedicated to the 26" Elite medal winners. Photos by Michel Roy (Digital Direct) International Video Contest 2010 - The 2nd edition of the Best Video of the Year Contest, organised by trials-riders.es, is open to international entries ! There are some fabulous prizes too, thanks to trial-bikes.com !

Vincent Hermance after Mont Sainte-Anne - Vice-French Champion Vincent Hermance talked to us yesterday evening in an interview in which we talked about the competitions in Mont Sainte-Anne and the surprising final!

It's a fairly 'extreme' stock to got to straight from a mod like you had Ross, it's miles longer for a start. Give it some time and I'm sure you'll get used to it. Oh, and welcome to the big boys' club

Gilles Coustellier after Mont Sainte-Anne - An interesting interview with the former World Champion after his surprising performance in the Mont Sainte-Anne Final.

Hi Ryan, We are in partnership with a lot of riders across Europe. While we had some bikes left (that we'd tested etc.) we offered our riders a discount on them. Now we've sent all the bikes out we offer more of a mutual promotion deal whereby riders will wear our shirts/hats and put our logo in their videos and we'll promote them as riders by putting their results, news and media on the site, hopefully attracting other, more substantial sponsors for them. Ben

The Tribal Zine Trial Team UK - Introducing the UK Tribal riders for 2011, Nathan Marks, Jamie Bew, Sam and Charlie Rolls, Steve Rogers, Jack Carthy, and Ben Swales.

I think it'd be great if they could feature comp write-ups and photos, product reviews and general interest stuff (the rider interviews or features on group rides that you mention, for example). If they could manage to get a vibe a bit like the Hip Hop section of MBUK but with a bit more content (what they do in MBUK is great, but it'd be cool to see a magazine dedicate a bit more space to the sport!) that would be ideal I reckon.

The Mont Sainte-Anne Elite 20" Final - Write-up, results and photos from the Elite 20" Final. The Mont Sainte-Anne Elite 20" Semi-Final - A 20 minute video of the Elite 20" semi-final in Mont Sainte-Anne, mainly concentrating on Benito Ros' ride. The Mont Sainte-Anne Elite26" Semi-Final - Another 20 minute+ video form the guys at Meta bikes, this time of the Elite 26" semi-final, with the focus firmly on John Webster who surprised everyone by qualifying for Sunday's final.

I don't know I'm afraid - looks like it could be; the 2011 Sky maybe? But no, no idea I'm afraid...

The Mont Sainte-Anne Elite 20" Final - Write-up, results and photos from the Elite 20" Final The Mont Sainte-Anne Junior 26" Final - Write-up, results and photos from the Junior 26" Final

Some seriously unexpected results in Elite 26"! It's great that Kenny's finally won, especially after how last year's result went against him. Great to see Abel and Benito so far up the rankings in 26" as well, next season should be pretty interesting!! Congratulations to all the Brit riders who did so well, especially Sam and and Ben! Can you elaborate a bit? Sounds interesting!

Elite 26" Semi Final by Michel Roy - A collection of photos from the Elite 26" qualifcations in Mont Sainte-Anne on Saturday, taken by Michel Roy. The Mont Sainte-Anne Junior 20" Final - Write-up, results and photos from the Junior 20" Final