For a long of time I’ve been interested in how technology can help us in our work tasks, and also in communication and collaboration with peers. The UVic-UCC Specialised Translation Master’s Degree course gave me the opportunity to further explore this area of translation in two ways: participating in the internship scheme and preparing my master’s thesis.
During the internship, I learned how translation of SmartPLS statistical software is carried out and all the items involved in the process. SmartPLS was is a spin-off of the Technical University of Hamburg, as a result of research projects that aimed to develop a solution for Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) analysis under the leadership of Dr Christian Ringle. SmartPLS GmbH was founded in 2015 in order to commercialise the software. To date, SmartPLS is the most popular software for PLS-SEM analysis by social science researchers.
Why has this software been more widely adopted than its competitors?
There are factors related to technology, such as the easy-to-use and user-friendly design. But there are other aspects that contribute to its success. One of them is the variety of implemented algorithms for statistical analysis offered by SmartPLS, which have been tested and published in peer-reviewed academic journals. The software developers seek to improve not only the software but also the statistical methods available. Another aspect, no less important, is the community of SmartPLS users that has been forged and that has contributed to its wide adoption.
You might think that because SmartPLS users are scientists, the company would assign the translation of the software from German to English (and other international languages) to a specialised translation service provider. But this is not the case. Members of the user community have voluntarily translated the software into over 30 languages. Volunteers engage in the translation process by proposing translation solutions in a project that the company has created on the Crowdin platform.1 The translation is not limited to the software. Books published by the developers have been translated by scientists into several languages. In fact, my main task during the internship was to update the case studies in the third edition of the book A Primer on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) by Hair et al. (2022) to the latest version of SmartPLS and then to translate them into Spanish. The case studies can be now downloaded for free on the book’s website.
Later on, I used the case studies for my thesis to compare the productivity of MT and CAT English to Spanish translation of statistical texts. In this case, I used another leading translation platform, Trados. This allowed me to explore how technology can contribute to translators’ work, but also to reflect on the factors behind the success of Trados. As in the case of SmartPLS, I don’t think the technology is the only thing that matters. The ability of Trados to collaborate with other technology developers in order to offer a great variety integrations for translation is another important factor. Its users also play an important role, especially language service providers, because translators have to use the technology provided by the company that hires them.
Language technology suppliers cannot always rely on users for the translation of their applications because the quality may not be good enough. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the translation of SmartPLS is of low quality. The problem is that when relying on peer collaboration for translation, the quality will depend on the number of people involved in the process, their specialist knowledge, their language skills and the degree of interaction when validating translation solutions. In the case of SmartPLS, user collaborations for translation of the software has increased its worldwide adoption. However, peer collaboration in translation may not be the best solution in every case.
* Crowd-sourcing is a tried and trusted approach to translation of popular online platforms. Volunteers have successfully translated Ubuntu, Google, TED Talks, Facebook and hundreds of other social network applications. It is said that in 2007 the Facebook environment was translated into French, using this system, in a matter of 24 hours. And it came out in Catalan shortly after, thanks to the same system.
