The ATA Chronicle - March/April 2020 - 36

TALKING WITH THE DEVELOPER OF GT4T continued
GT4T offers very flexible plans. Users
can buy either time-based packages
that have no usage-limit, or characterbased packages with no time-limit.
I pay MT engines on the basis of the
number of characters used. Time-based
licenses work on only one computer at
a time, but you can install a characterbased license on up to 30 computers. I
calculate profits for each purchase using
server-side scripts. Occasionally I do
actually end up paying more for a user
than they pay me, but on the whole I
make money from time-based licenses.
But the danger is real: theoretically, a
very hard-working translator on a timebased plan could bankrupt me, and I
don't have a plan for that.
GT4T is also valuable as a free tool.
The dictionary, glossary feature, and two
MT engines (Yandex and Tencent) are
actually free.
Let's talk about the accessible
engines I listed earlier. What I'm
missing are engines such as Amazon
Translate, SDL BeGlobal, PROMT, and
Naver Papago. How do you decide
which engines to include, and can users
ask you to add engines?

J

first thing I consider is
D The
translation quality. It seems DeepL
and Google excel in quality, and there's
no urgency to add more engines. I
seriously consider suggestions from
users. Some engines don't offer API
access. I recently added Systran at the
request of a user and later removed it
because I couldn't reach an agreement
with Systran. I recommended NiuTrans
to her and she was happy with it. By the
way, NiuTrans is a dark horse that
deserves more attention. It performs
pretty well, even for European
language pairs.
I'm not sure I agree completely. For
instance, in the case of Naver
Papago (whose engineer we interviewed
in the November/December issue3), the
results are often judged better by Korean
users. Amazon also might produce better
results in some language combinations.
Maybe it would be possible to just add

J

36

The ATA Chronicle | March/April 2020

the framework so users can add their
own API keys for some engines that are
not supported?
Thanks for updating me with this
information and recommending
Naver Papago and other engines. If they
offer API access and I can reach an
agreement with them, I'll certainly add
them to GT4T. Users certainly will then
be able to use their own API as well.

D

I always want GT4T to be just a
productivity tool, a reference.

s a question about security
J Here'
and privacy. You're located in
China, which might be a concern to
some users or their clients. Are requests
to the various MT engines actually
visible to you and/or do you store that
data? Or does your tool just facilitate
the connection between the user and the
respective MT engine so you don't
actually ever get to the data?
Neither the requests nor the
replies from MT servers are visible
to me or are being collected. When a
user selects some text and presses a
GT4T shortcut, the selection is sent
directly to the respective MT servers and
then the user receives replies from them.
GT4T collects the following for
licensing purposes: a unique hardware
code and the number of characters you
submit to MT servers through GT4T.
The last time you used GT4T and your
IP address are also collected
automatically by the GT4T licensing
server. They're actually collected by all
websites you visit, and it takes hard
work not to collect them.

as well as Microsoft Office types. Users
will then be able to translate their
documents without having to upload
them to a server, and they can even
browse a folder and ask GT4T to
translate all the files in the folder and
subfolders in the background. Your
idea of providing suggestions while a
user is typing is also helpful. I'll
reevaluate it and other suggestions that
you brought up.
As the sole developer of this app, my
strength is flexibility, but I also know
my limits. Frankly, I've been hugely
dependent on users' suggestions and
reports for new features, and sometimes
even for debugging.
Remember, if you have any ideas and/or
suggestions regarding helpful resources
or tools you would like to see featured,
please e-mail Jost Zetzsche at jzetzsche@
internationalwriters.com.

NOTES
1.
You can check out GT4T at
https://gt4t.net/en/.
2.

API stands for application programming
interface, and is the technology that
allows different programs to talk with
each other (such as Trados or GT4T with
Google Translate).

3.

Zetzsche, Jost. "Thoughts on Naver
Papago with MT Engineer Lucy Park,"
The ATA Chronicle (November/December
2019), 30, http://bit.ly/Naver-Papago.

D

J

Any future plans with GT4T that
might be interesting for us?

I'm currently working on a new
version that does document
translation. It will support many file
types, including popular CAT file types

D

Dallas Cao is an
English>Chinese translator
and self-taught programmer.
He developed GT4T, a Windows/
Mac app that allows users to
use online machine translation
and dictionaries in any programs without having to
open the browser. Contact: dallascao@gmail.com.
Jost Zetzsche is chair of
ATA's Translation and
Interpreting Resources
Committee. He is the author
of Translation Matters, a
collection of 81 essays
about translators and translation technology.
Contact: jzetzsche@internationalwriters.com.
www.atanet.org
https://www.gt4t.net/en/ http://www.bit.ly/Naver-Papago http://www.atanet.org
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