Some target languages may distinguish between different levels of formality when addressing the reader (i.e. they make a distinction between a formal and an informal tone of voice). Depending on how formally you would like to address your audience, you may want to instruct your Machine Translation provider to use a formal or informal style.
If you want your machine translations to use an informal style, you can utilize the AI Formality Adjustment feature within Smartling’s AI Toolkit. This feature is compatible with all MT providers that don't already support formality specification.
Supported Providers
The following two Machine Translation providers allow you to specify the desired level of formality for the translation output:
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Amazon Translate
The desired formality can be specified for supported languages only. -
DeepL
The desired formality can be specified for supported languages only.
If you are using Smartling Auto Select, the desired level of formality is available only for strings passing through Amazon Translate or DeepL MT providers. If adherence to your preferred level of formality is essential, we would recommend using a dedicated MT Profile for DeepL or Amazon Translate instead of Smartling Auto Select. Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager for further information.
We do not recommend using Amazon Translate if you would like to make use of Smartling's Glossary Term Insertion feature.
Setting up formality for MT
There are two ways of setting up the desired level of formality for Machine Translations:
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Specify the desired level of formality in your Smartling Style Guide:
To make use of this option, your Style Guide needs to be created with the Smartling template. Under Language Conventions, specify if the subject should be "Formal" or "Informal".
For MT integrations which have access to the Style Guide (i.e. machine translation workflows and MT suggestions in the CAT Tool), the Style Guide associated with the relevant Project and target locale is used to determine the desired level of formality.
This applies to supported providers only.
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Specify the desired level of formality directly in the MT profile:
For supported providers, you can specify the desired level of formality directly in the MT Profile.
AmazonDeepL
The level of formality specified in the MT Profile will only be used:
◦ for MT integrations which don't read from the Style Guide (Smartling Translate, site-wide Machine Translation for the GDN, Smartling's Zendesk Support Plugin and Smartling's Machine Translation API)
◦ if there is no Style Guide available for the target locale or
◦ if the Style Guide does not use the Smartling template.
Only if any of these conditions apply, the MT Profile is checked for the formality setting.
If the above conditions do not apply and the desired level of formality specified in your Style Guide does not match the formality indicated in the MT Profile, the Style Guide takes precedence.