Welcome to our second post in the ‘5 Questions’ series, which will give you a deeper insight into the people at KantanMT.
Last week, we introduced Laura Casanellas who aced the 5 questions. This week we will introduce you to Riccardo Superbo, who is recently back from a long and fulfilling Trans-Mongolian journey.
What’s your role at KantanMT?
I am a Client Solutions Engineer at KantanMT. My role is to provide Professional Services clients with full support to their projects, and some of my tasks include building, improving and deploying customised MT engines, as well as carrying out linguistic quality testing and implementing post-editing rules when possible.
It’s a very varied role, and I must say it’s challenging, enjoyable and I learn a lot from it.
What according to you is the most marketable technology right now?
I think one of the coolest and most marketable technologies being developed in recent times is Augmented Reality (AR). Although this kind of technology hasn’t really fully taken off yet in the market, the possibilities are endless. Visors and smartphones equipped with AR features are quickly becoming more and more popular.
Talking specifically about KantanMT technologies, I believe that our KantanFleet engines are extremely-cutting edge. KantanFleet engines allow our clients to start translation projects immediately. Clients can also complement the KantanFleet engines with their own training data and increase the total source word count, leading to considerable improvement in the quality of their engines.
What according to you is the least appreciated piece of technology?
Most modern technologies are so integrated within our society that we easily forget how complicated certain aspects of our lives were without them. I think one of the least appreci
ated pieces of technology is perhaps broadband Internet connection. We often take for granted how fast broadband connection has become, and we are regularly complaining about servers being slow.
Cast your minds back to the old and uncomfortable days of dial-up connection – now that was the real hassle!
What interests you the most in the world of automated translation?
According to me, what’s exciting about automated translation is the potential ability of Machine Translation to mimic natural language fluency. We’re not quite there yet, but it is amazing how powerful and precise some technologies have become. It might be utopian, but I dream of a future where automated translation will be flawless for all language combinations in the world.
My colleague, Dimitar is doing some pretty cutting-edge research at KantanLabs, and I am looking forward to the outcome of his Hybrid Neural Machine Translation (NMT) research.
You can read more about NMT here.
If you could be any fictional character, who/ what would you be, and why?
Eärendil the Mariner, by Jenny Dolfen
A lover of Celtic mythology, I have always been fascinated by elves, especially those depicted within J.R.R. Tolkien‘s universe. Since travelling is a great passion of mine, my favourite fictional character is Eärendil, a half-elf described by Tolkien with the epithet “the Mariner”, as he spent much of his life voyaging around the world.
Meet Riccardo Superbo:
Riccardo Superbo from the KantanMT Professional Services team is a system engineer. He holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. degree in Materials Science from University of Milano-Bicocca and another M.Sc. degree in Translation Technology from Dublin City University. He has extensive experience in translation technologies.
Riccardo will be co-presenting the webinar titled, ‘Improving Machine Translation with Automatic Language Quality Review,’ on 15 September with Laura Casanellas and Carlos Collantes. Join him here to learn how to quickly create better quality translation engines. During the webinar they will talk about the key elements of fully distributed translation workflow, standard or custom KPIs, customised MT test plans and real time data visualisations.
