Why Machine Translation Cannot Fully Replace Humans?
The Technology of online translation tools are rapidly evolving – increasing the level of accuracy. In the past two years, “Google translate” which is known to be very useful for translating simple phrases and only a few words accurately into over 10 rare languages. Some include: Basque, Cebuano, Finnish, Georgian, Kazakh, Khmer, Swedish, Swahili , Zulu.
Reasons people may choose machine translation:
There’s absolutely no waiting on a translator or translation company to reply to your request. In Google translate, you need to only enter the texts type the source and target language – the translation process begins immediately. A machine translation tool such as Google has over 100 languages at your fingertips. Why would you need a human translator? Machine translation is still far away from being perfect and accurate.
Here are some of the Advantages and Disadvantages of choosing Automated and Machine translations:
Advantages of Automated and Machine Translations:
– Translation is much faster when compared to human translation
– Translations are at a lower rate or even free of charge
– You do not need any time for finding and managing translator(s) to complete a translation job
Disadvantages of Automated and Machine Translations:
– Not all words, phrases can be translated accurately
– It is a bit difficult to use automated translation for accurate results that may result in slang
– Complicated terms which may become difficult to handle
– Sentences translated can lose their meaning in machine/automated translations
– The translations are literal (word for word) , can miss out on words, word structure, lack of grammar, which can lead to problems.
Even with these advanced online translation platforms, it is proven that the platform still produces incoherent, nonsensical translations.
If you are a business owner or individual looking for personal documents, handbooks, websites, etc. looking for an accurate translation, an automated/machine translation is not an option. Automated translations do not understand the contexts and will not be able to translate correctly.
Can you honestly present automated/machine translations to your potential and existing clients, government agencies, schools, DMV, etc.? Definitely not!
Choosing a professional translator or agency
When you are trying to attract new clients internationally, having an accurate translation into the targeted language is very important. Customers want to feel valued and want to be sure they are dealing with a reliable and professional company. After all, the business’s reputation is on the line – having inaccurate translations is not an option.
Human Translation:
Unlike automated/machine translation, there are far more benefits from having a person translate your contexts. Human translation is proven to be irreplaceable and vital. Only a human can understand and capture the context, translate according to the cultural differences in language, and find suitable alternatives, as well as review their own work.
You may choose Post Editing – which is basically machine translation with a human touch. Even though the machine translation may contain mistakes, a person can proofread and edit making all necessary corrections.
Even though automated/machine translation is still nowhere close to replacing human translators, the everyday progress in technology, is gradually improving.
