Content consumption worldwide is increasing at an accelerated rate, as a result of which the demand for translated content has risen dramatically. With the rise of e-commerce, digital communication, and global travel, businesses and individuals alike need to be able to communicate effectively in multiple languages.
Fortunately, machine translation technology makes it possible to translate large volumes of content at a faster rate. The concept of machine translation involves a computer translating text into another language without any human intervention. The widespread use of machine translation technology has definitely affected the job of human translators in recent years.
While machine translation systems have improved significantly, they still cannot fully replicate the accuracy and nuances of human translation. Therefore, there is still a need for skilled human translators to produce high-quality translations, especially for complex or specialized content.
In this case, machine translation can be considered a translation tool that is useful for translators, because they provide a preliminary translation that can be edited and refined, which can help them work more efficiently.
When used properly, machine translation can save a lot of time and effort, especially when dealing with large volumes of text. Further, machine translation is affecting translation jobs these days in some ways. Some are beneficial and some are harmed by it. Although, translators may be adapted their workflows to use machine translation as an aid rather than replace their work completely.
1. Machine Translation in the Modern Era
Machine translation is known as a tool to process translation material into designated languages without human intervention. This tool has come a long way since its early days in the 1950s. The evolution of machine translation has undergone massive development ever since.
The first development of machine translation was established in the late 1960s. It was SYSTRAN that developed machine translation and worked with the U.S. Air Force on translating intelligence data during the Cold War. Translating content by machine was intended to make it easy for translators to understand the meaning behind the data.
Statistical models played a significant role in improving translation quality when big companies like IBM adopted them in the 1990s. Advanced statistical methods were incorporated with the capability to translate a growing amount of content with a vast amount of internet data. A large-scale deployment of this technology was later undertaken by Google in order to make all human knowledge browsable.
2. Machine Translation Role in the Translator Community
Translation involves the process of translating a message from one language to another. Translators must be precise while adapting to the vast demand for translating material. Therefore, they need to efficiently translate it into another language.
In today’s translating job, translators are most likely to use machine translation. In order to make sure the content meets the highest quality level desired by the client, they do post-editing work.
Therefore, they must learn new skills that are required to stay current with technology development. It is necessary for them to undergo new training when learning how machine translation works.
The learning curve for machine translation can be steep, but many benefits will follow if they master it. Taking on more work is possible thanks to machine translation, which helps cut the translating process and deliver the work faster
3. Machine Translation Advantages for Translator
As the need to translate materials increase rapidly, machine translation can be beneficial. The use of machine translation can be regarded as one of the translation tools at this point, offering several advantages. Here are several advantages that machine translation provided:
Increased productivity by serving as starting point: By providing translators with a starting point for translating, machine translation can help them work more efficiently. The machine translation output can be used as a first draft and then refined, ensuring accuracy and readability.
Lower cost with improved quality: Translators are able to produce a better translation with machine translation by getting suggestions for specific terms or phrases to translate. This can help them avoid mistakes or inconsistencies in their translations. Moreover, it can reduce costs since major mistakes can be avoided with efficient production.
Consistency: Machine translation can help translators ensure consistency across their translations, particularly for technical or specialized content that requires precise terminology.
Time savings: Machine translation can help translators save time on a routine or low-value translations, allowing them to focus on higher-value work that requires their expertise.
Skill development: Working with machine translation can help translators develop new skills, such as post-editing, which can be valuable in the current job market.
While machine translation is not a replacement for human translators, it can be a useful tool to help them work more efficiently and effectively. It can provide valuable support in the translation process, allowing translators to focus on tasks that require their specialized knowledge and expertise.
Machine translation does, however, have disadvantages that may directly or indirectly affect the job of a translator.
4. Machine Translation Disadvantages for Translator
Although machine translation has made significant advancements in recent years, it still has several disadvantages for professional translators, including:
Quality of content: The quality of machine translation is still inferior to that of human translation, especially when it comes to nuances, cultural references, and idiomatic expressions. Due to their incapacity to understand context, tone, and register, machines can produce inaccurate translations.
Clarity and conciseness of content: Statistical algorithms and machine learning models are heavily relied upon for machine translation. These can produce inaccurate translations whether the training data is incorrect or the system is limited by its ability to process certain types of data. Through the use of CAT tools, machine translation can dilute information’s conciseness by substituting alternatives for each source word, which may lead to longer texts.
Limitations on usage: Technical expertise may be required for translators to effectively use machine translation tools. Training and specialized knowledge are required to customize and fine-tune the system to improve translation quality, but it will limit the translators if they have not mastered this tool.
Creativity and Style: Machine translation cannot replicate the creative and stylistic elements of human translation, such as literary techniques, humor, and wordplay, which can be essential for certain types of content.
Confidentiality of content: Transcribing sensitive or confidential documents with machine translation may be risky for confidentiality and privacy. Data stored or shared by machine translation systems can lead to security breaches.
While machine translation can be a useful tool for translators, it should not replace the expertise and creativity of human translators. It should be used in conjunction with human oversight and refinement to support the translation process.
5. Will Machine Translation Replace Human Translators?
In recent years, technological innovations have greatly improved our quality of life, including machine translation. The use of machine translation has many advantages, but it also has some drawbacks.
Although, the debate over machine translation has been going on for years, especially in the translation industry. Does machine translation have the capability to overcome manual human translators?
A machine translation works by encoding and decoding source sentences. In other words, it is all about algorithms and probability without context comprehension. This alone led to the conclusion that machine only works with words, not with language just like translators do. To conclude, machines will not be able to translate as humans do.
Despite the fact that machine translation simplified translators’ work, its capabilities are limited to words only. It may have effects on translator jobs, but not fully replace them.
If used correctly, machine translation can even benefit translators to help them translate massive workloads. In spite of this, they must undergo training before using translator tools, including machine translation.
References:
https://trends.memoq.com/machine-translation-impacts-translation/
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/575/1/012178/pdf
https://www.crisoltranslations.com/our-blog/will-machine-translation-replace-humans/
