Is machine translation any good?

In the beginning

The field of automatic translation goes back further than you may think. The first research programs exploring machine translation systems were conducted in the early 1950s and focused on the Russian<>English language pair. As you can imagine, progress was slow, and the quality of the output fell well short of that produced by a human translator.

Although interest in machine translation remained constant and a variety of different methods were tried by countries the world over, from a commercial standpoint, translating and editing the ‘old-fashioned’ way would continue well into the 1990s.

The distinction between machine translation (MT) and computer-assisted translation (CAT)

Whereas a machine translation service aims to automatically generate a target language text without the need for any human input, computer-assisted translation software tools are designed to support the professional translator in their work by storing previously-translated content in a translation memory (TM), integrating glossaries and termbases and applying quality control tools such as spell-checks in the interface directly.

By the mid-1990s, CAT technology had made significant advances, and its use on personal computers started to become more widespread. Today there is a wide range of CAT programs available. Any good translation company will know how to maximize these tools to improve their services’ quality, consistency, and cost-efficiency.

Current practices

Machine translation companies’ ultimate aim is to bypass the human translator altogether. Among the most well-known operators in this field is Google translate, whose online service processes over 100 billion words per day. Impressive numbers indeed. However, you don’t need to be a professional translator to see that the target-language text generated is still far from satisfactory.

Nevertheless, whereas machine-translation output from 10 years ago would range from the hilarious to the downright bizarre, today’s tools produce much more ‘readable’ results. In addition, they can provide a genuinely helpful service if your goal is to get a basic grasp of foreign language text or to make yourself understood in a foreign tongue.

Human proofreading after machine translation

However, the problem remains with using machine translation to generate high-quality language that can be used to sell your business in foreign markets. Put simply, despite the progress made; MT programs aren’t yet up to the task. Nevertheless, the proliferation of services available and the significant improvements in quality have given rise to a new service –machine translation post-editing.

This involves a human translator performing extensive editing of machine-translated material to make it acceptable for publication. As an increasing number of localization companies offer it as a service, its use is becoming more widespread. It is set to grow significantly over the coming years, particularly for more ‘formulaic’ and repetitive text types. That said, if your document requires any element of creativity, such as in marketing and publicity materials, a human touch is always best.

Future perspectives

One thing’s for sure: the machine translation boom shows no sign of slowing down. As the tech giants battle it out for market supremacy, the service available to the end-user gets better all the time.

Although, for the time being, the best results always come from a human translator, either through the traditional method or via machine translation post-editing, current estimates are that machine translation will have “caught up” with human translation within the next 10-20 years. Watch this space!

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