Machine Translation, including such applications as Google Translate, have a pretty terrible reputation, and quite frankly, they do not work. I am not going to sit here and tell you that automation is not really a threat or that it won’t cut jobs, because it will, and anyone who says otherwise needs to get with the times.
This got me thinking after talking to friend of mine who is also a translator, will automation- in this case machine translation- one day take over and displace human translators?
My friend argued no, that machines can never always get the intricacies of language correct 100% of the time. All they are is a box of algorithms, which is a fair point.
He also talked about how applications such as Google Translate aren’t particularly accurate,something that anyone who speaks a foreign language, and has used Google Translate, will know to be an accurate statement.
He also argued that machines don’t understand culture, as we often say here at Raptor Translations, culture shapes language and the perception of language, a fact that I agreed with.
Machine translation and their algorithms don’t understand slang, my friend said “I am sure that if I put in some Cockney rhyming slang (London slang) into Google Translate, it would fail dramatically.”
I agreed with that statement, and so we decided anyway to try it (into Spanish, as we both speak Spanish, and he is a Spanish translator), what came out had us laughing for about a week.
He also then stated that machine translation can’t easily be localised to a certain area, which is correct, if I want to localise some material in Spanish to Puerto Rico, I wouldn’t put it into European Spanish, as applications such as Google Translate would.
My opinions
I agreed that with him that his points were valid, which I truly believe that they are. However, I also argued to him that it would be stupid to say that computers will never take over. In the 21st century, so many jobs are at risk from automatisation. Take for example a job such as Taxi Driver. Self driving cars will likely kill that profession when they are introduced.
I also argued that whilst applications such as Google Translate aren’t accurate enough for a professional translation at the moment. Although, translation agencies have begun to use them. They are being used other translation agencies such as Capita Translating and Interpreting. Where they use a machine translation and a human professional goes over it and makes sure it works and flows well.
However I also told him that I think, given enough time, applications such as Google Translate will take over, as over time, machine translators will be able to manage and replicate human tone and style, a feat that only human translators can do at the moment.
I agreed with another statement he made. He said that machines don’t understand human humour, another drawback of machine translation. And as such, they can’t replace human translators. Something I thoroughly disagreed with him on, as it is simply a matter of time…
Will machine translation applications take over?
Despite this, I believe that one day human translators will be replaced by machines, much like many other jobs, human translators will be a thing of the past. Even though at the moment, applications such as Google Translate aren’t able to do in-depth translations with all the intricacies of language, yet…
Everyday applications such as Google Translate are getting smarter, the linguists and coders who work for Google, are providing Google Translate with more samples of translations done by human translators and how the source and target language behaves.
It is only a matter of time until machine translators take over, and human translators become obsolete, with the primary way to translate documents being to use machines.