One wonders if technology might eventually turn against people who believe they’re using it to their advantage; and perhaps we could have a Terminator II scenario happen in the field of translation!

Translators Working in Harmony with Machine Translations

Figures show that 3 billion gigabytes of data are currently generated every day; with automatic translation services processing more words per minute than all human translators are capable of processing in a year. We know that machine translations are unable to produce the same high quality as human translators, but in defence of this modern technology we should acknowledge machine translations for what they do offer because we are now quite dependent upon this technology; and also remembering that the quality of machine translations will continue improving as time goes by.

In fact, it’s anticipated that, in some fields, machine translation will reach an acceptable level between the next 10 and 15 years.

Technological Developments Create Fear in Many Professions

In the past we’ve seen many examples whereby technological developments have caused fear and panic among members of certain professions; concerned that new innovations might create the end of a human’s necessity to be involved. But machine translations are a different proposition, and the relentless advance of this technology is creating amazing opportunities for translators to coexist with technology; such as revision or post-editing of the machine output.

Translators Should Look beyond Machine Translations

When it comes to high-quality human translations, the truth is that translators have no other option other than to coexist alongside machine translations. Human translators will need to focus on areas of linguistic content that are beyond the capabilities of machine translation: some examples might be humour, poetry and marketing. Translators of today, and especially tomorrow, will be required to take on new roles with the emergence of highly-capable machine translation, roles such as operating and working together with these intelligent machines.