{"id":12090,"date":"2015-07-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/tf2019\/uncategorized\/machine-translation-is-it-the-hope-or-the-ruin-of-the-industry\/"},"modified":"2024-02-13T09:04:52","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T08:04:52","slug":"machine-translation-is-it-the-hope-or-the-ruin-of-the-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/blog-en\/machine-translation-is-it-the-hope-or-the-ruin-of-the-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Machine Translation: Is It the Hope or the Ruin of the Industry?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-5581 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.textform.com\/tf2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Machine-translation-end-or-future1.jpg\" alt=\"Will machine translation be the end of the translation industry?\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\" \/>Almost no other issue divides opinions in the translation industry as fiercely as machine translation. Will it become prevalent \u2013 and put human translators out of work? But how can it, when the translation quality is \u201cso terrible\u201d? At the end of the day, maybe it\u2019s not a matter of \u201chuman <em>or<\/em> machine,\u201d but of \u201chuman <em>and<\/em> machine.\u201d Is all the fuss over nothing?<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>What are the supporters of each \u201csystem\u201d actually fighting about?<\/strong><br \/>\nFor starters,<strong> the advantages of a machine translation<\/strong> over one by a human translator are very attractive for customers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It\u2019s cheap: Machine translation costs much less than employing a human translator. If publicly accessible translation machines like Google Translate are used, they don\u2019t cost anything at all.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s available immediately: If there\u2019s no time to wait for someone to translate the text, machine translation is hard to beat.<\/li>\n<li>It gets a lot done quickly: Translating huge amounts of data in a short amount of time takes multiple translators \u2013 or a machine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>But the limits of machine translation<\/strong> are just as evident as its advantages:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A machine doesn\u2019t translate idiomatically: As a result, machine translations generally don\u2019t flow well and have a strange syntax.<\/li>\n<li>A machine can\u2019t read between the lines: Humor, irony or metaphors are lost on computers. They only translate the words in their memories.<\/li>\n<li>A machine can only do what it has learned: Whether rule-based or statistical \u2013 a machine can only produce content that was fed into it at some point in time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-5588\" src=\"http:\/\/www.textform.com\/tf2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Maschinelle-Uebersetzung-in-der-zukunft2.jpg\" alt=\"How will the translation industry evolve?\" width=\"329\" height=\"219\" \/>While these limits of machine translation are deal-breakers for literature, marketing or technical documentation, the role they play in less permanent environments with lower quality requirements, such as discussion sites or help forums, should not be underestimated.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the question \u201cmachine <strong>or <\/strong>human translation?\u201d doesn\u2019t generally come up. Instead, the question should be: \u201cMachine translation without postediting <strong>or<\/strong> no translation at all?\u201d And for translation projects with higher quality requirements, larger budgets and longer deadlines: \u201cHuman translation <strong>or<\/strong> machine translation <strong>plus<\/strong> postediting?\u201c<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 163px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.textform.com\/tf2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Human-versus-machine-translation-infographic.pdf\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5589 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/www.textform.com\/tf2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Humanvsmachine_thumb-149x300.png\" alt=\"Human or machine translation - what's right for your project?\" width=\"153\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">How to know when to use machine translation. (Click on the image to view the infographic)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The fact is,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/translation-tools\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> machine translation<\/a> always needs some postediting. And why shouldn\u2019t it? If a translation can be produced at virtually no cost, you\u2019ve already saved a significant part of the total budget. Having saved that much, it\u2019s always a good idea to invest in a more or less in-depth revision of the translation.<br \/>\nWhich brings us back to the question of whether computer translation programs threaten translators\u2019 jobs. The answer is no, quite the contrary! At the same time, the future of translators is no longer just translation, but rather postediting machine translations. This opens up a whole new line of work that calls for new abilities and qualifications. Translators who stay on the ball won\u2019t have to worry about their jobs in the future. After all, the amount of text that needs to be localized in the globalized world is so large that, even if computer translation programs are used on a large scale, there will be plenty of work for humans <strong>and<\/strong> machines.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Summary<\/strong><br \/>\nComparing human translations to machine translations is like comparing apples to oranges. There are reasons to use each solution, and if they\u2019re used appropriately, they almost never come into conflict with each other \u2013 even if new findings in computer linguistics can further improve the quality of machine translations. The day when a computer can replace a human translator is still very far off. It will probably never come. On the other hand, the day when today\u2019s translators can be a useful supplement to computer translation programs is already here. This is an opportunity no one in the translation industry should miss.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0As Quality Manager at text&amp;form, Katrin Marheinecke focuses on enhancing the quality of translations and continuously improving translation processes. For her, observing the latest trends in the translation landscape is both business and pleasure.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Read more from Katrin:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/blog\/5-reasons-why-you-should-outsource-translation-projects\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">5 Reasons why you should outsource translation projects<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Almost no other issue divides opinions in the translation industry as fiercely as machine translation. Will it become prevalent \u2013 and put human translators out of work? But how can it, when the translation quality is \u201cso terrible\u201d? At the end of the day, maybe it\u2019s not a matter of \u201chuman or machine,\u201d but of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":13390,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[339,737],"tags":[661,350,382,74,388,354,589],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12090"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17371,"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12090\/revisions\/17371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.textform.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}