The translation industry is going through a huge transformation, and one of the biggest changes has been in the realm of machine translation. This has been one of the issues that have the professional translation services worried. The machine translation services have been making inroads into what was so far the realm of professional translation. The AI has been one of the prominent changes and thus made it possible for the machine translation capable of learning. This post is an attempt at reducing the fears in the minds of professional translators.
The technology will not replace humans
The machine translation is designed to replace the human translators. In fact, the automation will create a better room for the enhanced interaction between the human and machines. It will introduce a better cognition and thus tend to improve the performance of the professional translators. In fact, a capable and futureproof translation services agency will focus on using the machine translation for a better co-existence and easing the workload of the human translators.
The Human translators are still in vogue
The translation industry indeed is quite powerful and has been generating a good revenue. Even with the increase in the machine translation services, it has been found that it is still the human translators who are stealing the show. You cannot expect the kind of professionalism and quality from a machine translation service that can be offered by a human translator. It goes without saying that the machine translation can only improve with the human intervention.
Opting for a Hybrid Approach
The hybrid approach will involve making use of multiple machine translation options and combine them with human performance. This can help you achieve a flexible and control based option for precision in your translation services. This can involve using different machine translation techniques like Neural machine translation, rule based machine translation and statistical machine translation.
Are the machine translation services good enough as of now?
Well, they can be good enough if you use the technology along with human intervention. The level of performance shown by the machine translation may be acceptable only in some circles and industries, but still, it is far from being a perfect option or an alternative to the human and professional translators.
The colloquialism is enough to take your machine translation to go haywire. As long as you talk slowly and clearly, the machine should be able to understand what you are talking about. But, it will not be able to understand the colloquial terms and slangs in an effective manner. It will also fail miserably if you tend to use proverbs and similar figures of speech unique to a particular language.
So, what is the future?
Future definitely belongs to the professional translators, and they have nothing to worry about. The machine translation can only go to the extent of supporting your human capabilities. They are not replacing your human translators. In contrast, it will help you with achieving the speed and precision for your professional translation services.
There are a few specialized translation services, and these can not be taken over by machine translation methods ever. Some of the prime examples of these specialized translation services include legal, medical and technical papers. The machines can only help you enhance the level of accuracy and efficiency in addition to improving the speed performance. In fact, it can become handy enough if you have a huge workload that a human may not be able to handle.
There is another area that can be aided by machine translation will include the task of proofreading. It can go a long way in helping your editors save the time spent on proofreading and corrections, and this has been made possible with the improved algorithm. But it will never make your professional translation services go anywhere into oblivion.
The Concluding Thoughts
No matter what technology has to do with it, the translation services have been here to stay. The technology is only designed to bring new dimensions to the already existing professional translation services. Of course, the technology has been touted to be the future of the translation industry, but it will never challenge the human element at all. After all, translation service is a creative area, and it should be dependent upon the human intelligence than on the machine learning.
That should definitely alleviate the fear you may have in terms ofmachine learning and machine translation affecting you as a professional translator. Make use of the technology for an enhanced performance of your translation business and of course, grow as a translation services agency.
